In one of my first blogs I told the story of the veteran missionary who told his wife and children that they would always be poor because of their call to missions. Here is his story quoted from my earlier blog:

With tears in his eyes the veteran missionary looked at me. He had gathered his children and grandchildren around him at the front of the church building. I had just finished teaching that God wanted to be the God of “more than enough” for his children. Generally as I proclaim the message of biblical prosperity, people respond and ask for prayer to be free from poverty. But I realized God was doing something different as this man approached me with his extended family gathered around him.

       Here was a precious man of God and his wife who had spent much of their lives on the mission field. As they approached me, he gathered his sons and daughters and put his arms around them. He wanted me to pray for his whole family. He shared that early in his life he felt called to the mission field and he had told his wife and family that they would “always be poor” because they were called to be missionaries. He went on to share about their experience of never having enough. When they were on the mission field and when they were home, they never seemed to have enough…always barely scraping by. And now he saw the same lack in the lives of his children. He wanted me to pray for them and break the power of these words he had spoken over his family. He wanted his family to meet and know God as El Shaddai, the God of more than enough.

        Knowing the power of our own words, I asked him to pray first and cancel his words of financial lack over himself and his family. He stood in his place of God-given leadership authority over his family and renounced his words of “always being poor”. Then I followed in a prayer of financial blessing for the family as God met them in a beautiful time of prayer and restoration.

Our words are so important. This man’s words bore the fruit of poverty and lack in his family even for years after they were back from the mission field. He felt the Lord prompting him to retract those words. The spiritual principle here is simply stated in Proverbs 18.

From the fruit of his mouth a man’s stomach is filled; with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied. The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit (Proverbs 18:20-21).

When we speak faith filled words about our finances, we are not deny a financial reality, we are speaking words that change that reality.