When Our Lips Contradict God's

"God's blessings are hindered when we let out lips contradict His Word." T.L. Osborn
whatever is in your heart determines what you say — New Living Translation  Luke 6:45
for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh — King James Version  Luke 6:45

No one ever taught KatieLyn this truth: You can annul your prayer by speaking against it. Many people wonder why some of their prayers were not answered and then go on to rationalize that God must have said, "No." But in many of such cases, people cancel out their own prayer when they start speaking in unbelief. When you begin talking and meditating on doubt, you rescind what you prayed before. It works this way: Expressing doubt saps all the faith from that prayer.
Matthew 21:22 says, "whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." Speaking doubt means that you are not believing in your heart; you have annulled what you asked in prayer.

Several posts have shown that doubt comes from the devil. You should not accept anything sent by the devil! But today, I am adding another layer to that: Doubt breeds more doubt.

When Gwen opened her yap and began admitting her lack of faith, she added to her doubt. Recall that "Faith comes by hearing," Romans 10:17. She was hearing her doubt aloud and began growing faith in her doubts. When KatieLyn heard her mother's doubts, she began having faith in those doubts too. Eventually, she had more faith in her mother's doubts than she had in what God had told her.

Doubt Breeds Doubt
Expressing doubt breeds more doubt because faith comes by hearing. Faith does not come by praying for faith! That may come as a surprise to some, but you really do not believe because you pray to believe; you believe when you hear yourself say it.
Salvation is dependent upon confession, not upon a formal prayer.  In such case, prayer is only the vehicle for the confession. "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9. See? No prayer necessary! But you do need to make that declaration with your mouth.

Paradoxically, prayer for faith is actually a confession of doubt. Prayer for more faith is a confession of weak faith. Such prayers show that you are doubting God's promises:
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13
In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Romans 8:37

Gwen liked to complain about her doubts. She sought out fits with KatieLyn in order to rehearse her misgivings. Why would she do that?

That answer was astounding—and not in a marvelous way, but in a dumbfounded way. And what put me on to receiving that insight were Gwen's own words when she said she "grieved" for our family. That reaction had struck me as odd and insincere at first; now I see it as a projection of her own wants. Gwen felt left out. She wasn't getting the attention that she wanted. She felt like she was losing her matriarchal role and was being supplanted. And that is partly true because God did want KatieLyn to be promoted beyond her primary position of daughter and assume the increased authority of a wife. But Gwen never came to terms with it as her daughter's promotion; she saw it primarily as being her own loss.

Gwen pitied herself. And she took the thought that she deserved pity and sympathy, so she would glorify her doubts as wisdom. She convinced herself that her worry meant that she cared more than anyone else. After KatieLyn ran back home in the middle of the night, Gwen reveled in the sympathy she finally received. "Oh how hard that must have been for you…" She seized her opportunity to turn the situation into a power-grab and set up a triangulation where all communication had to go through her. Finally, Gwen was getting all the attention that she could. I was thunderstruck when I eventually realized that she had "grieved" for our family because that is what she would have wanted for herself.

I found her reaction to be creepy in an unstable sort of way, and part of me is relieved that Joe was spared her controlling issues. The reason I found it creepy is that misdirected sympathy nourishes the devil's ability to work in a person's life. Compassion heals, but pity destroys. Gwen's grief was the pity kind.

The Lesson
God's Word does not fail, but KatieLyn chose not to listen to and not to speak God's word. She chose to confess the fears of her mother. Her faith was limited by whom and by how much she chose to hear. The Lord had said, “Give attention to my words… for they are life to those who find them." Proverbs 4:20, 22
Your faith is measured by your words. You do have control over those. You can chose what you put into your heart by controlling your confession. When you speak about the doubts and the misgivings that the devil whispers in your ear, then you empower the devil. When you hold fast to what the Lord has revealed to you, you will end in success.