Joy wrote the sentence on a small white card at the crossover service. It was a few minutes before midnight on the thirty-first of December, and the church was packed. The ushers had distributed cards and pens during the worship, and the pastor had asked everyone to write their declaration for the new year. “Write it boldly,” he said. “Speak it daily. Whatever you declare in faith this year, you will see.”
Joy was thirty-four, a pharmacist with her own small shop in Surulere. She had a good life, a loving family and a church she was committed to. What she did not have, and wanted very much, was a husband. So she wrote, in careful capital letters: BY DECEMBER THIS YEAR, I AM MARRIED.
She took it seriously. She stuck the card on her dressing table. She wrote the same words on a sticky note and put it on the dashboard of her car. Every morning before she opened the shop, she said it aloud three times. When friends asked how she was, she would sometimes add, half laughing and half serious, “And by December I will be a married woman.”
December came. She was not married. She was not even in a relationship. At the next crossover service she wrote the same declaration again, with more determination. Then a third time. By the end of the third December, the card had become a source of quiet shame. Someone at church suggested that she had not declared it with enough faith. Someone else hinted that there might be a spiritual blockage in her family line. Joy began to dread the thirty-first of December. She told me later that she felt as though God had set her an examination and she had failed it three years running.
The turning point came in a midweek house fellowship. They were studying Hebrews 13, and the leader, an older man who taught mathematics at a secondary school, read verses 5 and 6 aloud. Then he asked a simple question. “In this verse, who speaks first?”
Joy looked at the text. “For he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper” (Hebrews 13:5-6). God spoke first. He hath said. Then the believer answered. So that we may boldly say.
She went home that night, took the card off her dressing table and looked at it for a long time. She realised that she could not think of a single place where God had told her that she would be married by December. She had declared something she deeply desired. She had never stopped to ask whether it was something He had said.
Who speaks first
The verse that opened Joy’s eyes contains the whole pattern of biblical declaration. Look at it again. “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Hebrews 13:5-6).
There are two speakers. First God speaks: I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. The writer is quoting a promise that runs through the Old Testament, given to Jacob, to Israel through Moses, and to Joshua as he took up leadership. Then the believer speaks: The Lord is my helper. That second sentence is itself a quotation, from Psalm 118. The believer’s bold declaration is drawn from Scripture and stands on a promise God has already made.
PunchlineThis is the order of every true declaration. God speaks, and we answer. Our words do not go first and pull God’s action after them. His word goes first, and our words come into agreement with it.
Notice too the context of these verses. The writer is talking about money and contentment. “Be content with such things as ye have.” The promise of God’s presence is given as the answer to covetousness and fear. In other words, the very passage that teaches us to make bold declarations is also teaching us to be content with what God has given, rather than using our words to grasp at what He has not. A declaration rooted in God’s promise produces contentment. A declaration rooted in our desire often produces the opposite: restlessness, striving, and disappointment when the thing does not arrive.
This does not make declarations weak or timid. Boldly say. There is nothing tentative about “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear.” It is a confident, even defiant statement, spoken in the face of whatever people might do. But its boldness comes from its source. You can say it boldly because God has said it first.
I believed, therefore have I spoken
Paul describes the same pattern in his own ministry:
We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.
“I believed, and therefore have I spoken.” Paul is quoting Psalm 116:10, and the full verse in the psalm is striking: “I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted.” The psalmist spoke in faith while he was in deep trouble. He did not deny the affliction. He named it in the same breath. But because he believed God, he spoke.
Paul applies this to his own sufferings, which he has just described: troubled on every side, perplexed, persecuted, cast down. “We also believe, and therefore speak.” What does he speak? He tells us in the next verse: “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus.” His speech is anchored in a specific truth God has revealed: the resurrection. He is declaring a hope that God has guaranteed in Christ.
Notice the chain. God reveals His word. The believer believes it. And out of that belief, the believer speaks. Speaking comes third. Paul says the same elsewhere: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Faith comes from hearing what God has said, and then it finds its voice.
When declarations begin with desire instead of God’s word, the chain is reversed. We choose an outcome, speak it, and then try to generate faith through repetition. But repetition cannot produce what only God’s word can produce. You can say a sentence ten thousand times, and if God has not said it, you will be no more certain at the end than at the beginning. In fact, you may be less certain, because some part of you knows that you are trying to make yourself believe something that has no foundation.
NuggetThat is what had happened to Joy. The more she repeated her declaration, the more anxious she became, because it rested on nothing except her own longing.
The vision of their own heart
Scripture has strong words for people who speak their desires in God’s name. In Jeremiah’s day, Judah was facing invasion by Babylon. God had sent Jeremiah to warn the people that judgement was coming because of their persistent idolatry and injustice. But many other prophets were giving a different message:
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD . They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.
“They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.” That is a precise description of desire-driven declaration. The people wanted peace. The prophets wanted to be popular. So they announced peace, in the Lord’s name, with complete confidence. The message was attractive, comforting and false.
A few chapters later, one of these prophets confronted Jeremiah publicly in the temple. His name was Hananiah, and he announced, “Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts... I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the LORD’s house” (Jeremiah 28:2-3). It was specific. It had a deadline. It was spoken with all the confidence of a genuine word from God. And it was entirely his own invention. Jeremiah answered him, “The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie” (Jeremiah 28:15).
Ezekiel, prophesying in exile at around the same time, described the same problem: “Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!” (Ezekiel 13:3). Have seen nothing. They spoke with conviction about things God had never shown them.
We should be careful how we apply this. Joy was not a false prophet. She was a sincere believer who had been taught that declaring what she wanted was an act of faith. But the principle applies. When we take a desire of our own heart and announce it as though God had promised it, we are doing a small version of what Hananiah did. And we may lead others to trust in it too.
God gave a simple test in the law of Moses: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22). Joy’s declaration did not come to pass three years running. The trouble lay in the source of the words: the Lord had not spoken them.
A declaration is only as strong as the word it rests on. If God has said it, you can say it boldly. If He has not, repeating it will not make it His.
Four hundred voices and one
One of the most vivid scenes in the Old Testament shows how attractive desire-driven declarations can be. Ahab, king of Israel, wanted to go to war to recapture the city of Ramoth-gilead from Syria. He invited Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, to join him. Jehoshaphat agreed, but asked that they first enquire of the Lord.
So Ahab gathered his prophets, “about four hundred men,” and asked whether he should go. They answered with one voice: “Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:6). One of them, Zedekiah, made a pair of iron horns as a dramatic visual aid and declared, “Thus saith the LORD, With these shalt thou push the Syrians, until thou have consumed them” (1 Kings 22:11). It was a confident, unanimous, theatrical declaration of victory.
Jehoshaphat was uneasy. He asked whether there was not another prophet of the Lord they could consult. Ahab admitted there was one, Micaiah the son of Imlah. “I hate him,” he said, because Micaiah never prophesied anything good about him (1 Kings 22:8). The messenger sent to fetch Micaiah tried to prepare him:
And the messenger that was gone to call Micaiah spake unto him, saying, Behold now, the words of the prophets declare good unto the king with one mouth: let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them, and speak that which is good. And Micaiah said, As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that will I speak.
“Let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them, and speak that which is good.” That is the pressure many believers feel. Everybody else is declaring good things. Why spoil the atmosphere? But Micaiah answered, “As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that will I speak.”
Micaiah told the truth. Ahab would die in the battle, and Israel would be scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Ahab had Micaiah thrown into prison on bread and water. Then he went to battle, disguised himself to avoid being targeted, and was killed by an arrow drawn “at a venture,” shot apparently at random. Four hundred confident declarations could not protect him from what God had actually said.
The four hundred prophets were saying what the king desired. Micaiah was saying what God had said. That is the difference this whole teaching is about. Declarations that flow from desire are often more popular, more exciting and more comfortable. Declarations that flow from truth may be quieter, and they may sometimes be costly. But only one kind can be relied upon.
The God who calls things that are not
Some teaching on declarations rests heavily on one phrase in Romans 4. Paul describes God as the One “who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). From this, some have concluded that believers should do the same: call into being whatever we want by speaking it as though it already existed.
Read the verse carefully. The subject of the sentence is God. It is God who gives life to the dead. It is God who calls things that are not as though they were. Paul is describing what God did when He told a childless old man, “I have made thee a father of many nations,” years before Isaac was born. God called Abraham a father before he was one, because God’s word guarantees what it describes. “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9).
What did Abraham do? Paul tells us: he “against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken” (Romans 4:18). According to that which was spoken. Abraham did not choose an outcome and declare it. He believed what God had said. His faith was a response to a specific promise. He was strong in faith, giving glory to God, “being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:21). What he had promised. The power was in the promise, and the promise came from God.
Notice too that Abraham was fully aware of the facts. Paul mentions his body, “now dead, when he was about an hundred years old,” and “the deadness of Sara’s womb” (Romans 4:19). Abraham did not pretend that he was young or that Sarah was fertile. Faith did not require him to deny reality. It required him to trust that God’s word was greater than reality.
The creative power to call things into being belongs to God alone. The book of Lamentations puts it plainly: “Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?” (Lamentations 3:37). Our calling is to trust the God who speaks and to answer His word. When we transfer His creative authority to ourselves, we lose something precious. We stop worshipping Him as Creator and start treating Him as a mechanism that our words can operate.
What about “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21)? That proverb is a serious warning about the power of speech in human relationships and in our own lives. Words can wound or heal, build up or destroy, and we will reap the fruit of how we use them. It calls us to careful, gracious, truthful speech. It gives us no promise that we can create circumstances by announcing them.
What God has said cannot be reversed
When God has truly spoken, His word cannot be overturned. One of the most surprising illustrations of that comes from the mouth of Balaam, a prophet hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel. Balaam went up onto the heights, looked down on the camp of Israel, and opened his mouth to curse. What came out was a blessing:
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it ? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.
“God is not a man, that he should lie... hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” Balaam was being paid handsomely to declare a curse. His employer desperately desired it. Balaam himself seems to have wanted the money. But none of that desire could change what God had said. “He hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.”
That is the security of a declaration grounded in God’s word. It does not depend on our feelings, our circumstances or the opposition of other people. If God has said it, it stands. The writer to the Hebrews speaks of “two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18), His promise and His oath, so that we might have strong encouragement.
God makes the same point through Isaiah:
For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth.” The word that accomplishes God’s purpose is the word that comes from His mouth. When we speak that word back in faith, we are joining ourselves to something that cannot fail. When we speak words of our own invention, however sincerely, we have no such guarantee.
This gives believers an extraordinary freedom. You do not need to manufacture certainty. You do not need to repeat something until you can make yourself believe it. You can find what God has actually said, and stand on it with complete confidence, because He will not lie and He will not change His mind.
Declarations that rest on promises
So what should a believer declare? Paul gives us the key:
For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
“For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen.” Every promise God has made finds its yes in Christ. And our response is Amen, which means “so be it” or “it is true.” That is what a biblical declaration is. It is the believer’s Amen to God’s Yes.
There is a great deal to say Amen to. You can declare that you are forgiven, because Scripture says so plainly. You can declare that you are a child of God, that you have been made righteous in Christ, that nothing can separate you from His love, that He will never leave you, that His grace is sufficient for you, that He will supply your need, that He who began a good work in you will complete it, and that you will be raised with Christ. Every one of those declarations stands on a clear promise to those who belong to Christ. You can say them boldly, in good times and bad, and they will never fail you.
To declare well, we need to read well. When you find a promise you want to declare, ask a few simple questions. Who was this originally spoken to? What exactly does it promise? What is the surrounding passage about? And how does the New Testament apply it to believers in Christ?
Take a verse that is very often declared over individual futures: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jeremiah 29:11). It is a precious word. But look at the verse just before it: “after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you” (Jeremiah 29:10). The promise was given to a whole nation in exile, and it would be fulfilled after seventy years, meaning that many of those who first heard it would die in Babylon. We can rightly take from it the truth that God’s thoughts toward His people are thoughts of peace, a truth confirmed again and again in Christ. We cannot rightly use it to guarantee a particular job by next month.
Even the devil quoted Scripture. In the wilderness he took Psalm 91 and urged Jesus to throw Himself from the temple, because “it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee” (Matthew 4:6). The words were genuine Scripture. The use was a twisting of them, applying a promise of protection to a reckless act God had not asked for. Jesus answered, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7). It is written again. Jesus read Scripture with Scripture. He would not let one verse be used against the whole.
Where desire belongs
PunchlineIf declarations should flow from truth rather than desire, what should we do with our desires? The answer is beautifully simple. We bring them to God in prayer.
“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). In every thing. There is no desire too ordinary or too personal to bring. A husband, a child, a job, a house, healing for a parent, a visa, a business breakthrough. God wants to hear about all of it. The psalmist says, “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4). As we delight in God, He shapes our desires and meets them in His wisdom.
The difference is between a request and a declaration. A request says, “Father, this is what I would love. You know my heart.” A declaration says, “This is what You have said, and I agree.” Both are acts of faith. Both honour God. But they are not the same, and mixing them up causes great confusion. When a desire is presented as a declaration, it claims an authority it does not have. When a request is offered honestly, it trusts the Father’s wisdom with the answer.
Jesus Himself shows us the shape of a desire brought honestly to God. In Gethsemane He prayed, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He named His desire plainly. He did not hide it or disguise it as a declaration. And then He placed it in His Father’s hands. That is the strongest faith in the world.
Truthful declarations also mean honesty about present facts. A declaration should never require us to lie about a medical report, a bank balance or another person’s free decision. You can receive an accurate diagnosis, follow your doctor’s advice, and pray for healing, all at once. You can declare that God is your healer and your helper without telling anyone that the tumour has gone when it has not. Faith is not protected by false information. Like Abraham, we can face the facts fully and trust God more.
Joy is thirty-seven now. She is not married. She still hopes to be, and she says so freely.
But she does not dread the thirty-first of December any more. At the last crossover service, when the ushers handed out the cards, she wrote a different kind of declaration. She showed it to me afterwards. It says: He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. Underneath, in smaller letters, she had written a prayer: Father, You know I would love to be married. I trust You with my life.
“My old card was longer,” she said. “And every word on it was mine. This one is shorter, and every word in the declaration is His. The other part is just me talking to my Father.” She has kept the first card. It is tucked into her Bible at Hebrews 13, as a reminder.
She told me that the past year has been one of the richest of her life. She has started mentoring young women at church. Her pharmacy has grown. She has learned to pray about her desire for marriage honestly, without shame and without pressure. “I used to think that if I stopped declaring it, I was giving up,” she said. “Now I know that I was never standing on anything. Now I am.”
That is the freedom God offers you. You do not need to manufacture outcomes with your mouth. You do not need to carry the burden of making your desires come true by the force of your words. Bring your desires to your Father as honest requests. And when you declare, declare what He has said. His word goes first. Yours answers. And His word, unlike ours, has never once failed.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Think of a declaration you have made regularly. Can you point to the place where God has said it? If not, what is it really: a promise, or a desire?
- What is the difference between Hananiah’s message and Jeremiah’s? Why might Hananiah’s have been more popular?
- How does reading Romans 4:17-21 carefully change the way you understand “calling those things which be not as though they were”?
- Which promises of God, clearly given to believers in Christ, could you declare with complete confidence this week?
- What desires do you need to move from declaration into honest request?
This Week
Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write the heading What God has said, and list five promises clearly given to believers in Christ, each with its reference. Check each one by reading the passage around it. On the right, write the heading What I desire, and list the things you most want from God at the moment. Each morning this week, declare the left-hand column aloud, boldly. Then pray through the right-hand column as honest requests, ending each one with, “Father, I trust You with this.”
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You have spoken, and that Your word never fails. Forgive me for the times I have declared my own desires as though they were Your promises, and for the times I have trusted in my words more than in Yours. Teach me to hear what You have said, to believe it, and then to speak it boldly. Thank You that all Your promises are Yes in Christ, and I gladly say Amen. I also bring You my desires as Your child. You know what I long for. I trust You with every one of them. Let my declarations flow from Your truth, and my requests rest in Your wisdom. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.