Kingdom Faith #6: Calling Things That Are Not, and the Power of Your Words

Kingdom faith speaks like a king: it calls those things that are not as though they were, instead of describing problems and blaming God for them. In this sixth and closing message of the series, Dr. William P. Hohman shows how God changed Abram’s name to make him speak his promise, why believers are made kings and priests, and why every word we speak either builds our future or works against it.

This message completes the teaching that continues from Kingdom Faith #5: Calling Things That Are Not as Though They Were. Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, each Scripture he uses (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline and practical steps.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries in Merrill, Wisconsin, and posted on February 22, 2022. Pastor Hohman explains that it is the sixth week of a section of his kingdom faith teaching on calling those things that be not as though they were, and that he hopes to finish it in this service.

The sermon moves from the new birth, to Abraham’s name change, to the believer’s identity as a king, to Job’s words, and then to Jesus’ teaching on idle words and Paul’s call to speak the same thing. It ends with declarations and a prayer of salvation.

Kingdom Faith Starts With a New Birth

Pastor Hohman begins with a short recap. When we are truly born again, God gives us a new heart and puts His Spirit within us, and that is far more than knowing about God. Even Satan believes there is a God and trembles (James 2:19). The difference is that he does not put the principles of God’s kingdom into play. He does the opposite.

In the garden, the serpent persuaded Adam that God was holding something back, when Adam was already made in God’s image. Adam believed a lie, and a corrupted government came into the world, bringing an earth-cursed system. Jesus came to redeem us from that darkness and convey us into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1:13).

Without the new birth, he says, you cannot know how the kingdom works. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3–7). Religious people pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done” (Matthew 6:9–10), yet would not recognize the kingdom if it walked into their living room.

Born-again believers are not like a bobber cut loose from a fishing line, drifting wherever the waves go. God’s thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), higher than any government, family tradition or system, but in Christ we have His mind (1 Corinthians 2:16). We can understand how He works, and then do it too.

God says His people seek Him daily and delight to know His ways (Isaiah 58:2). Israel knew the acts of God, but Moses knew His ways (Psalm 103:7). The people only wanted God to do things for them, which is the attitude of the cursed system: everyone is owed something, and every problem is someone else’s fault.

He jokes that he could not cook an alligator because he only had a crock pot; that is what our excuses sound like to God. You already have what you need. You are the head and not the tail (Deuteronomy 28:13), so stop trying to get ahead. God is not our servant; He is our Father.

From Abram to Abraham: Calling Things That Are Not

The foundation of the whole series is Romans 4:17–21: God gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. Pastor Hohman explains that Jesus could come into the world because Abraham gave God permission by believing Him. Isaac came by promise when it was naturally impossible, just as Jesus later came through a virgin.

God brought Abram outside at night and told him to count the stars, because so would his descendants be, and Abram believed God (Genesis 15:5–6). But he lacked one thing. He believed, but he did not act like God. Years later, at 99, with Sarai at 89, there was still no child.

So God changed the way Abram talked. He renamed him Abraham, father of a multitude (Genesis 17:5), and changed Sarai’s name to Sarah, a mother of kings (Genesis 17:15–16). From that day, every time someone said his name, Abraham heard his promise, and everyone around them was speaking it too.

About a year later, Isaac was born. His name means laughter, because they had first laughed at God’s promise. God brought it to pass by changing the way Abram saw and declared things.

Everyone is born into a fallen world, spiritually dead to God. Going to church does not make anyone a Christian; you must be born of the Spirit, and then your eyes open to how God does things.

Where the Word of a King Is, There Is Power

In Revelation 1:5–6, Jesus loved us, washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us kings and priests to His God and Father. Revelation 5:10 adds that we shall reign on the earth. Jesus is King of kings, and His children are those kings.

The problem, Pastor Hohman says, is feelings. Since the fall, people live by their five physical senses. But we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). He reads the gates of Psalm 24:7–10 as those senses: lift them up, and the King of glory comes in.

He shares his own story. As a young man he ran from the Lord because of what he had seen in ministry, but then cried out to know the God who created the heavens and the earth, who could heal, deliver and take care of him. Those prayers gave him the confidence to preach in 34 nations with only his Bible.

That confidence is faith, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). He calls faith the title deed to what you are believing for. Then he reads Ecclesiastes 8:4: “Where the word of a king is, there is power.” Your words have power, just as God’s do. In the beginning was the Word, and all things were made through Him (John 1:1–3). The Word made everything that is seen out of what was not seen.

So if you do not see health in your life, you declare what you do not yet see. Believers were never created to be depressed, defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed or unworthy; that comes from the kingdom of this world. There are two parallel kingdoms, and we are in this world but not of it (John 17:16).

Whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory, our faith (1 John 5:4). If you think you do not have enough, Jesus said faith as small as a mustard seed is enough to speak to a mountain or a tree (Luke 17:6). The key is that you speak. Start talking to your circumstances with the promises of your inheritance.

Job and the Power of Words

Pastor Hohman turns to Job’s terrible season. Raiders killed his farm hands and stole his oxen and donkeys, lightning burned up his sheep and shepherds, Chaldeans took his camels, and a powerful wind collapsed the house where his sons and daughters were gathered. Yet in all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong (Job 1:22).

Christians, he says, often blame God for their problems with a catchy phrase: God is in control. Pastor Hohman says God is in charge, but He is not in control in the sense people mean, because He has given the earth to the children of men (Psalm 115:16). You are the one who is supposed to be decreeing and declaring. God needs you as much as you need Him, which is why Jesus called His disciples the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13).

Even covered in boils and scraping himself with a broken pot, Job did not sin with his lips (Job 2:10). He did not accuse God, though he did speak wrongly in other ways, and later he said, “Teach me, and I will hold my tongue” and “How forceful are right words!” (Job 6:24–25).

Words, he teaches, are like capsules that hold your future. They do not fall to the ground and die. Like a time-release cold capsule packed with tiny beads that each release at a different moment, words keep releasing what is inside them. God did not make Job sick. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came to give abundant life (John 10:10), a word he explains as super abundance.

He recalls a time when he had been at NTC only two years, walking in the woods, complaining and calling it prayer. The Lord spoke: “I put you there. You do something.” Every believer sometimes needs to learn the vocabulary of silence. We have two ears and one mouth. Telling everyone what you are going through feels good, but it is like throwing kindling on a fire; without wood the fire goes out (Proverbs 26:20).

He shares that he grew up in a hard home with parents who loved him but did not know how to raise him. He never blamed them. If he had complained and blamed them, he says, it would still have been his own words controlling his life, not theirs. Each of us will stand in judgment for ourselves.

Every Idle Word and the Centurion’s Faith

In Matthew 12:33–37, Jesus tells the religious leaders that a tree is known by its fruit and that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. For every idle word men speak, they will give account, because by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned. That is why we need a new heart.

Pastor Hohman explains idle with a car left running in the driveway. It burns energy but goes nowhere. Idle words cost us energy and accomplish nothing. The table below follows the kinds of words he contrasts in this sermon:

Paul pleaded with the Corinthians to all speak the same thing, with no divisions, perfectly joined in the same mind (1 Corinthians 1:10). Paul is not asking us to speak like the world, but to speak like God.

The centurion in Matthew 8:5–10 understood this. He told Jesus he was not worthy to have Him under his roof: “Only speak a word, and my servant will be healed.” Jesus marveled that He had not found such great faith in Israel. Great faith, Pastor Hohman concludes, was someone who knew how to use words.

That is why the church prays by commanding healing in Jesus’ name, and he says they have seen more healings and miracles than you could imagine. James warns that a fountain cannot send out sweet and bitter water at once (James 3:10–12). One word from God holds more power than you will ever need, but you have to stand on it, and having done all, stand (Ephesians 6:13), saying, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).

Speak the Same Thing: Mark 11 and the Tower of Babel

He challenges the church to commit one year to speaking God’s Word, promising they will never go back. In Mark 11:22–24, after the fig tree withered from the roots, Jesus said whoever speaks to a mountain and does not doubt will have whatever he says. Many prayers fail because people mix positive and negative words. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:6–8).

You have to believe everything you say will come to pass, not only the things you want. There are thousands of promises in the Bible, and God has not withheld them.

The Tower of Babel shows the power of agreement. In Genesis 11:1–9, the whole earth had one language, and the Lord said nothing they proposed to do would be withheld from them. So He confused their language. Pastor Hohman applies it to the church: when believers speak the same thing and agree with God, nothing is impossible.

Jesus prayed that we would be one, as He and the Father are one (John 17:21). In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free (Galatians 3:28). As the body of Christ, our words should not contradict who we are.

His last text is Ephesians 4:29–30: let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Edify means to build up. Your words can please God or grieve Him. By Jesus’ stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24), so speak accordingly, blessing the Lord who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases (Psalm 103:2–5).

Putting Kingdom Faith Into Words

Pastor Hohman holds up printed declarations he wrote before coming to Merrill, available to the church, and reads from them. Like rain and snow that water the earth, God’s Word will not return void (Isaiah 55:10–11). Here are the practical steps from this kingdom faith message:

• Speak like a king. Declare who you are in Christ: a new creation, at peace with God, receiving abundance of grace and reigning in life.
• Declare a sound mind. Thank God that He has not given you a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
• Put your name in the promise. He reads 3 John 2 with his own name: prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.
• Stop blaming God. Refuse to call a fallen world’s damage an act of God, as Job refused to charge Him with wrong.
• Learn the vocabulary of silence. When telling everyone your troubles only adds wood to the fire, stop talking.
• Trade worry for thanks. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication give thanks (Philippians 4:6).

He closes with Romans 10:9: if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Saved, he explains, means healed, delivered, prospered and strengthened. He then leads a prayer of salvation.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Sixth week of calling things that are not
• 2:14 Adam, the lie and the cursed system
• 3:21 Nicodemus: you must be born again
• 5:32 Isaiah 55: higher ways and thoughts
• 8:04 Romans 4 and Abraham under the stars
• 9:14 Abram becomes Abraham
• 12:40 Knowing God’s ways, not just His acts
• 16:14 Revelation 1: kings and priests
• 19:20 Crying out to know God
• 21:34 Ecclesiastes 8:4: the word of a king
• 22:49 What you were never created to be
• 25:08 Speaking to the mountain, and Job’s losses
• 28:52 Job did not blame God
• 30:14 Words as time-release capsules
• 32:37 “I put you there. You do something.”
• 36:44 Matthew 12: every idle word
• 39:10 1 Corinthians 1:10: speak the same thing
• 41:33 The centurion: speak the word only
• 45:11 Mark 11: have faith in God
• 48:40 Genesis 11: the Tower of Babel
• 57:34 One body, one voice
• 58:54 Ephesians 4:29–30: words that edify
• 1:01:21 Reading the declarations
• 1:05:44 Romans 10:9 and the prayer of salvation

Kingdom Faith Series

This is the final message in this part of the kingdom faith teaching at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or review the previous message:

• First message: Kingdom Faith: Calling Those Things That Are Not as Though They Were
• Previous: Kingdom Faith #5: Calling Things That Are Not as Though They Were
• You are here: Kingdom Faith #6: Calling Things That Are Not, and the Power of Your Words

Frequently Asked Questions

Is God in control of everything that happens to me?

Pastor Hohman draws a distinction. God is in charge, he says, but He has given the earth to the children of men, so believers are responsible to decree and declare His Word. He warns that the phrase “God’s in control” is often used to blame God for things He never did. Job lost almost everything, yet did not charge God with wrong, and Jesus said the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy while He came to give life.

What if I say I am healed and still feel sick the next day?

He tells of a woman who asked exactly this. His answer was that a declaration is not a one-time formula. Speaking God’s Word has to become your life, and you have to believe that everything you say will come to pass, not only the things you hope for. He urges people to stop mixing faith-filled and negative words, because a double-minded person cannot expect to receive from God.

What does the word saved mean in this message?

Pastor Hohman explains that the Greek word for save, sozo, means more than going to heaven one day. As he teaches it, it includes being healed, delivered, prospered, strengthened, encouraged and empowered. Heaven is the future, he says, but believers are meant to rule and reign in this life too. That is why he ends the message by inviting anyone who has never given their life to Jesus to confess Him as Lord.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Romans 4:17–21 — calling things that do not exist as though they did
• Genesis 17:5 — Abram renamed Abraham
• Revelation 1:5–6 — kings and priests to God
• Ecclesiastes 8:4 — the word of a king
• Job 1:22 — Job did not charge God with wrong
• Matthew 12:33–37 — every idle word
• Matthew 8:5–10 — speak a word only
• Mark 11:22–24 — speaking to the mountain
• Genesis 11:1–9 — one language at Babel
• Ephesians 4:29–30 — words that edify

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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