Tag Archives: confess

Whose Side Are You On?

In a world where sensations scream louder than scripture for the faith-fumblers, the call to confession isn’t some mystical chant—it’s the bold declaration of God’s unshakeable truth over the fleeting shadows of experience. We’ve all been there, staring down giants that loom large in our sight, whether it’s a diagnosis that defies hope, a financial pit that swallows dreams, or a relational rift that feels irreparable. But here’s the divine directive: confess God, not Goliath. This isn’t about denying reality’s bite; it’s about affirming the Creator who bites back harder, reshaping that reality according to His promises. Faith isn’t a whisper in the wind; it’s a thunderclap that commands mountains to move and giants to fall. And if your faith feels more like a polite cough, don’t worry—we’ll amp it up to thunder level soon.

Let’s start with the basics, drawing from the well of scripture that never runs dry. Confession, in biblical terms, is the act of saying the same thing as God. We’re agreeing with His revelation rather than inductive speculations from the five senses. Romans 10:9-10 lays it out plainly: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” Notice the progression—faith is birthed in the mind, then voiced through the mouth, and that confession seals the deal. This is spiritual mechanics controlled and ensured by the Almighty. Yet, so many Christians fumble this, agreeing with their aches and anxieties instead of the atonement. They spot Goliath’s spear and start negotiating terms of surrender, all while claiming to trust the Sovereign. Talk about a theological facepalm.

Take Abraham, the father of faith, as our prime exhibit. In Romans 4:17-21, Paul paints a picture of a man who stared down barrenness and old age, yet didn’t flinch. “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” Abraham didn’t confess, “I’m childless and creaky.” No, he called things that were not as though they were, echoing God’s own creative speech in Genesis. His empirical sensations shouted infertility, but his confession echoed eternity. He agreed with God’s promise, not his circumstances, and reality bent to that faith. If Abraham had played the “realist” card, confessing his old age, doctor reports, and YouTube statistics on having children after 90, then he’d have stayed Abram the barren. But he didn’t, and if we are true children of Abraham’s faith, then we should confess the promise over reality. Our confessions aren’t reports on the weather; they’re decrees based on God’s Word that change the climate. Picture Abraham as the original weatherman, he knew the weather because his faith dictate the course of his life.

Now, contrast that with Israel’s epic fumble in Numbers 13-14. God had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, a contract carved in divine faithfulness. He sends spies to scout it, and what do they bring back? A report laced with unbelief: “We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (Numbers 13:33). They confessed their smallness, agreeing with the giants’ stature over God’s promise. It wasn’t a lie—the cities were fortified, the people were huge—but it was a betrayal of God’s revealed promise. God had said, “I am giving you this land,” yet they wailed, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” (Numbers 13:31). And God, in His anger, responded: “As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very thing I heard you say.” (Numbers 14:28). He made them wander until that faithless generation dropped dead in the desert. Their confession aligned with sensations, not His revelation, and it cost them the inheritance. Today, we see the same spiritual sabotage—folks facing cancer confessing, “This is too big for me,” or poverty proclaiming, “I’ll never break free.” They’re agreeing with Goliath, and God lets them reap the wilderness they sowed. It’s not cruelty for God to make their empirical confessions self-fulfilling prophecies; it’s the least they earned. Faith-fumblers are trash—they peddle unbelief like it’s piety, limiting the Holy One of Israel who parted seas and raised the dead. It’s like bringing a defeatist attitude to a victory parade—total buzzkill.

Ah, but then there’s David, the shepherd boy who schooled a giant in theology. In 1 Samuel 17, Goliath struts out, nine feet of Philistine fury, defying Israel’s armies: “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” (v. 10). The Israelites quaked, confessing defeat before the battle began. “When the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.” (v. 24). They agreed with Goliath’s taunts, measuring their might by his muscles. Enter David, fresh from tending sheep, armed not with armor but with audacity born of faith. He hears the giant’s bluster and retorts, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (v. 26). David didn’t confess Goliath’s strength; he confessed God’s supremacy. “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands… and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.” (vv. 45-46). His confession wasn’t rooted in his slingshot skills but in God’s power and promise to help His chosen ones. He slung that stone, and Goliath’s head hit the ground—literally. David didn’t agree with the giant; rather, he confessed the Greater One. If he had joined the chorus of cowards, Saul’s army would have stayed sidelined. But one boy’s faith decree shifted the battlefield. His faith turned Goliath into a punchline.

This pattern pulses through scripture, a divine drumbeat urging us to align our lips with His promises. Sickness, for instance, isn’t God’s fingerprints; it’s Satan’s graffiti on your body. Yet, how many confess the curse instead of the cure? Acts 10:38 reminds us Jesus “went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil,” because oppression comes from the devil, not our Father. When we confess healing—”By His wounds I am healed” (Isaiah 53:5)—we decree the report of God’s atonement news, not the doctor reports. If you agree with the symptoms, then you’re siding with Satan, letting him sideline saints while you slap a “God’s will” sticker on it. That’s not faith; that’s joining with demons to fight against God. It’s like high-fiving the villain mid-battle—awkward and unhelpful to say it midly.

Don’t get me wrong—confession isn’t denial; it’s dominion over reality. Abraham faced his dead body but didn’t use those observations as his starting point for knowledge. Israel saw the giants but should have seen God’s word as stronger. However, because they used their observations as a starting point for knowledge, their sensations became a foundation to disbelieve the faithfulness of God. David eyed Goliath’s size but proclaimed God’s power, because God’s Word was his starting point for knowledge, not his observations. In our lives, this means daily declarations drown out doubt and renew our minds in God’s Word. Facing financial famine? Confess Philippians 4:19: “My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” Battling illness? Proclaim Psalm 103:3: “He forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” It’s not overly optimistic; it’s obedience to God, respecting His Word as more powerful than observations. Imagine Goliath trash-talking, only for a kid to reply, “Your spear’s big, but my God’s bigger. Let’s dance.” That’s the guaranteed faith brings, cutting through observations like David’s stone through Philistine pride. No need for a gym membership when faith does the heavy lifting.

Ah, those faith-fumblers—spiritual garbage peddling unbelief like it’s holy incense. They spot Goliath’s shadow and immediately confess their own smallness, agreeing with the giant’s taunts as if echoing Satan’s playbook pleases God. Picture David rising to join the chorus of cowards screaming unbelief, agreeing with every sensation screaming at him: Goliath’s spear gleaming, the army trembling, the odds stacked. If he did that, his story would have ended there, and his name forgotten like the rest of the Israelites lined up in the war camp. However, he didn’t confess the enemy’s strength or Israel’s weakness; no, he declared God’s victory as done, slinging faith like a divine haymaker. Today, it’s the same farce: folks facing cancer confess, “We can’t defeat this—it’s too big,” then slap a sovereignty sticker on their surrender, praising God for “working all for His glory” in defeat. As if the Almighty’s plan hinges on our demise! That is insanity; that would be a kingdom divided. The faithless have zero courage, zero spine, teaching flocks to nod along with Goliath, mumbling, “God might help if it’s His will.” They say, “As we can see, God in His sovereignty made Goliath bigger than us, thus, it must be His will for us to lose to the Philistines and be defeated and suffer for God’s glory. Let us suffer for God without complaining.” But David’s roar exposes the lie: God’s will is victory for those who confess His promise over the problem, not cower under it. These fumblers aren’t just wrong; they’re complicit by joining with Goliath, limiting the Holy One who gave a promise. They’re like the bad advice in a choose-your-own-adventure book—pick them, and you end up in the wilderness chapter.

This defective ethic turns theology into tragedy. The faithless don’t just lack belief—they teach others to align with the adversary, confessing circumstances as fate while ignoring Isaiah 53’s stripes that already crushed the curse. Like the Israelites whining about giants, they reap wilderness wanderings, dying slow deaths of doubt. But God calls us to David’s boldness: refute the report, command the cancer to crumble in Jesus’ name, because sovereignty doesn’t sabotage salvation—it secures it for the asker. If they’re praising God for defeat, they’re cheering on the wrong team. They have blood on their hands for fighting against God’s people. Time to flip the script and join the winning side.

Yet, the faith-fumblers persist, teaching unbelief as if the Bible teaches us to doubt God. They say, “God might heal if it’s His will,” while scripture screams, “Ask and it will be given” (Matthew 7:7). They’re the modern spies, reporting giants without reckoning God’s Son who says, “All things are possible for the one who believes,” and “Whatever you ask, believe and you will have it.” We have a better covenant than David or the Israelites, where faith moves mountains (Mark 11:23). Our upgrade includes unlimited miracle miles—claim them.

Whose side are you on? Stop agreeing with Goliath’s growls. Seriously, if you repeat what you see—“how big Goliath is”—and not decree God’s promise, you have already joined with the Philistines. The real battle is a clash of faith vs. unbelief. Because David won the battle of faith-filled words over unbelief, it carried over into his victory over Goliath in the material world. However, the faithless are blind to the fact they are standing with Goliath and facing off against God’s chosen ones. The 10 spies who truthfully spoke what they saw (they were smaller and there were giants in the land) thought they were doing nothing wrong. But God considered them an abomination for speaking empirical data over the promise of God. When observations, even if true, contradict God’s promise, don’t you dare confess them, unless your goal is to become an abomination in God’s sight. If you speak your observation over God’s promise, you are Goliath. You have become an abomination that speaks against God and encourages God’s people to speak against God. You are that man. You have become Goliath. You are not David. You are not a hero of faith. You have become the villain and have aligned yourself with a host of witnesses who include Satan and demons. They started the tradition of questioning God’s Word, and now you have joined with them. Is it now you understand why your life is so messed up? There is a reason why there are so many demonic footholds in your life, and it has to do with your confessions.

Goliath’s bite is real, but his sword bows to a man who has faith. We all must start somewhere. Confess God’s promises relentlessly, day and night, until your faith catches up to your confession. And when it does, heads will begin to roll.

In the end, this isn’t optional; it’s ordained. Hebrews 11 chronicles heroes who confessed victory amid valleys—Abraham, Moses, David—all emulating faith that frames worlds (v. 3). Make sure you’re on team Jesus, not team Goliath. Your giant awaits, but so does your God. Speak His Word, sling your faith, and watch heads roll. After all, in this cosmic showdown, the battle belongs to the Lord—but the confession? That’s on you. And frankly, if you’re still nodding along with Goliath, it’s time to switch sides before the arrows begin to fly, and they will fly soon.

ALL Is Not Lost

I was praying the other day. It is now common for me to be praying in tongues and making faith confessions and praising God.

Over the last few years, God has been healing me, restoring me, and growing my inner man. And now, as I look to the future, my focus is more power, more righteousness, more kingdom expansion, seeing my dreams become reality, and taking all choke points and limits off God and what faith can do.

I am in my 40s, and I was feeling a little bit of hopelessness because of my age. I was wishing I could go back to my teens to teach myself what I have learned and practiced over the last several years. And so, I decided to use life’s greatest life-cheat: praying in tongues. After some time, I received an interpretation, “All is not lost. I have heard your prayers.”

When God says “I have heard your prayers,” as He did to Hezekiah, it means He gave you what you asked. Because God is so loving and so faithful to do what He promised, the same act of God hearing you is the same act as God granting your request.

When I heard the Spirit say this, I was unsure if God meant “all” as in “some things might be lost but not all things,” or “all the dreams you have ever had are still yours for the taking.” I looked up and said, “I don’t know how you meant ‘all,’ but I mean it as all my dreams are still here. Even if you did not mean it that way, I mean it that way and receive it that way, because you said ‘all.’” (Hey, if you’re going to quibble with the Almighty, at least do it with faith and a dash of audacity—its how scriptures teach us to pray.)

God told King David that He gave wives to David (this is mostly about sex), a kingdom, prosperity, and fame, and if David wanted more, God would have given more sex, more kingdoms, more prosperity, and more fame to David.

This teaches us that we cannot ask too much. The risk in praying is asking too little and shooting too low. If you aim for the Andromeda Galaxy but end up hitting Orion’s belt, then great, you accomplished some good things. But if you aim for the ground, then that is all you will hit—frankly, why settle for dirt when the stars are up for grabs?

The Gentile woman hijacked Jesus’ words, which meant one thing, to mean something else. Jesus approved and called her faith great. In fact, Jesus was arguing for God’s will to be done, and by the end of the exchange, Jesus confesses out loud, “Woman, your will be done.”

Jesus had already promised to go and heal the centurion’s servant, but the centurion asked for an upgrade to a miracle already in motion (just say the word). Jesus approved of this man asking for more, and he got the upgrade.

Last note: Pray in tongues and ask for interpretation. Even if you don’t have a spiritual gift for interpretation, by asking in faith, you will find you will receive interpretations. Don’t sleep on this. It will help you.

I am here to remind you: All is not lost.

Do not limit God. Do not shoot too low. Do not ask for only small things. Pray for big things; pray for upgrades to miracles you are already getting. Pray for more. And when you think you have asked for too much, ask for more.

And when God hears you, you know God has given.

You Will Not Die But Live

You Will Not Die But Live

A few years before the COVID storm rolled in, Vincent Cheung had already begun publishing more on faith. That stirred me to rethink and refocus. But it was the lockdowns themselves that forced a complete lifestyle shift: deeper devotion, bolder faith, and a daily pursuit of God that I had never known before.

God had warned me years earlier in a divine trance. He told me straight: I wasn’t internalizing Scripture with the faith and inner strength I should. Even after that, I was still partly blind to what it really meant.

When COVID locked most of us down, I found myself stuck at home. I even took the second booster shot. (Listen, if you walk in real faith, you have freedom in your choices—as long as you’re not willfully testing Him in bad conscience. Faith isn’t a straitjacket; it’s freedom wrapped in a divine safety net and unstoppable power.)

Still, afterward I felt half-dead for weeks. One afternoon in my living room I nearly passed out. Vision went black, veins and heart turned cold and sluggish, breathing shallow. Time slowed to a crawl. I had one foot in the grave, and it felt like the other was sliding in too.

I couldn’t speak out loud, i was so weak, but in my spirit I cried out to God. I remembered the dreams and prophecies spoken over my life that still needed fulfilling. Instantly, just enough strength flowed in. I pulled myself onto the chair, and the Holy Spirit spoke with crystal clarity: “You will not die. I will help you. I will restore you and strengthen you.”

I had no health insurance then, so a doctor wasn’t even an option—which turned out to be the best medicine of all. The Great Physician doesn’t charge co-pays, and He’s always faster than any app notification on speed dial.

That single word from the Spirit cut the fear off at the knees. I still felt rough for months, but real recovery began. Slow, steady, and supernatural.

That was the turning point. I changed my everyday life to seek God devotionally. I downloaded the Joseph Prince app and started my first consistent devotional. I signed up for Kenneth Copeland’s daily email. I remember laughing to myself: “I can’t believe I’m reading these guys!” The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is so easy, and you shouldn’t boast about knowing it as if it were a difficult thing to do. It is a doctrine no one can take from me. Reading faith teachers never once damaged my grasp of it. The real problem was that I knew sovereignty but wasn’t living in the joy, peace, and answered prayer of the Spirit in a true application of sovereignty. Knowledge of Sovereignty without faith is empty.

I needed to grow in these areas of faith. However, the Pentecostals and charismatics were too weak. The faith teachers were the only ones who did not qualify Jesus’ statements about faith.

Back in my teens I had prayed in tongues and grasped God’s absolute sovereignty from Romans 9 with no teacher at all. I was at my strongest when the Spirit filled me with power. The faith teachers simply reminded me how vital tongues really is. So I went all in again: praying in the Spirit daily, speaking God’s promises aloud as faith confessions and declarations, singing and praising more and more, cycling through my lists of promise verses, and feeding on faith preaching.

Within months the difference was night and day. Before, stress and fear kept me up at night. Now I slept like a baby—peace mandatory, snoring optional. Prayers started landing. Doubts showed up less and less.

My inner man had been weak, fed only by my own limited experience. Prayer used to come loaded with doubt, stress, and what I now recognize as demonic harassment—those force attacks Vincent Cheung describes so clearly in “On Spiritual Attacks.” Satan pushed condemnation, dread, and the feeling there was no way out. Godly fear brings dread but also shows the escape route with hope and the Holy Spirit shouting “yes” to every promise applied to you.

When you actually read the Bible you see the pattern: when you ask God for something, you should feel nothing but joy, peace, and rock-solid confidence. Anything less means weakness in the inner man—like trying to run a marathon on spiritual spaghetti legs.

Years later (we’re in 2025 now), some of those old weaknesses and demons have tried to creep back. But my inner man is stronger—measured mostly by faith—and I know how to take authority in Jesus’ name. I command them to leave, and they run with their tails between their legs. See my essay “Power Is What Will Finally Deliver You” (and the fuller treatment in Systematic Theology 2025, Faith Edition).

I’m not claiming perfection. I’m not yet at the level of power and faith I’m pressing toward. But the decisive difference a strong inner man makes is undeniable.

And the same upgrade is waiting for you.

All is not lost, friend. Renew your mind in faith and confidence in God’s good promises. Strengthen your inner man. Know how much He loves you and what He has already given you in Christ. When you pray, you will have what you ask. You will see what you confess. You will accomplish what you command in Jesus’ name.

You will not die, but live—and declare the works of the Lord.