Right and Wrong Confessions

Right and Wrong Confessions

By E. W. Kenyon

For a long time, I was confused over the fact that there was a continual sense of defeat and failure in my own life and the lives of others.

I prayed for the sick. 

I knew that the Bible was true, and I searched diligently to find the leakage. 

One day, I saw Hebrews 4:14 (asv), which says that we are to “hold fast our confession” (“profession” in the Authorized Version).

Reading the third chapter of Hebrews, I discovered that Christianity could be called the “great confession.”

I asked myself, “What confessions am I to hold fast?” 

I came up with these: 

I am to hold fast the confession of the absolute integrity of the Bible.

I am to hold fast the confession of the redemptive work of Christ.

I am to hold fast the confession of being a new creation, of receiving the life and nature of God.

I am to hold fast the confession that God is the Strength of my life.

I am to hold fast the confession that “surely He hath borne my sicknesses and carried my diseases, and that by His stripes I am healed.” (See Isaiah 53:4–5.)

Though, I found it very difficult to hold fast the confession of perfect healing when I had pain in my body. 

I discovered that I had been making two confessions. 

I had been confessing the absolute truthfulness of the Word of God and, 

at the same time, making a confession that I was not healed.

If you had asked,

“Do you believe that by His stripes, you are healed?” 

I would have said, 

“Yes, sir, I do.” 

But in the next breath, I would have said, 

“But the pain is still there.” 

The second confession would have nullified the first.

In reality, I’d had two confessions: 

first, 

a confession of my perfect healing and redemption in Christ, 

and second, 

a confession that the redemption and healing were not facts.

Then came the great battle to gain the mastery over my confession, until I’d learned to have but one confession. 

Now, if I confess, 

“My God shall supply every need of mine,” 

I must not nullify that confession by saying, 

“Yes, God supplies my needs, but I cannot pay my rent. I cannot pay the telephone bill.”

Faith holds fast the confession of the Word. 

Sense knowledge holds fast the confession of physical evidences. 

If I accept physical evidence over and against the Word of God, 

I nullify the Word, as far as I am concerned. 

But now I hold fast my confessions that God’s Word is true; 

that by His stripes, I am healed; 

and that my God does supply my needs. 

I hold fast those confessions in the face of apparent contradictions, and God is bound to make good.

Many believers fail when things get difficult because they lose their confession. 

When the sun shines brightly, their confessions are vigorous, strong, and clear. 

But when the storms and testings come, and the adversary takes advantage of them, they give up their testimony.

Every time you confess disease and weakness and failure, you magnify the adversary above the Father and you destroy your own confidence in the Word. 

You are to hold fast to your confession in the face of apparent defeat. 

You are to study the Word until you know what your rights are, and then hold fast to them.

Some make confessions without any foundations. 

Then the adversary badly whips and beats them.

You are to find out what your rights are. 

For instance, you know that the Word says, 

“Surely He hath borne our sicknesses and carried our diseases.” (See Isaiah 53:4.) 

So now you can make your confession. 

“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37). 

There you can make your confession. 

“Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). 

You can make your confession here.

Stand by your confession through thick and thin, through good report and evil. 

You know that your confession is according to the Word.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; 

(Revelation 12:11)