Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners. I'm Sharon Knotts, welcoming you to the Sound of Faith because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today's message is part of an in-depth study entitled The Spoken Word Series, which includes teaching on the creative Word of God, because everything that's created visible and invisible, God spoke into being.

Also the living Word, the revelation of the two-mouths sword of the spirit, which is the spoken Word of God when we speak what God has quickened to our spirits. This teaching is the culmination of my own personal journey from a place of deep despair to an authorized and dynamized deputy of the spoken Word of God.

R. G. Hardy: Remember what God told the children of Israel when they were coming to the end of their journey and Moses was getting ready to go to be with God? And Moses said—he spoke and he told them—I'll just refer you to it, it’s Deuteronomy 8:3. He says, and he humbled you and suffered you to hunger, and he fed you with manna, which you did not know, neither did your fathers know, that he might make you to know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

God didn't give them a seed to plant. He didn't give them a seed to grow a crop or harvest the grain or grind it or bake it as bread. It came straight down from heaven already as bread. God probably said, "Let there be bread." No, let me fix that. He probably said, "Bread be!"

And by the same token, God gave His word to Moses. Moses wrote them down, but they weren't his words, they were God's words. And see, what was the whole point of the manna? What was the point of it? Just to feed them? No. The point was to show them just like this bread came straight from heaven, man had nothing to do with it.

Man didn't plant a seed, man didn't grow a crop, man didn't harvest a grain, man did not put it in the oven and bake it. Man didn't touch it. Moses did not make this bread. It came straight out of the mouth of God. And God wanted that to show them, the word that I give to Moses now to give to you, I want you to understand that this law that he's about to deliver to you is not coming out of Moses. It's coming right from my mouth.

Just like the manna came from heaven, these words came from heaven. Jesus, if you would've read all of John the sixth chapter, he had this big discourse with the Pharisees and they kept trying to revert back to the old covenant. And they said, "Well, you need to show us a sign that you are who you say you are. Show us a sign because you know our fathers were in the wilderness and he gave them bread to eat from heaven."

And Jesus corrected them and said, "Moses didn't give you that bread. My Father in heaven gave you that bread and I want to tell you, I am the bread! I am the bread! I am the bread come down from heaven that if a man would eat of this bread, he shall have everlasting life."

And Jesus said in John the sixth chapter, seven times—seven times—he said, "I am the true bread from heaven that gives life." So this word of God is alive. Now we're going to go to our third hallmark verse and that is Hebrews the fourth chapter, verse 12. Hebrews 4:12. This is a very important one.

For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The Word of God is quick. I told you just a moment ago, what does that mean? It’s alive. The Greek word is Zoe. You've heard Zoe before. What does Zoe mean? Life.

The Word of God is alive and the Word of God is powerful. Now we are accustomed to the word powerful and power and most of the time we think of dunamis—that dynamite power of God. But in this particular verse, power is not dunamis. It’s energo. Energo—E-N-E-R-G-O. Can you hear the English word energy? Energy. So what it means is the Word of God is not only alive, but it’s energized to give life.

God's Word not only is alive, but God's Word gives life. This is very crucial, people. I want to tell you, I'm alive. I'm alive up here. But I can't give you life. I'm alive, but I can't give you life. But this Word is alive and it can give you life. It can give you life. So I like to read it this way instead of alive and powerful—this is the way I like to read it—the Word of God is alive and active because it produces life.

And that life is produced when it is spoken. The divine energy that creates the life that’s in the Word of God that’s inherent—it’s inherent in the Word—when it is spoken, it releases that life. Now this is really important, the next few things I'm going to say, so put on your thinking caps.

The Word of God is alive and powerful. The Greek word here in Hebrews 4:12—the word is Logos. And you all know Logos—L-O-G-O-S—refers to the written Word of God. But if we go to Ephesians 6:17—Ephesians 6:17, which is part of the message on the whole armor of God—it says, "and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God."

Now we just read in Hebrews 4:12 the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword. Now I'm giving you Ephesians 6:17, "the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God." In Ephesians 6:17, word is not Logos. It’s Rhema. Rhema—R-H-E-M-A. And what is Rhema? Don’t make it something magical. It simply means a spoken thing, to speak something. Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow. That's Rhema. I just spoke it.

But now let's bring it in conjunction with Hebrews 4:12 and what God's Word is saying. So in Hebrews 4:12, the written word is a sword. In Ephesians 6:17, the spoken word is a sword. They both refer to the Word of God. When the sword is applied to our soul and spirit personally, as we found in Hebrews 4:12, it is more like a surgeon's scalpel.

A surgeon's scalpel can divide asunder joint and marrow. And here we read that God's Word, like a surgeon's scalpel, can divide asunder soul and spirit. So God's Word in Hebrews 4:12—the written Word of God—is like a surgeon's scalpel and we need that.

We need to read the written Word of God because as we're reading the written Word of God and meditating on the written Word of God, it starts doing this circumcision in our heart. Our heart starts getting convicted about something. Okay, Lord. And it’s like circumcision. You know, they have to use a blade, a knife, to circumcise a baby boy.

And what do they do? They cut away the foreskin on the baby boy they cut away the foreskin because that represents the flesh and the things of the flesh that can become contaminated. And so the Bible speaks all throughout about the circumcision of the heart. God says you need your heart circumcised. And when we read the Word of God—the written Word of God as Hebrews 4:12 tells us—it goes in and it begins dividing soul and spirit, thought and intent.

And that's a message unto itself. There are not many things that can reveal and expose our hearts, but the Word of God can. We all have things in us that we are not even aware of, or we may be slightly aware of, but we choose to push it down and hope that it will go away. But it doesn't go away. It grows. So eventually we've got to get it out.

And so the Word of God—the written word—is like a scalpel. That sword is like a scalpel. But when the Word of God is used as a weapon against our adversary, it is not the written word. It’s the Rhema, the spoken word. That's the weapon that we have to use against our enemy.

The Rhema word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. Now we can all in our minds imagine a sword with two blades. You've seen them with two blades. But I want to bring you the part of this message that's the revelation—and this is one of my favorite parts—where it says two-edged.

The Greek word is distomas. Distomas—D-I-S-T-O-M-A-S. It's actually two words. The prefix di means two and stomas means the mouth. So what does that tell us? The Word of God is a two-mouthed weapon. It is sharper than any two-mouthed sword. One of those mouths is God's mouth. Whose is the other mouth?

My mouth, your mouth, our mouth. One of those mouths is God's mouth—it is when He speaks His Word. The other mouth is my mouth when I speak His Word. The other mouth is your mouth when you speak His Word. You've got to do your part by speaking the Word of God.

And saints, this is where the victory is either won or lost right here because when the enemy comes against you and you feel overwhelmed by it in your flesh—this is what I used to do, I'll speak for myself—I used to go in my bedroom, get in a fetal position on the bed and just curl up. And I got lockjaw. My whole body was just tense.

Because if you hold your jaw shut, it'll start hurting. I didn't realize that sometimes when I had a headache and a neck ache, it's because I didn't realize I was always clenching my jaw because I was so overwhelmed with pain—with the mental warfare, with the spiritual warfare. I was just—and I was always walking around like this.

And when something would get really overwhelming, I'd get in the bed in a fetal position, shut the door, put the shades down, and lay there. Now do you think I won the victory doing that? No, I didn't. The devil just beat me up a little bit more. He used what I didn't know against me. It wasn't until God began to show me this. You've got to open your mouth.

I felt like I had spiritual lockjaw, but God was showing me you've got to open your mouth. You've got to resist the enemy. You've got to rebuke the devil. You've got to talk back to the devil. He's shouting in my mind. He's shouting all these doubts—what if, what if this happens, what if you never get better, what if the pain never goes away, what if this and what if that—and it got worse.

The what-ifs just took on a life of their own. And it wasn't until I learned this word, that God's Word was the sharp two-mouthed sword of the spirit. God had already done His part. He has already done His part. Now I had to do my part. I had to open up my mouth and speak the Word of God.

Now here's how Rhema works. Let me tell you how it works. You're praying, you're meditating, you're reading the Word of God. Maybe you're sitting like you are here this morning listening to the Word of God. You could be riding in your car listening on the radio or a CD, whatever.

But all of a sudden, something leaps in your spirit. How many have felt that happen? I mean, you're just going along and smoothly, but all of a sudden something leaps up in your spirit. That is Rhema word. That is when God takes a word from the Word and highlights it in your spirit.

We all probably have Bibles that have got yellow marks and I have green, red, purple, yellow—I've got all kinds of marks in my Bible at home, my study Bible. And so it's like God gets out the yellow highlighter and highlights that in your spirit. And He says this word is for you, for right now, for what you're facing at this time.

You know that scripture—rarely does God use something you don't know. Most of the time He knows something you already know. But all of a sudden it's different than any way you've ever heard it before, read it before, thought about it before. It becomes quickened.

It's like the Bible says in Isaiah 50:4, a word in due season to him that is weary. That's what the Messiah said. He said, "God hath given me the ear of the learned and he awakens my ear morning by morning that I might have the tongue of the learned, that I might speak a word in due season to him that is weary."

And Proverbs 15:23 tells us, "a word spoken in due season, how good it is!" Oh, how good it is! When you're in that pressing place and you feel all the powers of darkness are coming against you, and you are struggling to get up and really use the armor of God, and the Holy Spirit uses something that you're reading, you're listening to, and He just sets it on fire in your spirit.

And you take that thing and it just turns your whole way of thinking around. It just—like this, all of a sudden you've got a whole new perspective. And then you begin to rise up in victory. You know, many of David's psalms start off rather pitifully. Sometimes he starts off in the mulligrubs, and you almost get down there with him when you start reading it.

But hang in there, I tell you most always, most always before you get to the last verse of that psalm, he is exalting in God. He is praising God. Why? Because God put a word in his spirit. God quickened something in his spirit. You say, well how do you know that? I know that because that's what he said.

He said many times, especially in Psalm 119, he said several times, "I would have perished in mine affliction but your word quickened me. Your word quickened my spirit." And think about it, David didn't have the New Testament. David didn't even have the psalms to read. He was still writing them.

But God was able to take something, if you can believe it, out of Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. God was able to take something out of Joshua and Judges and the book of Job, that was the first book written. And God was able to quicken something to David's spirit that he was able to rise up and take the victory.

It's when God speaks that word to your heart, it becomes a Rhema word. He pulls something out of the written word—the Logos—highlights it in your spirit. Now it becomes the Rhema word when you speak it. You can meditate it on all day long, but when it rises up so strong in you that you cannot contain it—you know, you meditate it on it and then "Oh yeah, and that scripture agrees to that"—now God brings another scripture.

"Oh, they're all dovetailing. Wow, this is great! This is really great!" until finally it is about ready to explode inside of you and you've got to open your mouth and declare it. It's when you speak it, it becomes a Rhema word. God created the first blade when He spoke it to your spirit, but you've got to create the second blade when you speak it.

And saints of God, that is the number one weapon that every Christian has in their arsenal. It's the one weapon against which Satan has no defense. There's no greater weapon than the two-mouthed sword. It will cause him to flee every time. I'm telling you that the enemy is not stronger than us.

He's not greater than us. He's not more powerful than us. The Bible tells us in 1 John 4:4, greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. But he will take advantage over us if we don't speak what we know. Not because he's stronger, it's because we give him the advantage.

Something supernatural happens when you speak what God has spoken, because you're coming into agreement with God. You can hear the scriptures preached, you can hear CDs, you can do all of that, but until you come into agreement with it, you will not have the divine energy released in your life to bring the victory. When you come into agreement with it, how do you express it? You speak it. You have to express it with your voice.

One of my favorite verses is Hebrews 10:23, "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith nothing wavering, for he is faithful who has promised." Profession, in other places, the same Greek word is rendered confession. They're interchangeable in the Bible. Confession, profession.

I love the Greek word. You're going to love it too. I'm not trying to overwhelm you with Greek words, I'm giving you the ones I think are important and the ones I think you recognize. You recognized energy from energo, so I think that'll help you to remember next time you read that verse: God's word is energizing me.

Now confession, profession. Greek word: homología. Two words. You all know what homo means—the same. Logía is another form of Logos. What is Logos? The word, the written word. So when you confess, you say the same thing God's word says.

When you profess, you're saying the same thing that God has written in this word. And when you come into agreement with what God has said in this word, then you confess it. Confession requires that you communicate verbally. The scriptures in Romans—it's about salvation, but it fits everything—believe in your heart, confess with your mouth and you shall be saved.

So when you come in agreement with this—whether it's salvation or healing or finances or any problem that you face: demonic warfare, habits, all of these things, it doesn't matter—you find the Word of God, what God's word says about it, and you come into agreement with it. And when you agree in your spirit, you've got to speak it with your mouth.

You have to speak it with your mouth and when you do, when you come into agreement and say the same thing that God says in His word, then you cause this explosion to happen in the supernatural realm. Jesus said if any two on earth would agree as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done unto you.

You've got to come into agreement. And we know that the scripture tells us in Deuteronomy 32:30, one shall put a thousand to flight but two shall put ten thousand to flight. Don't you see that something supernatural happens? If one puts a thousand and two puts ten thousand to flight, and if we go there and we have three in agreement and four in agreement and we get in corporate agreement, it becomes exponential.

That's why the devil doesn't like it when husband and wife learn how to pray and agree together because he knows that they're two, if they come in agreement in prayer, that they are going to have what they say if they're saying what God's word says.

I don't think I have to go down that road and explain it's got to be what God's word says. There are some flaky flighty people, they'll think it's anything they say, and then they'll come back and say why didn't it work? Because you've got to come in agreement with the written word.

And so when you come in agreement with the written Word of God and you speak it, it becomes exponential supernatural power is released. You may not see the results instantaneously in the natural, but I guarantee you that if you could look in the spirit, if God would pull back the curtain and you could look in the spiritual realm, in the second heavens where the principalities and the powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual wickedness that’s in the heavenly places that we're told about in Ephesians 6:10 and 11 and 12, you would see that activity is happening.

And God will get to the place that He will let you know ahead of time. I'm glad that after I got a problem and I got a situation, that God will come down and help me to get out of it. But I want to get smart enough in the spirit that I can hear His voice that when He warns me ahead of time, that I have ears that are sensitive and awakened to hear.

I have the ear of the learned that I can pick up on what God is telling me ahead of time. All kinds of things went into action after 9/11—after the fact. The government revolutionized everything they do. But there was chatter before. Plenty of chatter and warnings before, but they did not pay attention and dot their I's and cross their T's because had they, it was so obvious the plan, the plot, and they pulled it off.

So now the government is very sensitive to pick up on chatter beforehand and analyze the chatter beforehand. Maybe it's benign and means nothing. But maybe it's a clue that can thwart an enemy terrorist plot. And if man has that kind of espionage intelligence technology, what do you think the Holy Spirit has?

So the work has got to be done in our heart first. I'm not going to stay on this point—it would be another message. But the thing of it is, in order for this—you say I love this and this is what I want. Well, you've got to get the sword first to become a scalpel and clean up on the inside, your heart.

I truly believe—this is my opinion—that this is why the word of faith movement did not profit everybody. It didn't work for everybody. Now some of you might say, what are you talking about? Well, back in the early eighties, the word of faith was born. There were churches all over America and they still are called the Word of Faith.

And everything was confess it, and you know they began to put out these little things like "name it and claim it", things like that. And then after a while when it wasn't working for everybody, some people got a little sarcastic and said "yeah, blab it and grab it" because they were saying it didn't work.

There's nothing wrong with God's word. And there's nothing wrong with the fundamental principle that you can speak God's word when He gives it to you and you can speak it and it becomes a weapon against the enemy. But you've got to have your heart right.

If your heart is not pure and clean, then you are—will be having contaminated theology going on down in there. If you're not living right, if you're not doing right, if you're not obeying the word of God, and you've got error in your spirit—I'm not calling you a devil, I'm not calling you a sinner, I'm just saying you've got stuff in there—you are not going to be in a position and a condition to receive the Rhema word of God.

And if anybody knows it, your adversary does. He watches you, he watches me. He is an expert on human behavior. He's been busy watching us since Adam and Eve. And even though he cannot read your mind—thank you Jesus, I'm glad he can't read my mind. You say why? Don't you go down the wrong road there. Sometimes I have been double-minded.

Sometimes I've been battling doubt and fear and unbelief. But I was smart enough not to give it life by speaking it. I was smart enough not to open my mouth and begin to speak all that negative stuff. Because the scripture says in Romans 10:17 faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

But I can flip it and tell you that so does doubt and fear and unbelief come by hearing negative things—even if it's your own voice. He didn't qualify whose voice it was. He just said by hearing. And if it's the Word of God he qualified what is spoken. If it's the Word of God, then faith comes.

But if you get under negative things and even with your own mouth, you can sabotage yourself. I've seen people do it all the time. "Well, I don't know why God doesn't move for me. Well, I don't—I don't this and I don't that and I'm upset and I don't believe..." I've got a letter sitting at home, it's been sitting on my desk for two weeks.

I've got to answer it, I don't want to answer that letter, but I've got to. It's one of them kind of letters. I thought we could just say what we—you know, we'd be able to say—call those things that are not as though they were. And she's going—I'm not saying this to disparage against anybody, but I have an indication that everything's not quite right because she's in jail.

Now you could be saved in jail. Many people get saved in jail. But chances are that whatever got her there, some of that's still here and's got to be worked on. You can't just all of a sudden say "I call them things that are not as though they were" and like abracadabra the gates are going to open and I'm going to walk out.

So you see, you've got to let the Word of God be the scalpel first to do the work in your heart. Because you've got to have—it's not speaking a formula. And that's where the word of faith movement, many people got messed up. They grabbed a formula and they were using the formula and they used it, and after a while for some reason they did not get the results.

They became discouraged. They really got discouraged. And I'm telling the truth, some of them ended up giving up. They said it didn't work and they gave up and they backslid, and that's a shame. There's nothing wrong, but what did Jesus say—and I don't want to get ahead of myself because this is next week: application—but Jesus said, if you will say and not doubt in your heart.

See, you can't have—not doubt in your heart is one of the biggest keys of all. It only works in a clean heart, a pure heart. You can't have some faith and some doubt. You can't have a lot of faith and just a little bit of doubt. You've got to have all faith and no doubt. Nothing wavering.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I really hope you're being blessed and spiritually enlightened by this teaching, The Spoken Word Series. This revelation was forged in my spirit during a time of prolonged suffering in my body, which triggered emotional and mental anguish. I had always had a strong spirit of faith, but after being homebound and bedridden, I despaired.

And in my distress, I begged God for a word to hold on to. And He gave me John 15:7, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you will and it shall be done." Honestly, I was disappointed. I wanted something more dramatic. But then I began to get this revelation of God's spoken word, and gradually as I put it into practice, I overcame the attacks of the adversary.

The foundation is the creative word. The Word of God literally spoke everything into existence. He framed the worlds and He upholds all things by the word of His power. The revelation is the authority that Jesus, the Word of God made flesh and dwelt amongst us, had Himself and gave to us to speak the word as a sharp two-edged sword against the enemy.

The literal Greek says two-mouthed sword. One mouth is God's and the second is mine or yours when we speak forth the word that God quickens to our spirits. This creates the one weapon against which Satan has no defense. Rhema is not a magical formula. It is the active living Word of God, a word from the Word that comes out of our mouth.

The application is the illumination of Jesus' own ministry, by which He demonstrated faith in His own spoken word and its unlimited authority over time and distance when He sent His word and He healed them. Friends, I urge you to order The Spoken Word Series. The complete set is a three-CD set, offer SK136. That's SK136.

Please send a minimum love gift of $15 to the Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, or order online at soundoffaith.org where you may also order on MP3. But to order The Spoken Word Series by mail, send your minimum love gift of $15 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Request offer SK136. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying, Maranatha.