POSITIVE THINKING & POSITIVE CONFESSION (PART I)

“Defining Positive Thinking and Positive Confession”

By Akin Ojumu

Pastors wear many hats. Their duties and responsibilities are wide ranging. In fact, a pastor who can’t multitask, is a pastor clueless about what the duties of a pastoral ministry ask. God’s shepherds oversee the diverse problems of a diverse people with diverse personalities. Thus, the pastor must be able to adapt to diverse responsibilities.

Very often, pastors serve as grief and marriage counselors. They are crisis managers and problem solvers. Many serve as mentors and life coaches. Pastors are first responders and healthcare providers tending to the physical health of their flock. It’s not unusual for pastors to assume the role of administrators, financial advisors, and estate planners.

By far, though, the most important duty of pastors is the spiritual development of the congregation. As overseers, they are to teach, preach, pray, and care for the spiritual well-being of the congregation. Through their exemplary lifestyles and good conduct, they are to model godliness to the souls they lead.

1 Timothy 3:2

“Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach…”

Foundational to everything we do as Christians is the knowledge of God’s Word. Since the job of pastors is to preach the Gospel by teaching the Scripture accurately, it’s imperative that pastors are well-grounded in their understanding of Scripture. Anyone whose knowledge of Scripture is deficient is unfit to be shepherd over the flock of God.

Titus 1:9

“He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.”

Because the pastor’s responsibility is to help the congregation attain a clearer understanding of the Word, those who exercise spiritual authority in God’s Church must be Scripturally savvy and adequately equipped to teach the Bible accurately and capable to refute those who assail God’s Truth.

2 Timothy 2:15

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

Blood-curdling heresies are inevitable when unqualified and ill-equipped individuals are elevated to the position of a pastor. The rampant hair-raising false teachings that pervade the churches today are a direct consequence of having biblical illiterates teaching the people of God. Because these novices have zero grasp of Scripture, they continually twist Bible texts to propagate all kinds of doctrinal errors. Lacking proper understanding, they replace the Gospel with all sorts of myths.

One of those errors and myths that have become commonplace across churches and denominations worldwide are the concepts of positive thinking and positive confession. These erroneous assertions, which derive their origin from a religio-metaphysical healing cult, known as the New Thought Movement, are the cornerstone doctrines of the Word of Faith Movement, and they are the doctrinal pillars on which the false belief system stands.

The good folks at Got Questions provide, what I think is, a good description of positive thinking and positive confession.

“Positive thinking is the act of reviewing thought processes in order to identify areas that need improvement and then using the appropriate tools to change those thoughts in a positive, goal-oriented way.”

“Positive confession is the practice of saying aloud what you want to happen with the expectation that God will make it a reality. It’s popular among prosperity gospel adherents who claim that words have spiritual power and that, if we speak aloud the right words with the right faith, we can gain riches and health, bind Satan, and accomplish anything we want. To confess positively is to speak words that we believe or want to believe, thus making them reality. This is opposed to negative confession, which is to acknowledge hardships, poverty, and illness and thus (supposedly) accept them and refuse the ease, wealth, and health God has planned for us.”

As with the rest of their false belief systems, the adherents of positive thinking and positive confessions believe there’s a biblical basis for their false doctrine. When challenged to provide a text in Scripture that supports the positive thinking and positive confession doctrine, they are quick to point to the following two texts namely:

Proverbs 23:7

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…”

Proverbs 18:21

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”

Let’s take a pause here and continue next time when we’ll exegetically examine these two Bible texts to see if they indeed support positive thinking and positive confession of the Word of Faith Movement.