Want to be light in a dark world?

Steve Brown:
Want to be a light in a dark world? Stay tuned to Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to let you know that because of what Jesus has done, God will never be angry at you again. Steve invited our friend Jerry Q. Parries to do the teaching this week. Jerry is a pastor, an author, and has served in ministry for more than 35 years.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hello Jerry.

Jerry Parries:
Hey, Dr. Brown. How are you sir?

Steve Brown:
Listen, I know how busy you are. You know what? One of the things among many that Jerry does is he travels all over the world. And he loves it. And I don’t, he takes groups of people to places you wouldn’t believe. And I don’t even like to go to the corner drugstore. It’s good. I know how busy you are and coming in and spending this time with us is a real gift. One of the wisest decisions I ever made, was to make you a voice of Key Life.

Jerry Parries:
Oh, well, I’m honored.

Steve Brown:
And so many people have said that to me. Let me tell you what we’re going to do this week. Jerry, who is one of the voices of Key Life, is a blessing to me, a benediction in many ways. And I could sit here and name them. But one of the things is that when he walks into the Key Life building, everybody feels better. When he walks into my study. And I was sitting there writing things I didn’t want to write this morning. And as he walks into my study at Key Life. I kind of feel like the sunshine was out. And so this week we’re going to find out the place from which that comes as we talk about the power of confession. Now, when we talk about confession, if you think Jerry and I are going to confess our sins to you, you’re out of your mind. We need our jobs, but when we talk about confession, we talk about your witness, your standing up, what you confess to the world, what you confess to yourself. Not in terms of sin, but in terms of who you are and Jerry’s going to tell us as we go through this week and you don’t want to miss a bit of it, the difference confession makes in your life.

Jerry Parries:
Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, it’s so good to be here. And likewise, you make me smile every time I see you.

Steve Brown:
Most feel the opposite, but I’m glad.

Jerry Parries:
Well, listen, Dr. Steve Brown. This is Going to be an exciting week and I want everyone to tune in. And yes, we’re going to be talking about the power of confession. I’m, there’s a very familiar Scripture, Proverbs 18 and 21, that says.

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

And one of the things that I’ve learned about me. And this is what I started doing probably 20 years ago, is I started changing what I said about myself. There are times that you can talk yourself out of a blessing. You can talk yourself out of feeling good today. You could talk yourself out of being positive and you have to confess the right things about life, about you, about who God says you are, so that you can get the right results in your life.

Steve Brown:
That is so, you know, and I was telling you when you came in this morning that I was working on a new book. I’m up to the 7th chapter of 11 chapters, and the title is, The Lies We Believe Dealing With Guilt, Shame, Fear. and Regret. And great minds must think alike because that book has to do with what you’re going to be teaching us this week. We do believe lies, don’t we?

Jerry Parries:
Yes, we do, we do. In fact, there’s a Scripture, that Jesus even says. He says.

Surely I say unto you, “If you say to this mountain, be thy move and cast into the sea and do not doubt in his heart, but believe that those things which he says will be done, he will have whatsoever he says.”

That Scripture is sometimes taken way out of context. But I want to hone in on the one thing that Jesus says here is that, you will have whatsoever you say. If you say, that I’m going to have a terrible day. You will. You’re going to have a terrible day. Because that’s your confession. I love the Scripture and I get up in the mornings.

And this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

See, that’s a declaration that you’re making over your life that I don’t care what goes on today. I may have a moment, but I’m not going to let the enemy have my day.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s so good. You know, I kidded about Tony Campolo, my friend. By the way, pray for him. He’s, this is a rough time. He had a stroke and been struggling with some health issues of late. But Tony gets up in the morning and says.

Good Lord. What kind of neat things have you planned for me today?

Jerry Parries:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And he kids me. He says, Steve, when I get up in the morning, I say, “Good morning, Lord”. When you get up in the morning, you say, “good Lord, it’s morning”.

Jerry Parries:
That’s a big difference, that’s a big difference.

Steve Brown:
And Jesus was saying that words are powerful, aren’t they?

Jerry Parries:
Yes, yes.

Steve Brown:
We think words are just words, but they’re not.

Jerry Parries:
No, in fact, Romans says.

That the world was created by the Word of God.

That means that we’re not seeing what did then appeared. So, when God said, let there be light. God said, let there be light. Then what did God see? He saw what he said. And so, when you begin to say great things about your life and what God is doing in your life, it will cause you to see the manifestation of those things. And no place do you see this more than you do in Numbers the 13th chapter, Moses sends out spies to go look at the promised land. And while they’re out there seeing the promised land, they saw God open up the Red Sea, they saw God do the ten plagues, they saw God do all of these marvelous things. But then when it came down for them going to take the promised land, they went and said, we can’t do this. We don’t know how to, we don’t have enough strength to do this. These people going to kill us. They start declaring and making confessions that they were not good enough. In fact, Numbers 13 says.

There we saw the giants and we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes.

Watch this.

And so were we in their eyes.

Watch this. They saw themselves unworthy and they thought other people saw them unworthy. They saw themselves unqualified and then they saw other people thinking they were unqualified or they thought other people saw them unqualified. And when you see yourself undeserving, you will start thinking other people see that you’re not deserving. So, you’ve got to remove that negativity out of your life and you won’t go get some jobs, Steve, because you feel you don’t deserve it. You’re unqualified.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Jerry Parries:
And you will walk, you will talk yourself out of being blessed by God. I remember when you came to me and then said, I want you to be one of the voices of Key Life. I said, who, me? Because you would talk yourself out of

Steve Brown:
It’s so easy to do

Jerry Parries:
what God has for you

Steve Brown:
Now, we’re not talking about believe, we sometimes think of faith as believing what just isn’t true, but we’re talking about truths about us.

Jerry Parries:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
I mean, we’re talking about confessing what God has already said about us.

Jerry Parries:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
That he’s pleased and we’re going to talk a lot about it throughout the week. But he’s already pleased with us.

Jerry Parries:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
We’re forgiven.

Jerry Parries:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
We’re loved deeply and with, and once you begin to see yourself that way and quit believing the lies. And Satan’s called the father of lies.

Jerry Parries:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
Once you start believing the lies it turns dark.

Jerry Parries:
It does, it does. You you start saying things over your life. You start believing things that are not true, and then you start acting those things out. You know, I used to say, I used to tell people about the righteousness of God and why it’s important to declare your righteousness. It’s like a child growing up, when you have a child and you look at a child and you call him stupid, you call him crazy. You say negative things to a child, then he’s eventually going to act those things out. He’s acting them out because you have confessed that into his life. And so, I tell people, don’t tell your children they’re stupid. Don’t tell your children they’re crazy. Don’t tell your children they’re bad because that’s a confession that’s going to manifest in their lives. And you want to tell them how wonderful and how blessed they are that God has made them fearfully and wonderfully made.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s so good. We’ve got to stop doing that to ourselves.

Jerry Parries:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
It’s not just because God hasn’t done that to us.

Jerry Parries:
No, not at all. God wants you to confess over your life and starting tomorrow we’re going to give you three things, so you’ll want to tune in tomorrow.

Steve Brown:
You don’t want to miss tomorrow.

Jerry Parries:
You don’t want to miss this week. We’re going to give you three things to tell you how to change that perspective over your life. God wants you to know that you are the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, the lender and not the borrower. For you to get in that position, you’ve got to speak positive things over your life, so that you would be able to rise to the occasion that God has called you.

Steve Brown:
It’s sort of a godly arrogance, isn’t it?

Jerry Parries:
Yeah, that’s good.

Steve Brown:
Arrogance is not a good thing, but it’s a good thing if you’re affirming what God has said about you.

Jerry Parries:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Now, you guys, you don’t want to miss a single one of the broadcasts this week, because this is the subject. If you’ve been saying all kinds of things like, I’m a worm, I don’t deserve anything, I’m so bad, God can never use me again, listen to me. Stop it! We’ll tell you why this week. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve. And thank you Jerry. That was Steve Brown and our good friend Jerry Parries. And as you heard, they will be teaching us all about the power of confession. It’s going to be a great week. Be sure to join us again tomorrow. So, Steve and Jerry will be reminding us about the power of confession, but what about the power of grace? Yeah, we talk about it a lot and yet we so easily forget. If you could use a reminder about that, there’s a booklet we’d love to send you called Radical Freedom: Surprising Faithfulness. It’s a newly reprinted excerpt from Steve’s classic book on radical grace, A Scandalous Freedom. Get your copy now by calling us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that booklet. To mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for your free copy of the booklet called Radical Freedom: Surprising Faithfulness. And finally, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or simply text Key Life to 28950 and then follow the instructions. And it goes without saying, but if you can’t give right now, or maybe you just don’t feel called to, we get it completely. But if you would, please do pray for us. Would you? Always needed, always appreciated. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.