I was watching a Christian TV show where someone was using positive confession. She stated over and over out loud, "I have a beach-front Condo and it's all paid for" and it actually eventually became true, according to her testimony. This sounds like "Word of Faith" teaching. I noticed on this forum that Charismatic forum is split into Word of Faith (WOF) and non word of faith.
In recent years I have come to realize that the Charismatics/ Spirit Filled churches really do have more power from the Holy Spirit, after I started going to an Assemblies of God church 3 years ago. However I know about Word of Faith teachers on TV who are Charismatics but with a slightly different twist in their doctrine. That you can make positive confessions of faith (like the beach-front condo) and these confessions can come true, sort of like name it and claim it. I am wondering if it is false teaching or if it's true. I think Ken Haggin is WOF and he talks about speaking in tongues/ spirit baptism. I know that tongues is something real, but if Ken Haggin WOF, does that mean his teaching is from the devil? Also I have watched Joel Osteen and I know he teaches some false doctrine because he does not mention sin very much and one time I heard him say that 99.9% of people are good people and they have good hearts whereas the Bible says that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things.
This is similiar to the 'Positive Thinking', 'Vision Boards' and the 'Law of Attraction'.
Yes it works ....
Is it of God that we should be proclaiming everything we desire?
This is NOT specific to Christianity, this is a natural law of the universe.
They found something that works. They are using God's natural law. They can then live extravegent lifestyles and show God's people how to becoem who want to be constantly and consistently blessed.
However, is it God that's blessing you or is it you, using natural laws to bless yourself.
There are many self-help authors like Dwayne Dwyer who have been using these principles for years. This is considered New Age.
The Lord tells us to lean not on our own understanding, but to come to Him for all things. Shouldn't we be coming to the Lord for what we need?
These preachers know how to grow a church and make money, though. Guess they are attracting a lot of Christians through the natural laws of the universe and psychology who want what they're selling.
Do a little research on your own about these Televangelists and their lifestyles. How they run their churches (many like a business). They take in multimillions and use their highest budgets to recruit new members, they have marketing budgets, advertising budgets, 15 positions or more, none related to ministry.
ARTICLE
How Joel Osteen Inspires Millions
By
Carmine Gallo November 07, 2007
Business leaders can learn a lot from the popular evangelist's uplifting style. Accentuating the hopeful empowers people to take action.
It's easy to spot Joel Osteen. The pastor of Houston's Lakewood Church has been featured on 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, Good Morning America, and other major network shows in addition to countless magazine and newspaper articles, mostly focusing on his new best seller, Become a Better You. The book was released in October with an initial printing of 3 million copies. Lakewood Church averages 47,000 attendees for Osteen's weekly services. Osteen has influence.
As a communications coach, I make observations on what makes a particular speaker inspiring to his or her listeners. The secret behind Osteen's charisma is this: He speaks the language of hope.
According to Osteen, "As parents, we can profoundly influence the direction of our children's lives by the words we say to them. I believe as husbands and wives we can set the direction for our entire family. As a business owner, you can help set the direction of your employees. With our words, we have the ability to help mold and shape the future of anyone over whom we have influence."
If that's the case, and I believe it is, then dwelling on the negative (for example, focusing on how "bad " things are, how the economy will ruin your business, etc.) will demoralize your listeners. Speaking in positive, optimistic language, however, will leave everyone inspired and energized by your presence.
Searching for Something to Believe In
The people around you want to be inspired. Your customers, employees, and co-workers are searching for someone and something to believe in. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 72% of Americans are "dissatisfied " with the way things are going in the U.S. You may not be able to change the national mood, but you most certainly have the ability to energize everyone in your sphere of influence.
Inspiring leaders speak the language of optimism. Joel Osteen is no exception. Osteen believes that the first 30 seconds of a conversation will determine the next hour, so he advises speakers to begin conversations with something positive to lower defenses and to create a connection with your listener. In Become a Better You, Osteen writes, "Your words have the power to put a spring in somebody's step, to lift somebody out of defeat and discouragement, and to help propel them to victory."
The other week while I was waiting at the airport, I saw a magazine cover featuring the best places to work in a particular city. The companies that led the competition offered employees perks like free beverages, on-site massage, and fitness rooms. All well and good, but the article was missing the point. Nobody ever jumps out of bed on Monday morning eager to work because they don't have to pay for a cup of coffee. It's nice, but it doesn't satisfy what Emerson described in his writing as "our chief want, someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be."
Fill the Emotional Tanks
Osteen realizes that listeners are hungry for words that reinforce a belief in a brighter future. I interviewed a high school coach who calls it "filling a person's emotional tank." In other words, by reinforcing what people do right and by painting a picture of how successful they could be if they improve in certain areas, you give them fuel that they can convert to energy in the workplace, at school, or wherever they need that extra dose of motivation. According to Osteen, "everywhere we go we should be making deposits—whether at the grocery store, ballpark, school, or office. Develop a habit of sowing good things into people's lives. Make it your business to help somebody else feel better about himself or herself. Encourage him in some way; make him feel important; help him to know that somebody cares."
Osteen also makes the point that you cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life. That's why we are uninspired by the presence of negative people. You may have a title that suggests "authority " over someone else—chief executive, manager, supervisor, director, teacher. But you will never be recognized as a true leader until you inspire people around you and make them feel confident about the future.
God Wants Me to Be Rich
Who will save us? Who will lift us up from crushing credit-card debt and resetting mortgage payments and impending foreclosure, from increasing gas prices and decreasing health-insurance coverage? We are a nation stumbling through our worst financial crisis in a generation and our worst housing market in a lifetime. And so we come, seeking gentle salvation, inspiring prayers, steadying words, soothing notions, and calming thoughts that will allow us to become, in Joel Osteen’s words, “victors, not victims.”
We are in Greensboro, North Carolina, making our way into the downtown arena through the hot, buggy air, to worship with the pastor who will save us, the man anointed, by one of his congregants, as “Reverend Feelgood.” Sixteen thousand will file in this evening, as have millions more to coliseums, concert venues, and baseball stadiums around the country—all, in a way, his churches. (
View a slideshow that tallies the budgets of some of the biggest churches.)
We are a diverse, representative swath of troubled America: families struggling under debt, husbands and wives seeking reconciliation, young couples on first dates, children dragged by pious grandparents who promise them popcorn and BibleMan action figures. It is religion as escapism, criticized throughout the Bible Belt as “Christianity lite” or “prosperity gospel.” But this murmuring crowd, slouching toward a kinder, gentler salvation, is a more telling indicator of the state of our union than consumer durables purchased or capital goods ordered. Unemployment they know; they don’t need to wait for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to publish a monthly number. O, but come to Joel, lift your hands to Jesus, banish your negative thoughts, and you can find in these dark times a beacon.
If, in this country, there is great hurting, then Osteen is here to soothe that suffering. He does not wish that pain on any of us, and the sight or thought of it will bring forth from him great torrents of tears—his eyes clamped shut, his fingers pressed into narrow eye sockets, his lips pulled back over pink gums as he grimaces. The crying has become a visual touchstone of an Osteen sermon, the born-again equivalent of James Brown’s pre-encore collapse from “exhaustion.”
Joel feels our pain and has made himself wealthy (reportedly earning $13 million for his last book advance alone) and his church prosperous ($75 million and counting in annual revenue) by urging us to let go of it, to turn it over to God, to accept God’s favor so that we may be as prosperous as Joel.
There was always a strain of American Puritanism that pointed to Scripture as justification for asserting that wealth is somehow godly. But ever since evangelical Christianity separated from the mainline faiths in the early 20th [bless and do not curse]century, some preachers have gone further and linked their focus on personal piety to financial success. The big-tent revivals of the 1930s promised the dust-bowl destitute the possibility of finding Jesus and their next meal just by listening to a fire-and-brimstone message. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, televangelists like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart made prosperity gospel big business, capitalizing on that era’s economic uncertainties to win over a new generation of acolytes, before those ministries were brought down by scandal.
Osteen is one of a new breed of televangelists—Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, and Creflo Dollar are also rising stars—who are preaching a less sanctimonious, more inclusive message. His church is in that part of the economy that thrives in troubled times, that can count on full pews when wallets are empty and an ever more receptive audience if we do go into a full-on recession.
Osteen hasn’t necessarily tailored his message for the downturn. Instead, he has continued his feel-good preaching, his exhortations to focus on the positive and banish negative thoughts, his reminders that God wants you to have a good job, a beautiful home, and decent cash flow. His vast ministry has become, in effect, shelter from the storm. “God wants you to have a big life,” Osteen reminds his flock. “That is his blessing. God has a big dream for your life.”
We live in a time of miraculous congregations. Osteen’s Lakewood Church, in Houston, is the largest in the United States, with 45,000 regular weekly attendees and 7 million more tuning in. His television show is the most-watched inspirational program in America and is seen in 100 countries around the world. He has sold 7 million copies of his two books,
Your Best Life Now and
Become a Better You. Podcasts of his sermons are downloaded 4.5 million times a month. He preaches to more than 15,000 people at a time in the basketball arena turned sanctuary that is Lakewood Church. His pulpit stands near the spot where Hakeem Olajuwon helped the Houston Rockets win two consecutive N.B.A. titles. But the Rockets, who have since moved across town, never put as many people in the seats as Osteen does.
Osteen will tell you that his success is a result of God’s favor, that his message is God’s message, and that all that he has achieved is a blessing from God. Clearly, he is more than just an inspiring pastor; he is also a master marketer and—pardon me for saying this, Joel—a damn good chief executive.
MORE:
upstart.bizjournals.com/executives/features/2008/07/16/Megachurch-Preacher-Joel-Osteen.html?page=all
