1,000 years before the birth of Christ, King David prophecied of Jesus in Psalms 2:
7 “I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.
The word decree means an official order issued by a legal authority. When God made this decree through David, He established an executive order that Jesus would be His Son. Someone may ask, but wasn’t Jesus already God’s Son? Why did God have to make a decree? And more importantly, what does making decrees have to do with us today?
We are going to look at the power of the decree in this article. It is necessary to understand the power of words if we are going to understand how God’s kingdom operates and how we were designed to function in it.
John 1:1 says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is speaking about Jesus. Jesus has been around from the beginning and He is referred to as the word. In this verse, the Greek word for Word is logos. The word logos refers to the entirety of scripture (the Bible). In the beginning Jesus was the entirety of scripture and He was with God in heaven.
So how did God get the entirety of scripture into the earth in the form of living, breathing, speaking person? God spoke. Specifically, He declared over 300 decrees through his prophets about Jesus! These words were the written word that was settled in heaven that God spoke into existence in the earth through people.
Eventually God sent an angel to tell a young woman named Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus. Look at Mary’s response in Luke 1:38:
Be it unto me according to thy word.
Mary spoke. She said be it to me according to your word. The Greek word for word in this verse isn’t logos; it is rhēma which means the spoken word. In other words, Mary gave a decree! This is how the word (logos) became flesh in the person of Jesus and tabernacled among us according to John 1:14.
You and I have been given the power to declare and decree. We are responsible for declaring and decreeing God’s promises into the earth so God can take His word and make it flesh in our life. God’s word is settled in heaven, but it doesn’t get settled in the earth until you and I speak it. This is how God provides fathers to the orphans, wealth to the poor, and healing to the broken-hearted.
The power of speaking is so important that after God called Jesus his Son in Psalms 2:7, He then told Jesus to speak in Psalms 2:8:
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.
God’s will was for Jesus and His disciples was to disciple nations. This was Jesus’s inheritance, but it wasn’t automatic. Jesus had to decree Psalms 2:8 (the word ask in verse 8 can be translated to require or make a demand on). It’s not a passive asking. It’s asking with expectancy.
We all know Jesus was a man of prayer. Often between His times of public ministry of preaching and performing miracles, He would go off by Himself and pray all night. I believe the reason He was so successful in public ministry when everyone was watching was is because He was successful in praying and decreeing God’s promises when no one was watching!
I want to challenge you to make 2020 a year of prayer! Speak God’s word! God’s plans for you and me are better than any of us are currently experiencing and He wants to release His promises into our lives! He just needs us to use our God-given authority and decree! I recently taught on prayer at church. To see that message click here.
