wysiwyghome.com

by Richard Gazowsky

Recently, some renowned prophetic friends of mine have warned me, “Richard, be careful what you say. That includes even casually speaking, because there are serious ramifications that can appear from a slip of the tongue.” To be honest, their warnings had a trite sound to me. But as the months went by, I began to put two and two together and I realized that I had been speaking with a casual “slip of the wit” and this can be dangerous.

I’ll never forget the story of Judith Emenike, wife of the world famous evangelist Victor Emenike. In one of their healing services, Judith’s eyes were completely healed. She had previously worn heavy prescription glasses, but now suddenly God healed her eyes. She didn’t need glasses to read, nor did she need glasses to see far away. It was a complete and total healing. For the next four days, she went around exclaiming, “I can’t believe it! I’m healed! I can see!” Little did she know, this slip of the wit exclamation was eroding her own faith. Suddenly, on the fourth day, her sight failed her and things were no longer clear visually. Reluctantly, she had to return to the use of her glasses. She realized she had lost her new vision because of her confession, “I can’t believe it!” Judith is a very powerful and experienced woman of God and I am sure this is why God’s judgment was much more severe, and I must say that I don’t believe God was not judging her for saying, “I can’t believe it!” But instead, satan was taking advantage of this use of words and was using it as leverage to get back, in effect, her vision. But that’s not the end of the story. Progressively, she has needed lighter and lighter prescriptions. It seems that God is healing her through a progressive process, which she has said has become a constant reminder to guard her tongue.

I have experienced this slip of the tongue myself and have found that my casual use of words, including the phrase, “I don’t believe it!” (used as a casual exclamation) were sometimes causing an interruption and even a cancellation of the miracle process.

So what should be our response to situations like this? My analysis of this phenomenon has brought me back to what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians, the second chapter, “I am determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” This is not just an intellectual professor making a declaration of a position of perceived humility, but it is actually a desperate cry of a man who is capable of knowing all of man’s carnal knowledge but refuses to study, plow into, or exercise himself in that wit. He has found the solitude and safety that there is in a quiet mind. A quiet mind is a mind that enjoys and meditates upon the moment and it finds great pleasure in rehearsing the great miracles that Christ has done in its life over the last few months. In this activity, there is peace and bliss.

Think about what Paul said. Nothing, absolutely nothing- I don’t want to analyze my situation, I will not take an account of my assets, I will not put things on a timeline or try to figure out the bell curve, but instead I am willing to let my mind rise up to the simplicity of a little child observing the footprints and handprints of God in his life. When you do this, your tongue becomes silent and the wit and the cleverness slip away into the darkness of what coulda, woulda and shouldn’t-a been.

The fresh light of revelation allows our tongues to speak in complete alliance with the will of God for our lives. Jesus actually gave a similar analysis on this subject when He said, “For out of the mouth, the heart speaketh. For out of a good treasure, a man brings forth good things.” This is an amazing insight into how God has wired our bodies. Your conscious mind does not actually control your spontaneous thoughts coming from your heart. For that to be controlled, there must be an inward change of your spirit. This change, I believe, cannot be accomplished by any manipulative efforts on your part. But instead, the change happens when you are brought through the fire of God and He cleanses these impurities of your heart by bubbling them to the surface and allowing you to easily access and get rid of the scum.

Yesterday, I was stopped for speeding. My car was filled with an eclectic group; my film crew! I have had a history of not doing well with officers stopping me. Every time, they throw the book at me and I can’t figure it out, because in my mind, I’m doing everything to get rid of the ticket. So yesterday, I am suddenly in the same position again. But this time something unusual happened. When the officer came, I spoke in the gentlest tone. He collected up all the usual information, checked it out in his car and came back to say, “I just wanted to warn you that you were speeding. Drive slower next time.” I was shocked. This has never happened before in my life. This morning as I contemplated that situation, I began to realize that actually, I was losing my slip of the wit. Those little things that I used to say, I don’t say anymore. Could it be that the fire of God is changing my heart and the things coming from it are also fresh and new?

Richard Gazowsky pastors a church in San Francisco called The Voice of Pentecost, and is also president of Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks. He has directed the films, “Guardians” and “The Roman Trilogy.”