3 Reasons Why Your Confessions Aren’t Working

She had just been hit over the head and mugged on the street. Now she was on the other end of the line with Kenneth Hagin Ministries, sobbing.
“How could this happen to me?” she asked. “I confess Psalm 91 protection over myself every day!”
Maybe you’ve felt the same. You’ve confessed a scripture and then seen the opposite results and wondered why.

The man on the other end of the line was a young Keith Moore. He didn’t immediately have the answer to her question until he heard the Holy Spirit quicken it to him. The Holy Spirit told Keith to ask her why she had been where she was that day.

“Well, I was just running some errands in that part of town. I did have a check in my spirit about going there that day,” she recalled.

There it was. Her confession hadn’t worked because it was based on what the Bible calls feigned faith – presumption. The idea that you can ignore the Word of God to you and just confess scriptures over yourself is a grave misstep.

This woman was standing on a scripture while ignoring the warning God gave her. It looked like faith; it sounded like faith. She was even quoting scripture. But He checked her about going. and she wound up with a confession that didn’t come to pass because she was out of alignment.

At the 2021 Southwest Believers’ Convention, Keith Moore shared an anointed word over several days about the reasons Christians aren’t receiving what they’re confessing and how we can turn it around. He began his teaching with this:

“There have been too many situations in our camp where people confessed things that didn’t come to pass. Claiming things and they didn’t happen. And it hurts your faith. When you confess, confess, confess and it doesn’t happen; and then you do it again and again and nothing happens; eventually, you stop expecting. It can leave you bitter and affect those around you.”

If you’re ready to see EVERY confession you make come to pass, begin today by studying these 3 Reasons Why Your Confessions Aren’t Working.

1. You Aren’t Hearing With Your Heart

“Faith comes by hearing.” – Romans 10:17 (NIV)

Your confessions will only work if they are founded on the Word of God and rooted in faith. Where does real faith come from?

Romans 10:17 (NKJV) tells us: “Faith comes by hearing.”

But here’s where most Christians get turned around. The hearing referred to in this verse is much more than having sound waves bounce off your eardrums or just having read the Bible. The kind of hearing that brings faith is the same kind of hearing Jesus was referring to in Matthew 11:15 when He said, “He who has ears, let him hear” (TLV).

We all have physical ears, so what did Jesus mean?

He was talking about the state of one’s heart. In the spirit realm, you hear with your heart. The condition of your heart affects your ability to hear. If you are bitter or unforgiving, or think you have it all figured out, you’re not hearing with your heart and you’re going to miss what God has to say to you.

When you’re closed off to the idea that you might be wrong about some things, you’re going to have trouble hearing from God – whether it be through His Word or through others. An unwilling heart makes a deaf spiritual ear, which causes your confessions to be led by the flesh, not by the spirit.

A willing heart, on the other hand, makes a hearing ear. But that’s only the beginning. You need God’s Anointing to hear a rhema word with your heart and then line up your confessions accordingly. A rhema is a spoken utterance by the Holy Spirit directly to you regarding a scripture or situation.

Keith Moore says, “Faith doesn’t come by reading your Bible – unless you heard from Him while you were reading.”

The same is true when you listen to a minister teach the Word.

Romans 10:14 asks us to consider this: How can you believe if you haven’t heard? Keith Moore says, “You can’t, and you won’t. There is no believing without hearing and there is no faith without believing.”

The verse continues, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” It doesn’t say, “How will they hear without a Bible.” In other words, the anointing on the preaching of the Word will cause you to hear in a way that brings revelation to your spirit. That’s why preachers are necessary. God ordained it that way. It’s not the person, it’s the anointing that causes you to see and hear.

But even then, faith doesn’t come by going to a meeting and hearing from preachers – unless while you were listening, you heard from God, which brings us to our next reason why your confessions are not working.

2. You Didn’t Hear From God First

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” –John 15:7 (NKJV)

A good number of Spirit-filled believers have gotten into the habit of using certain terms very loosely. Terms like, “I’m believing.”

I’m believing God for this, and I’m believing God for that. It sounds very spiritual and faith-filled. But the question is…

Based on what?

The Bible is a big book filled with hundreds of promises for every situation. So how do you know what to stand on?

Just picking a set of scriptures out of the Word to stand on without hearing from God first is a recipe for confessions that don’t work. Faith doesn’t come from going through your concordance and finding verses about something unless He quickened one of them to you. When you stand on and confess a verse over your situation, it should be an anointed rhema to you.

Now, you can ask God for something that isn’t specified in His Word, but you cannot confess something into being just because you want it.

If you become more selective, you’ll become more effective.

Of speaking only what you hear from God, Keith Moore says, “Hearing from Him all the time and His living words living in you is what is supposed to motivate what you say. If you’ll say what He says, He’ll do what you say. He’s not obligated to back every idea you come up with. He is not obligated to fund every project you come up with or every venture you launch into. He’s Lord – not you.”

That can be tough to hear, but this is how we can begin to see our confessions come to pass every time!

3. You Aren’t Obeying What He Said

“Why are you violating the command of the LORD, when doing so will not succeed?” –Numbers 14:41 (NASB)

Just as we saw in the situation where the woman was mugged after she had neglected to obey God’s instruction not to go to a certain place, confessions won’t work when you aren’t obeying what He said to you.

A confession is only part of the equation, and while words are critical to your receiving, if they are preceded or followed by error in other areas, they will be ineffective.

Think about the Israelites.

There’s a reason God told us to remember what they did and warned us not to duplicate their mistakes. God said, “Don’t save the manna.” They saved it. God said, “Don’t gather on the seventh day.” They went out and tried to gather. This is why God called them stubborn and stiff-necked.

Maybe that’s where you’ve been – ignoring the small promptings and corrections. The problem is, when you do that with smaller things, when it comes to the bigger ones, you’re likely to do the same thing.

That’s what Israel did.

God told them to go up and possess the land for He had given it to them. They said, “No, we’re not going up.”

So, in Numbers 14:25, God tells them to go into the wilderness. And what do they say?

You guessed it. In verse 40, they said, “We will go up to the place which the LORD has promised” (NKJV).

Can they have faith to go into the Promised Land now? They repented, right? They’re making a good confession, right?

No. Because God’s last instruction to them was to go into the wilderness.

They could confess all day long, “I can do all things through Christ and all things are possible to him that believes,” but they’re out of alignment with His Word. It sounds like faith, but it isn’t. It’s blatant rebellion.

That’s where we can get into trouble, too. Quoting scriptures while ignoring what the Lord told you to do, deciding to use your faith to do something else, expecting God to back it, and then getting mad when He doesn’t, is not faith.

If you aren’t obeying what He has said to you, your confessions will come up short.

Next time you need to stand in faith for something, consider these three reasons why your confessions aren’t working, and determine to take the right course. If you do it right, it works every time. But if you’ve been at a 50/50 rate in your confessions, it’s time to make some changes. Don’t just throw out confessions and see if they stick. Become stronger in your faith and bump your success rate up to 100!