Joel Osteen and the Name-it-Claim it Movement

In megachurch pastor Joel Osteen’s new book, “The Power of the I Am: Two Words that will Change your Life Today,” he encourages his readers to use positive affirmations staring with the words “I am,” for example, “I am successful.” He claims that such affirmations will bring success:

• Let me give you some “I am” s to speak over your life. Read over these declarations every day. Get them down in your spirit. Meditate on them. They may not all be true right now, but as you continue to speak them, they will become a reality. “I am blessed. I am prosperous. I am successful.”

Do we have such power to use our words to change reality? To support his point, Osteen calls upon Paul:

• As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations." He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4:17)

Osteen wrongly assumes that we have the same powers as God to call things into existence that are not. Instead, Scripture claims that we can do nothing without God (John 15:4-5; 2 Cor. 3:5). While Osteen might affirm this, it seems that he believes that God will affirm whatever we want to call into existence. Therefore, if we want success and recognition, all we have to do is to speak, “I am successful,” and God will automatically endorse our words.

However, Scripture warns us against such a presumptuous belief:

• Now listen, you who SAY, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to SAY, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

Such presumption about the power of our words is boasting and this “boasting is evil.” Instead, our words must coincide with reality. What is our reality? We “are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” To presume that we can control events with our words, as God does, is therefore sin.

Instead, our words must always be in line with the truth. The truth belongs to God, and we are not free to distort it for our own benefit. Osteen confesses that our affirmations “may not all be true right now.” If this is so, we shouldn’t be saying these things. They are presumption and boasting, according to Scripture.

However, there are positive messages that we should preach to ourselves. Therefore, Osteen speaks with some truth when he writes:

• Instead of whispering, “I am inferior. I am less than,” you start declaring, “I am one of a kind. I am handpicked by Almighty God. I am valuable. I am a masterpiece.” When you get up in the morning, don’t focus on all your flaws. Look in the mirror and dare to say, “I am beautiful. I am young. I am vibrant. I am confident. I am secure.” You may have had some disappointments. People may have tried to push you down, but quit telling yourself you’re all washed up. Do as Sarah and say, “I am royalty. I am crowned with favor. I am excited about my future.”

Our positive affirmations must come from Scripture. Therefore, Osteen is correct to encourage his readers to say, “I am valuable.” We certainly are in God’s sight! However, he is leading his readers down the wrong path by encouraging them to say things that are not true: “I am beautiful. I am young. I am vibrant. I am confident. I am secure.”

Instead, God wants truth, as David confessed:

• Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6)

To make positive affirmations/confessions that do not accord with the truth will bring disrepute on the church. It will also alienate us from life. Positive affirmations can be powerful, but they do not work unless they are believed. In order to compensate for my  feelings of shame and inferiority, I would tell myself “I am great and beloved by all women.” For a short time, it worked. These affirmations enabled me to confidently face the classroom. However, I wasn’t aware of the great price I was paying. Here are some of the costs:

1. The taller you are, the harder you fall. I began to see that my affirmations were not confirmed within the classroom, and I fell.
2. In order to achieve the same high, I found that I now had to fed myself with even more grandiose affirmations and, in the process, to believe them.
3. I could no longer find common ground with others, who saw me in a very different way than what I was projecting about myself.
4. Whatever we manage well, we must understand accurately. More and more, my life became unmanageable.
5. Even after coming to the Lord, He had to wean me away from this drug to which I had become addicted. Consequently, I was in withdrawal for many painful years.

Osteen tries to justify his affirmations through the lives of Caleb and Joshua who had reported that there were giants in the land, but that Israel would overcome with the Lord’s help. However, their confidence wasn’t the product of their own creation or desires. They were merely affirming that the Lord had spoken to Israel.

Sometimes, there is no easy answer to the deprivations we suffer. Instead, Scripture repeatedly warns us that we will have to suffer:

• We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Corinthians 4:8-11)

If we want to reign with Jesus, we must also suffer with Him. There are no easy ways to bypass this reality. However, many claim that there are and give people a false hope, which will eventually be dashed to the ground.

Joel Osteen and Name-It-Claim-It

What is the “The Osteenification of American Christianity?” It is a new book by Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute, which warns against the teachings of Joel Osteen and its effects. Hanegraaff writes:

• Behind Osteenian self-affirmations—“I am anointed,” “I am prosperous,” “My God is a ‘supersizing God’”—there lies a darker hue. Behind the smile is a robust emphasis on all that is negative. If you are healthy and wealthy, words created that reality. However, if you find yourself in dire financial straits, contract cancer, or, God forbid, die an early death, your words are the prime suspect. Says Osteen, “We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying. And this can be good or it can be bad.” In evidence, he cites one illustration after the other. One in particular caught my attention: the story of a “kind and friendly” worker at the church. He died at an early age, contends Osteen, “being snared by the words of his mouth.”

Osteen’s theology is the theology of blame! If you don’t get what you want, it’s your fault. However, God’s people often do not get what they want, at least in this world. In Hebrews 11, the Hall of Fame of Faith chapter – the chapter that highlights those of great faith, we read:

• Others [of faith] were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (Hebrews 11:35-38)

Although the “world was not worthy of these Saints,” they experienced the most horrific circumstances. Was it because they had not uttered the right self-affirmations? Should they have instead confessed that “I am not being persecuted; I am prosperous?” Instead, the Bible never gives us grounds for such self-deception and the deception of others.

Christ had prepared the faithful Church of Smyrna with these words:

• Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life. (Revelation 2:10)

These Saints were not going to suffer martyrdom because they didn’t know how to make those positive affirmations. Instead, they were the faithful ones and their lives were examples for us!

Paul had warned that persecution was inevitable for the faithful:

• In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:12-13)

Paul never suggested that if they spoke the right words, they could avoid persecution. Instead, he claimed that if Christ suffered, we must also suffer (2 Cor. 4:10-11).

In contrast with Osteen, James argued that our tongues must always serve the truth. Consequently, there was no room for positive self-affirmations:

• Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

We are not at liberty to use our tongues in any way we want. Instead, our tongues must submit to the truth, not create it. To boast that we are going to make a financial “killing” oversteps the truth that we are a mere “mist that … vanishes.” Instead, our tongues must reverently serve the truth, acknowledging that any success is a result of “the Lord’s will.” In fact, according to James, when we make such positive assertions, we boast and do “evil.”

Although Osteen might be a victim of his own self-deceptions, he is still leading the naïve to commit evil. Because of this, I welcome Hanegraaff’s new book of warning.