Fall in Love With the Power: Death and Life Are in Your Tongue 

Have you been praying for weeks, months, maybe years to be free from something — and it still has a grip on you?

Maybe you’ve been asking God to deliver you from fear, from anger, from a habit you can’t seem to break. And all this time, He’s already given you the tool to do it. It’s been in your mouth the whole time. The question isn’t whether you have the power. The question is whether you’ll love it enough to use it.

Death and life are in the power of YOUR tongue — not somebody else’s.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV

A lot of people hate that verse. They hate it because it puts the responsibility right where they don’t want it — on them. They’d rather blame God. They’d rather blame the economy. They’d rather blame their spouse, their boss, their upbringing, or the government.

But this verse says your death and your life are in the power of your tongue. Not theirs. Yours.

And notice the second part — those who love it will eat its fruit. When you argue about the power of words, when you push back against this teaching, when you say “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal” — you are literally saying, “I don’t love the power God put in my tongue.”

And if you don’t love it, you won’t use it. And if you don’t use it, your flesh wins by default.

The bridle only works if you pull on it.

We’ve been building this all week from James 3.

If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.

James 3:2 NKJV

Your tongue is a bridle. But a bridle sitting on a shelf does nothing. A bridle only works when you pull on it. That means this is an active thing, not a passive thing.

Many of you are trying to get control of your flesh through passivity. You’re praying about it — which is good. You’re hoping God will just remove the desire — which He may do. But in the meantime, He’s given you a tool, and you’re not using it.

You don’t get a horse to obey by hanging the bridle on the fence and hoping the horse sees it. You put the bit in the horse’s mouth and you pull. Your tongue is the bit. Pull on it.

Saying nothing is not the same as saying something good.

We’ve covered this every day this week, but it bears repeating because this is where people keep getting stuck.

David said he was going to muzzle his mouth. He went silent. He held his peace even from good. And while he sat there musing, the fire burned — and out came the very words he was trying to hold back.

Silence is not a strategy. It’s a pressure cooker. And eventually, it blows.

The fix isn’t shutting your mouth. The fix is opening it with the right thing. When your mind is screaming, “This just isn’t my day,” you don’t sit there gritting your teeth. You open your mouth and say, “This IS my day. I’m blessed and I’m in the blessing business.”

When the thought comes, “I’m such an idiot,” you don’t just try not to say it. You aggressively replace it — “I have the mind of Christ. God has given me wisdom liberally.”

When fear about money is ringing in your ears, you don’t muzzle yourself and hope it stops. You declare, “I will not be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever I have sown, I will also reap.”

You won’t stop saying the wrong thing until you change what’s on the inside.

Here’s a truth most word-of-faith teaching misses. You can’t just tell someone “Don’t say that” and expect permanent change. If Jeff walks around saying, “I’m a loser,” and I tell him to stop saying it, he might stop for a while — out of respect for me. But the moment pressure hits, it’s coming right back out. Why? Because he still believes it on the inside.

You will not permanently stop saying the wrong thing until you truly believe the right thing. And the way you get the right thing on the inside is by putting it in your mouth — out loud, over and over — until the Word of God displaces the lie.

That’s not works. That’s cooperation with grace. Works is anything you do to get God to love you. This is something you do because God loves you and you want to walk worthy of that love.

When you love something, you don’t have to be forced to use it.

My friend Jeff has been picking locks. Once he got the hang of it, I couldn’t keep him off of locks. He wanted to use those picks on everything — doors, padlocks, you name it. Why? Because he loves it. And when you love something, you look for ways to use it.

That’s what needs to happen with your tongue.

When you truly fall in love with the power God put in your mouth, you won’t have to be convinced to use it. You’ll look for opportunities. You’ll catch yourself mid-thought and pull the bridle before the wrong thing ever gets to your lips. You’ll wake up in the morning and start speaking the Word before your feet hit the floor.

You’ll stop worrying about what people think when you declare truth out loud in the middle of Walmart — because you’ll love the power more than you love their opinion.

Your flesh does not have to rule over you.

I want you to hear this clearly. Whatever has been holding on to you — fear, anger, lust, addiction, self-destruction, worry — it does not have to keep winning.

God has given you a bridle. He’s given you a tongue with death and life in its power. He’s given you His Word to fill your mouth with. And He’s given you grace to pull the reins.

The only question left is whether you’ll love this power enough to use it. Every day. Out loud. Aggressively. Without apology.

Fall in love with the power of your tongue. Pull the bridle. Fight To Win.