Transformed In Christ - The Great Disconnect

Have you ever sat in a church sanctuary, surrounded by the swelling sound of worship, feeling the absolute certainty that your life is on the precipice of total transformation? You hear the resounding, age-old promises of salvation, unyielding victory, and a deeply abundant life. The words wash over you, and they sound exceptionally beautiful to your weary soul. Yet, a heartbreaking reality often sets in the moment you close your Bible and walk back into the mundane, challenging realities of your daily life: absolutely nothing seems to change. The triumphant victory you read about in the scriptures begins to feel like it belongs to someone else's story, far removed from your own struggles and anxieties. Deep inside your heart, a terrifying question echoes, one you might have been entirely too afraid to voice out loud to your family or your peers: Why does the majestic gospel of Jesus Christ sound so incredibly good, but my everyday life still feels exactly the same?

This is the agonizing paradox that plagues millions of people across the globe, both those who have sat in pews their entire lives and those looking in from the outside, wondering if Christianity is actually real. But what if the problem you are facing isn’t the gospel itself? What if the issue keeping you bound has absolutely nothing to do with God's willingness to bless you or your own personal worthiness to receive that blessing?

In a profoundly paradigm-shifting sermon titled "Does Your Life Really Match Your Faith?" from the Transformed In Christ series, Pastor Sam Merigala exposes a hidden, devastating gap. As Pastor Merigala beautifully articulates, there is a hidden gap between what Jesus Christ legally and perfectly accomplished on the cross and what you are currently, practically experiencing in your waking life. And the most shocking revelation of all is this: closing that frustrating gap has absolutely nothing to do with you praying harder, crying more tears at the altar, or trying to believe with a greater intensity.

Through this sermon, Pastor Sam Merigala exposes the single most critical difference between those victorious Christians who walk in the tangible reality of God's promises and those who spend decades merely admiring biblical truth from a safe, theoretical distance. If you have ever felt like the gospel is just a lovely theory, this teaching will illuminate exactly why that is, and more importantly, it will equip you with the exact spiritual mechanics to change your reality forever.

The Illusion of Striving: Sunday's Promise vs. Monday's Pain

Let us paint a picture that is altogether too familiar for the modern believer. It is Sunday morning, and you hear the word of God preached with power. Your spirit immediately leaps inside of you in recognition. You hear the glorious news about your unshakeable righteousness in Christ Jesus. You hear that you are more than a conqueror in this life, and you are reminded that by His brutal stripes, your healing was completely secured. Everything inside of you resonates with this divine frequency. You think to yourself, with total sincerity, "Yes, that is exactly what I need". You feel the emotion of it, you receive the truth of it, and you might even shout a passionate "Amen" out loud for all to hear.

But then, the inevitable happens: Monday morning arrives. The alarm clock rings, and the physical or emotional pain you thought you left at the altar is still throbbing. The paralyzing fear of the future is still suffocating you. You find yourself trapped in the exact same old behavioral patterns, facing the same old relentless struggles, looking in the mirror at the same old you. Somewhere in the short distance between the church sanctuary and your kitchen table, the spiritual power you felt while hearing the word seemingly evaporated into thin air, much like the morning mist burning off in the sun. The life-altering gospel that sounded so magnificent just 24 hours prior now feels like nothing more than a lovely, poetic theory. You begin to tragically believe that this abundant life works perfectly well for pastors, leaders, and the ancient saints written about in books, but somehow, for some inexplicable reason, it simply does not work for you.

What do the vast majority of believers do when they hit this wall of disappointment? They turn inward and assume that the problem is a deficiency in their own faith. They tell themselves a very religious lie: "I just need to believe harder". So, they begin to try with all their human might. They strain their minds and their spirits. They attempt to artificially manufacture feelings of deep faith, hoping that if they can just work up enough emotional intensity during a worship song, that specific emotional high will somehow act as a key to unlock the vault of heaven's promises.

Yet, Pastor Sam Merigala directs our attention to a profound truth found in Hebrews 4:3, which states, "For we who have believed do enter that rest". Pastor Merigala brilliantly points out what this scripture deliberately omits. It absolutely does not say, "We who have strained, or we who have worked ourselves into an emotional frenzy". Instead, the requirement for entering God's rest is singular and clear: it is for those "who have believed". Believed what, exactly? Believed the radical notion that what God has already said is already completely true. This exact point of mental divergence is where an invisible, impenetrable wall stands tall between merely hearing the promises of God and actually having the promises of God.

The Tragedy of Doing What Grace Has Already Done

We must confront a difficult but liberating reality: most Christians today are exhausting themselves trying to make something happen that has, in fact, already happened. They are running on a religious treadmill, attempting to become something that they already fundamentally are. As long as you are actively trying to become righteous through your own efforts, you will never actually act like you are truly righteous. As long as you are begging and trying to receive a healing that was already purchased, you will never walk in the divine health that already belongs to your heavenly account.

Pastor Sam Merigala distills this profound spiritual crisis into one devastatingly accurate sentence: The reason we have failed is because we have tried to do what grace has already done. Think deeply about the gravity of that statement. We have failed in our Christian walk because we have arrogantly or ignorantly tried to accomplish what the unmerited favor of God has already perfectly finished. That single sentence contains the key to unlocking the mystery of why the gospel sounds good to your ears, but your life feels identical year after year. You are sweating and laboring to obtain what grace has already freely handed to you. You are on your knees begging God for what you already legally possess in your union with Christ. You are desperately trying to become the very thing that the Creator of the universe already declares you to be.

To understand how this toxic cycle ruins our daily experience, Pastor Merigala provides a highly relatable, everyday example. Imagine a well-meaning believer who opens their Bible and reads the earth-shattering words of 2 Corinthians 5:21: "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him". Deep down, their born-again spirit witnesses to this ultimate truth. They confidently think to themselves, "Yes, I am completely righteous in Christ".

But then, the pressure of life hits on a Tuesday afternoon. Perhaps traffic is terrible, or work is stressful, and they suddenly lose their temper. They snap and speak harshly to their spouse or their children. In that very fraction of a second, the old, defeated consciousness comes rushing back into their mind like a tidal wave. The internal dialogue shifts instantly: "See, I'm not really righteous after all. I'm still the exact same angry person. I just messed up again".

What precisely went wrong in that moment? Pastor Merigala explains that this believer began measuring their righteousness by their daily performance instead of by their eternal, legal position. They started looking entirely at what they did, rather than focusing on who God says they are. And here is the most devastating, paralyzing part of this cycle: As long as you insist on measuring your righteousness by your behavioral track record, you will never, ever be able to receive righteousness as the free gift that it is. You will constantly find yourself in a state of striving, constantly struggling, forever falling short of perfection, and endlessly beginning your journey all over again every time you make a mistake.

Let us be absolutely clear: that exhausting cycle is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is religion. Religion stands over you with a heavy whip and says, "Do better, try harder, and eventually you will be righteous". The true gospel, however, looks at you through the blood of Jesus and declares, "You are already righteous. Now, go and live like who you already are". Pastor Merigala emphasizes that this is not merely a debate over semantics or theological wordplay. This distinction is the literal difference between resting in God and striving in the flesh. It is the difference between unwavering confidence and crushing condemnation. It is the difference between actually experiencing the abundant, overflowing life that Christ promised, or merely watching it from a great distance as others enjoy it.

When you finally arrive at the revelation that you are righteous solely because of what Jesus Christ did, and absolutely not because of what you did, your entire psychological and spiritual response to personal failure changes completely. Instead of allowing shame to spiral you down into a dark pit of even more failure and self-hatred, your renewed mind thinks differently. You look at your mistake and say, "That behavior wasn't like me. I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. That sinful action does not match my true, divine identity. I repent, I leave it behind, and I move forward from the solid foundation of who I really am".

Do you see the breathtaking distinction here? One approach - the religious one - keeps you permanently trapped in a cycle of defeat and self-loathing. The other approach - the gospel one - establishes your feet firmly in your true identity and ultimately produces genuine, lasting behavioral change. A true believer can no more lose their righteousness than a born child can somehow lose their biological sonship. Your righteousness is not, and never has been, dependent on your flawless performance. It is entirely dependent on Christ's flawless performance. And as Pastor Merigala reminds us, referring to Hebrews 10:10-14, Christ's performance on the cross was perfect, and it was completed once and for all.

The Chasm Between Mental Agreement and Conscious Identification

To profoundly touch your life today, we must locate exactly where the breakdown is happening in your spiritual walk. Pastor Merigala highlights exactly where this gap exists, and surprisingly, it is not where most modern preaching points you. The gap hindering your breakthrough is not located between you and God's willingness to help you. God is absolutely not withholding any good thing from you. Furthermore, the gap is not between you and acquiring "enough" faith. If you are born again, you literally have the very faith of the Son of God living inside of you, as declared in Galatians 2:20.

Instead, the true gap exists between your legal, spiritual position and your daily conscious awareness. It is the vast canyon between what is absolutely true in the spiritual realm and what you have actually accepted and internalized in your physical mind. It is the difference between a covenant reality and a mere mental agreement.

Here is the monumental revelation that changes absolutely everything about how you read your Bible: The gospel does not merely offer you something; the gospel declares something that is already finished. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross and cried out, "It is finished," as recorded in John 19:30, He was not announcing the beginning of a long, arduous process of trying to get you clean. He was announcing the absolute, final completion of everything that was necessary for your total redemption, your unbreakable righteousness, your physical healing, and your ultimate victory in life. The work is done. It is not something that "will be done" when you finally learn to pray the right way. It is not something that "will be done" when you finally feel worthy enough to receive it. The work is entirely finished.

But here is precisely where the global church so often misses the mark. Most believers readily give mental agreement to what Jesus did, but they completely fail to actually identify with what Jesus did. They nod their heads in church and say, "Yes, I believe Jesus died for my sins". While that is wonderfully true, it is an incomplete revelation. They say, "Yes, I believe Jesus rose from the dead on the third day". Again, true, but tragically incomplete.

As Pastor Merigala preaches, the full, unadulterated truth that will actually transform your daily human experience is this: When Jesus died on that cross, you died with Him. When Jesus was buried in that dark tomb, you were buried with Him. When Jesus was raised to glorious life, you were raised with Him. And when Jesus was seated in the place of ultimate authority at the right hand of the Father in heavenly places, you were seated right there beside Him. This is not merely a symbolic, poetic idea, nor is it an event waiting to happen eventually when you go to heaven.

According to the unbending truth of Ephesians 2:6, God "raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus". You are, right now, at this very exact moment as you read these words, seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. Now, observe what dramatically shifts when that monumental truth moves from a simple mental agreement into a deep, conscious identification. If you truly know you are seated in heavenly places, you realize you do not need to be down here on earth begging and pleading for victory over your circumstances. You are already occupying the victory seat. If you truly understand that you died with Christ, you realize that your old, sinful nature is not something you have to desperately try to overcome every single day. It is something that has already died and been buried.

Pastor Merigala expertly unpacks the language of Romans 6:6, noting that it does not say your old man is currently in the process of dying. It emphatically states, "knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him". It is a past tense, finished fact, a legally done deal. The language used in scripture is highly deliberate and intentional. The Apostle Paul did not write that your old man should be crucified if you pray hard enough, nor did he write that you need to crucify your old man through intense fasting and self-denial. He wrote that your old man was crucified. It is done. It is finished. The cross of Calvary was never meant to be the starting line of your painful sanctification process. The cross was the complete and total completion of your sanctification.

This reality is echoed in 1 Corinthians 1:30, which tells us that Christ Jesus "became for us wisdom from God - righteousness and sanctification and redemption". Notice, as Pastor Merigala points out, the scripture says Christ is made unto us sanctification. It does not say He is making us sanctified over time. You are not slowly becoming holy; in Christ, you are holy right now. You are not working day and night toward a state of righteousness; you are currently righteous. The entire journey of the Christian life is simply learning how to live outwardly from what is already inwardly true, instead of exhausting yourself trying to make it become true.

Fighting Temptation From the Throne, Not the Gutter

Let us make this theology intensely practical for your daily struggles. When temptation inevitably comes knocking at your door - and it absolutely will come - most believers attempt to fight it from a pathetic position of inherent weakness. Their internal monologue says, "I am really struggling with this sin. I am so weak in this specific area of my life. I desperately need God's help to overcome this urge". Now, they are certainly right that they need God's help, but they are approaching the entire battlefield from the completely wrong position. They view themselves primarily as struggling, weak, and barely holding on by a thread.

However, according to the reality presented in Colossians 3:3, "For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God". You are not a victim barely surviving the onslaught of the world. You are perfectly hidden in Christ in God. That is an impenetrable fortress. That is the ultimate position of supreme tactical advantage. Therefore, as Pastor Merigala teaches, when a temptation like lust tries to lure you, you do not fight back by confessing, "I am really struggling with lust right now". Instead, you fight from your seated position of victory, declaring according to Romans 6:11, "I am dead to sin and alive to God. This temptation has absolutely no power or jurisdiction over a dead man. I am vibrantly alive in Christ Jesus, and in Him there is absolutely no sin. That is exactly who I am".

Do you see the monumental difference in those two approaches? One confession acknowledges weakness and keeps you completely bound to the struggle. The other confession establishes you deeply in your rightful heavenly position and releases the raw power of that position into your earthly experience.

We must understand that the new creation mentioned in scripture is not merely a reformed, slightly improved version of your old, broken self. It is an entirely new, unprecedented species of being that literally never existed before the moment you believed. Stop thinking of yourself as an improved version of your old self. You are not just a polished-up, well-behaved sinner. You are a completely, radically new creation, as declared in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new".

The old things have passed away - past tense, they are completely gone. All things became new - past tense, the transformation is completely finished. But here is the stark warning Pastor Merigala issues: If you are still walking around fully conscious of being the old creation, if you still constantly identify yourself with your past traumas and failures, and if you still introduce your identity by leading with your former struggles - saying things like, "I'm a recovering addict," or "I'm someone who just struggles with severe anxiety," or "I've just always been this way" - then you are tragically breathing life back into the very things that God Almighty has declared dead. You are actively denying the reality of the glorious new creation that God declares you to be.

The Billionaire In Rags: The Law of Consciousness

Your words are not empty sounds; your confession matters profoundly because your confession is a direct revelation of your internal consciousness, and it is your consciousness that ultimately governs your lived experience. Pastor Merigala states a truth so powerful you should write it on your mirrors: The moment we become conscious of what we are in Christ, we act like it. Notice the phrasing carefully. He did not say that transformation happens the moment we try harder. He did not say it happens the moment we work up enough emotional frenzy in a prayer meeting. He said it happens the moment we become conscious.

Consciousness is the state of total, deep-seated awareness. It is knowing a fact so deeply and implicitly in your bones that it naturally governs all of your reactions without you even having to consciously think about it. Pastor Merigala illustrates this brilliantly with the concept of citizenship. If you were born in America, you do not have to wake up every morning and frantically remind yourself that you are an American citizen. You are simply conscious of it. The matter is legally and permanently settled in your mind. When you travel to a foreign country and a customs agent asks where you are from, you do not hesitate, stammer, or question whether you are truly American. You simply and confidently state, "I'm American". Why? Because you possess a deep consciousness of your citizenship. You are fully aware of your legal identity. Nobody on earth can argue you out of this fact because your citizenship is not based on whether you feel "patriotic" on any given Tuesday; it is based entirely on cold, hard legal fact.

This is exactly, precisely how your spiritual identity in Jesus Christ is supposed to function in your life. You are a legally adopted child of the Most High God. 1 John 3:1 commands us to behold the manner of love bestowed upon us, "that we should be called children of God!". Or as the King James Version puts it, "that we should be called the sons of God".

You are not sitting around hoping to eventually become a son of God. You are not currently laboring to earn your sonship through good behavior. You are called a son or daughter of God right now. That is your unchanging identity. That is who you fundamentally are. And when you finally become as deeply, unshakeably conscious of being a child of God as you are of your earthly national citizenship, absolutely everything in your life changes.

When you possess this consciousness, you completely stop begging your Heavenly Father to give you the things He has already freely placed in your hands. You stop anxiously questioning whether He is even listening to your prayers. Instead, you simply start receiving from your vast spiritual inheritance because you finally know exactly who you are.

This is the ultimate answer to why the gospel sounds so good, but life remains a struggle for so many precious people. They have accumulated all the theological facts in their heads, but they have completely failed to become truly conscious of their majestic identity in Christ. They are continuing to live their lives reacting to what they can see with their physical eyes and feel with their physical emotions, rather than living from the supreme reality of what God legally declares.

Pastor Merigala delivers a brutal but necessary truth: What you are conscious of is exactly what you will experience in this life. If your mind is dominated by a consciousness of your own weakness, you will inevitably live a weak and defeated life. If you are constantly conscious of your sickness and your symptoms, you will likely remain sick. If you are perpetually conscious of your past failures, you will continue to act out and replicate those failures. But conversely, if you choose to become conscious of your imparted righteousness, your purchased healing, and your guaranteed victory in Christ Jesus, then those glorious realities are exactly what will begin to dominate your earthly experience.

Consider Pastor Merigala's stunning practical example to fully grasp this. Imagine a man who was born into extreme, grinding poverty. One day, he suddenly and legally inherits an astonishing fortune of one billion dollars. The money is fully and legally his. The massive bank accounts are firmly in his name. Every single legal document, signed and sealed, confirms his absolute ownership of this wealth. But imagine that absolutely nobody tells him about it, or imagine that he receives the news but simply refuses to become conscious of his newfound wealth. What happens to this man?

Tragically, he continues waking up every day living exactly like a pauper. He still stands on the street corner and begs for loose change. He still suffers from crippling anxiety over where his next meager meal will come from. He continues to live in a state of absolute lack. But why? It is certainly not because he is actually poor. Legally, he is a billionaire. The wealth is undeniably real, and the inheritance is totally secure. But because he is fundamentally conscious of poverty, he lives his life in poverty despite actually possessing billions.

And here is the most tragic part of the analogy: even if someone runs up to him on the street and tells him about the inheritance, if he does not internally become conscious of it - if he does not accept that information as his new governing reality - he will just continue living as a poor man. He might even say intellectually, "Yes, I know I inherited a lot of money somewhere". But if that knowledge merely stays in the realm of theory, if it never aggressively transforms his actual awareness of who he is and what he possesses, absolutely nothing in his daily life changes. For his circumstances to change, he must become so thoroughly conscious of being a wealthy man that he naturally starts thinking like a wealthy man thinks, speaking like a wealthy man speaks, and acting like a wealthy man acts. Only then will he truly experience the staggering wealth that was always legally his.

This heartbreaking scenario is exactly where the vast majority of Christians are living today. You are unfathomably rich in Christ. Ephesians 1:3 declares that God "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ". Notice it says all spiritual blessings - not just a few, not some, but all of them, and they belong to you right now. But because your mind is constantly conscious of lack, you continually experience lack.

You are legally healed in Christ Jesus. 1 Peter 2:24 unequivocally states, "By whose stripes ye were healed". This is a past tense, finished fact. But because you wake up every day completely conscious of your bodily symptoms, those symptoms continue to dominate your life and dictate your mood. You are perfectly righteous in Christ, according to 2 Corinthians 5:21. But because you are constantly conscious of your past sins and mistakes, shame continues to control your actions and isolate you from God. The gospel sounds good to you because it is the joyful announcement of your billion-dollar inheritance. But your life continues to feel exactly the same because you have not yet become conscious of what you actually possess in your heavenly bank account.

The Mechanism of Miracles: The Power of Confession

How do we fix this? How do we go deeper and actually change our fundamental consciousness? As Pastor Merigala warns, this is precisely where most modern teaching stops way too soon, leaving congregations highly inspired but practically unchanged. And as we know, inspiration without practical application merely produces deep frustration. You do not just need to know what the truth is; you desperately need to know the exact mechanics of how to make that spiritual truth your living, breathing reality.

The answer provided in scripture is so deceptively simple that many intellectual believers completely miss it because they are constantly searching for a more complicated, mystical formula. The key to changing your consciousness is located right beneath your nose: the answer is in your mouth.

Look at the profound blueprint laid out in Romans 10:9-10: "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation". Pastor Merigala implores us to notice the specific divine order here: heart belief is paired with mouth confession. Both components are absolutely necessary, and both work perfectly together.

But here is the transformative principle that the church has largely forgotten: If the verbal confession of Christ's lordship is what brought about your initial salvation, then the continuous verbal confession of your identity in Christ is what brings about your daily manifestation. This is a spiritual law: Confession always goes before possession. This is not a rule that applies only sometimes; it applies always. Confession must precede possession.

Why is this the case? Because the act of verbal confession is the exact method by which you make your internal heart's belief tangible. Speaking the word out loud is how you literally establish a new consciousness within yourself. When you make the radical choice to consistently speak out loud what God says about you, in direct defiance of what you currently see with your eyes or feel in your body, something supernatural begins to activate. Your mind actually starts to renew. Your internal awareness begins to shift dramatically. You begin to slowly but surely become conscious of who you truly are in the spirit, instead of who you used to be in the flesh.

Let Pastor Merigala show you exactly how this biological and spiritual process works. The very moment you believed the gospel, your human spirit was instantly born again. The reality of 2 Corinthians 5:17 happened in a blinding flash: you became a brand-new creation. However, your physical brain and your mind were absolutely not automatically renewed in that moment. Romans 12:2 commands us, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind". Mind renewal is an ongoing process, not an instant, magical event.

Right now, your born-again spirit knows exactly who you are in Christ. Your spirit is entirely perfect, completely righteous, flawlessly holy, and lacking nothing. But your mind is still cluttered with old, toxic thought patterns, limiting beliefs, and a deeply ingrained consciousness that was shaped by decades of living as an unredeemed person. This friction between the perfect spirit and the unrenewed mind is the ultimate battleground of the Christian life.

Your perfect spirit knows without a doubt that you are completely healed. But your unrenewed mind looks at the medical report and sees terrifying symptoms. Your perfect spirit knows you are the righteousness of God. But your unrenewed mind constantly replays the highlight reel of your worst past mistakes. Your perfect spirit knows you are a victorious conqueror. But your unrenewed mind wakes up feeling utterly defeated by life's pressures.

So, in this internal war, which side actually wins? The answer is simple: whichever one you consistently feed. And you feed your mind directly through the words that you consistently hear and the words that you consistently speak out of your own mouth. This is exactly why the biblical concept of confession is so overwhelmingly powerful.

It is crucial to understand that this is not "magic". It is the brilliant, psychological, and spiritual mechanism that God deliberately designed to renew your physical mind and drag your earthly consciousness into perfect alignment with your spirit's heavenly reality. When you boldly speak God's word about yourself, when you stand in your living room and confess your true identity in Christ out loud, a fascinating process occurs: your own physical ears hear the words, your brain processes the auditory information, and over time, through stubborn, consistent confession, your mind is forced to accept the reality that your spirit already knows to be true.

You must understand what you are doing. When you confess the word, you are not trying to convince God of anything. God already declared it to be true before the foundation of the world. You are not trying to force a new reality to happen. The reality already happened on the cross. What you are doing is renewing your own stubborn mind so that you finally become fully conscious of what is already eternally true inside your spirit.

The Tale of Two Confessions: The Grasshopper Syndrome

To illustrate the life-or-death stakes of our daily confession, Pastor Merigala points to one of the most powerful examples in all of scripture: the story of the twelve spies found in Numbers 13. Twelve men were sent by Moses to spy out the Promised Land. All twelve of these men looked at the exact same physical land. All twelve of them saw the exact same massive, terrifying giants roaming the hills. All twelve of them saw the exact same miraculous, oversized fruit that the land produced. They all shared the exact same physical reality and circumstances.

Yet, ten of those spies returned to the camp and declared a devastating confession: "We be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Numbers 13:31-33). Pay very close attention to the words they chose to speak. They verbally confessed their own perceived weakness. They verbally confessed their inevitable defeat. They confessed that they were nothing more than insignificant insects - grasshoppers.

But two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, looked at the exact same terrifying giants, assessed the exact same impossible circumstances, and declared a radically different confession: "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it" (Numbers 13:30). They faced the same insurmountable problem, but they produced a completely different verbal confession.

Here is the critical spiritual principle: Their vastly different confessions directly revealed their vastly different states of consciousness. The ten fearful spies were deeply conscious of being weak, helpless grasshoppers. Therefore, they spoke like grasshoppers. But Joshua and Caleb were deeply conscious of being the chosen covenant people of Almighty God, backed by His unbreakable promise. Therefore, they spoke like conquerors.

And what was the ultimate result? The ten men who confessed weakness and defeat were forced to experience 40 grueling years of wandering in a barren wilderness, and they tragically died without ever stepping foot into the Promised Land. But the two men who stubbornly confessed their God-given ability actually entered in and possessed their massive inheritance.

You must grasp this: Their negative confession did not somehow change or cancel God's promise. The Promised Land legally belonged to the Israelites regardless of what those ten men said. However, their negative confession absolutely determined whether or not they would actually experience the land that was already legally theirs.

This historical tragedy is the exact reality for millions of believers today. God's magnificent promises are already yours in Christ Jesus. Your physical and emotional healing is already yours. Your flawless righteousness is yours. Your total victory over sin is yours. Your supernatural provision is yours. But hear this warning clearly: if you continue to open your mouth and confess the limitations of what you can currently see, rather than confessing the truth of what God has already said, you will spend your life wandering in circles in a spiritual wilderness. You will spend your days looking at the glorious promises of God from a painful distance, but you will never actually cross the river and possess them for yourself.

Pastor Merigala makes a vital, necessary distinction here to prevent theological error: this biblical practice of confession is absolutely not the secular concept of "positive thinking". This is not some New Age attempt to magically "speak things into existence" out of thin air. Biblical confession is simply choosing to agree with what God has already said and done. You are absolutely not attempting to create a new reality with your human words; rather, you are respectfully acknowledging an established heavenly reality with your words.

There is a universe of difference between those two concepts. Secular positive thinking puffs out its chest and says, "I am going to use the power of my mind to speak myself into perfect health". Biblical confession, on the other hand, humbly bows its head and says, "God Almighty has already declared me healed by the brutal stripes of Jesus Christ according to 1 Peter 2:24, and I simply choose to agree with His assessment". One method is based in human presumption and pride; the other is rooted in genuine biblical faith. One method tries to twist God's arm and force His hand; the other method peacefully rests in the finished, historical work of God. One focuses entirely on your own personal willpower; the other focuses entirely on Christ's completed, bloody victory on the cross.

The primary reason so many Christians get incredibly frustrated with the teaching of "confession" is because they are approaching it as a magical formula designed to manipulate God into doing something new, instead of using it as a tool to align their minds with what God has already accomplished.

When you finally understand confession correctly, its power is absolute. 2 Corinthians 4:13 declares, "And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, 'I believed and therefore I spoke,' we also believe and therefore speak".

Real, authentic faith always, inevitably produces words. Faith speaks. If you genuinely believe deep down that you are the righteousness of God, you will naturally begin to speak about your righteousness. If you genuinely believe that healing is your covenant right, you will speak your healing out loud - not in a desperate attempt to convince God to heal you, and not in a vain attempt to brainwash yourself through mindless repetition. You speak it simply because that is exactly what faith does. True faith believes deeply in the hidden heart, and it confesses boldly with the physical mouth.

Observe the beautiful progression of transformation. You sit under good teaching and hear the true word about your identity in Christ. Romans 10:17 reminds us, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God". That glorious word enters into your spirit, and your spirit rejoices because it knows the word is absolute truth. But your stubborn physical mind, which has been intensely trained by years of looking at contrary, negative evidence, immediately resists the truth.

This exact moment of mental resistance is where the vast majority of people completely give up. They wait around, hoping that their feelings and their mind will eventually agree with the word before they actually dare to speak it out loud. But Pastor Merigala warns that this approach is completely backwards. You must bravely open your mouth and speak what your spirit knows to be true long before your unrenewed mind will ever accept it. You literally have to speak yourself into a new state of consciousness.

Again, this is not mindless, robotic repetition. This is an act of deliberate, intensely focused agreement with the eternal Word of God, held firmly in the face of violently contrary circumstances. You stand up and say out loud, "I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus" according to 2 Corinthians 5:21, even on the days when your failures make you feel utterly condemned. You declare, "By His stripes, I was healed" according to 1 Peter 2:24, even while your physical symptoms are screaming at you that you are sick. You proclaim, "I am more than a conqueror through Him that loved me" according to Romans 8:37, even when you feel completely beaten down and defeated by the world.

You keep stubbornly saying it, not because you are trying to make it become true, but because you know it is already true in the spiritual realm, and you are actively engaged in the process of becoming conscious of what is already true.

If you commit to this, here is exactly what happens over time. Your consistently spoken words will literally begin to reprogram your consciousness. Your newly transformed consciousness will then naturally begin to direct your daily actions and reactions. Those new, faith-filled actions will inevitably begin to produce radically different results in your life. And eventually, those visible results will align perfectly with the very things you have been confessing in the dark. The gospel that once sounded like a distant, good theory now feels like a burning, undeniable reality in your bones because you have successfully moved from mere mental agreement into a state of conscious identification with your exalted position in Christ.

The Great Confession: Your Choice Today

This brings us to the ultimate moment of truth. Everything Pastor Merigala has preached points directly to one pivotal, inescapable decision that you must make today. Will you stubbornly continue living your life based entirely on what you can see with your physical eyes, or will you bravely start living your life based on what Almighty God actually says? Will you keep waiting around to feel different before you dare to speak differently, or will you take a leap of faith and speak what God declares until your sluggish consciousness finally catches up with your covenant reality?

Make no mistake: your daily confession is either actively imprisoning you, or it is actively setting you free. Read that statement slowly and let it sink in. Your confession - the words you consistently, habitually say about yourself and your life situations - either builds a prison cell around you or unlocks the door to your freedom. It is not your difficult circumstances that are holding you back. It is not your fluctuating feelings. It is not even a lack of intense prayer. The thing holding you back is your confession. It is what you are choosing to say about what God has already said about you.

Remember the tragedy of Kadesh Barnea. The Israelites stood right at the vibrant edge of the Promised Land. God explicitly told them, "The land is yours. I've given it to you". That was a past tense, finished, undeniable fact. But they sent out spies, and those spies returned obsessed with the terrifying giants in the land. Ten of those spies confessed, "We're like grasshoppers in our own sight". Notice that crucial phrase: in their own sight.

God Almighty never once looked down from heaven and called His covenant people grasshoppers. God called them His treasured people, mighty, unstoppable warriors, and the rightful possessors of the land. But because they were internally conscious of being tiny, helpless grasshoppers, they confessed that they were grasshoppers, and consequently, they experienced grasshopper-sized results - getting crushed by the wilderness. They wandered aimlessly for 40 years simply because their mouths refused to match God's declaration.

But Joshua and Caleb stared at the exact same terrifying giants and declared, "We are well able to overcome them". They faced the same brutal facts, but they maintained a radically different confession because they cultivated a radically different consciousness. They chose to remain conscious of God's unbreakable promise, rather than the terrifying problem standing in front of them. And because of that choice, they were the absolute only individuals from that entire generation who actually survived to step foot into the Promised Land.

This is precisely the threshold where you are standing right now as you read this. You have a momentous choice to make. You can choose to look at your life, focus on the massive giants of debt, sickness, or addiction, feel completely insignificant like a grasshopper, confess your inevitable defeat, and resign yourself to wandering in circles of frustration for years to come. Or, you can make the radical choice to look intently at God's eternal word, see your breathtaking identity in Christ Jesus, become fiercely conscious of who you truly are, bravely confess what God says about you out loud, and finally step into the abundant, overflowing life that has legally belonged to you since the moment you believed.

The choice before you has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you are "worthy" of this life. Jesus Christ's blood already made you completely worthy. The only choice remaining is whether you will agree with God, or whether you will agree with your temporary circumstances.

Even Jesus Himself utilized this exact spiritual principle of vocalized faith in Mark 11:23. He taught, "For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says". Did you catch the sheer repetition in that verse? Jesus deliberately used the word "says" or "saith" three separate times in one single sentence. You must say to the mountain. You must believe what you say. You will have whatever you say.

Speaking the word is absolutely not an optional accessory to the Christian faith. Speaking the word is the fundamental mechanism of how true faith operates in this world.

Let us bring this entire profound teaching together with crystal clarity. The gospel of Jesus Christ sounds incredibly good to you because it is good. It is, as Romans 1:16 declares, the literal power of God unto salvation. But if this glorious gospel feels distant, theoretical, and powerless in your daily life, it is for one primary, fixable reason: You have not yet moved from mental agreement to deep, spiritual identification.

Yes, you agree intellectually that Jesus died and rose again. That mental agreement is enough for your initial salvation, ensuring you go to heaven. But have you truly identified with His violent death, His burial, His triumphant resurrection, and His current seating at the right hand of power? That deep identification is what produces actual transformation on earth.

The frustrating gap between merely hearing the truth on Sunday and actually experiencing the truth on Monday is a gap that can only be successfully bridged by your consistent confession. And again, this is not about mindless, superstitious repetition. It is not about reciting formulaic prayers like a robot. It is about making a deliberate, stubborn, and consistent verbal agreement with what God Almighty declares about you in His holy word.

When you consistently confess your righteousness out loud, you slowly but surely become conscious of your righteousness. When your mind finally becomes conscious of your righteousness, you will naturally begin to act in a righteous manner. And when you begin to act righteously, you will inevitably begin to experience the joyous, righteous results that follow. This exact same unbroken pattern applies perfectly to your physical healing, your mental victory, your emotional peace, your financial provision, and absolutely every single promise contained within the pages of scripture.

Christianity, at its very core, is called the Great Confession. It is not called the Great Feeling. It is not called the Great Emotion. It is the Great Confession. Therefore, you must seriously evaluate your own life today: What exactly are you confessing out of your mouth? Are you merely acting like a news reporter, confessing exactly what you see happening around you, or are you acting like a prophet over your own life, confessing exactly what God says is true in the spiritual realm? Remember the unbending spiritual law: Your confession entirely determines your internal consciousness. And your internal consciousness entirely determines your external experience. As Pastor Merigala asserts, this is a spiritual law that is just as reliable and predictable as the physical law of gravity.

Here is your immediate, practical takeaway to profoundly change your life starting today. You must immediately stop waiting until you feel different before you decide to speak differently. You must start opening your mouth and boldly speaking what God's word declares about you, utterly regardless of how depressed you feel or how bleak your circumstances look.

Go to your Bible and find the specific scriptures that clearly outline your new identity in Christ Jesus. Write them down. Say them out loud. Say them daily. Say them consistently. Remember, you are not doing this to convince God of anything; He already knows the truth perfectly well. You are not doing this to manipulate the fabric of reality; reality has already been eternally established in the finished work of Christ. You are speaking these words out loud to aggressively establish a new consciousness within your own stubborn mind. You are deliberately programming your own internal awareness with the eternal truth of heaven, instead of passively allowing the demonic realm and worldly circumstances to program your awareness with toxic lies.

When the insidious voice of condemnation whispers in your ear, "You're a failure, you're not good enough," you do not sit in silence. You open your mouth and you say out loud, "I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus". When terrifying sickness attacks your physical body, you do not just lay there and accept defeat; you speak up and declare, "By His stripes, I was perfectly healed". When suffocating anxiety and fear rise up in your chest, you declare with authority, "God has absolutely not given me the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind".

By doing this, you are not living in denial of what you feel physically or emotionally. You are simply making the higher choice to declare what is eternally true, despite what you temporarily feel. And the glorious promise is this: truth, when it is stubbornly and consistently confessed out of a believer's mouth, will inevitably transform their consciousness. And a transformed consciousness will undeniably transform your lived experience.

The gospel of Jesus Christ does not merely sound like a good, comforting story. The gospel is the raw, unadulterated, universe-creating power of God. But you will only begin to truly experience that earth-shaking power in your daily life when you make the bold decision to move far beyond just admiring the cross from a distance, and step into actually identifying with it. You will experience the power when you move beyond just quietly agreeing with the pastor's sermon mentally, to actually confessing the word violently and daily out of your own mouth. The victory becomes yours the exact moment that what God says becomes vastly more real and authoritative to you than what your physical eyes can see.

Through the profound teaching of Pastor Sam Merigala, the blueprint for true, lasting transformation has been laid entirely bare before you. The agonizing gap between what you believe in your heart and what you experience in your living room can be completely eradicated, not by endless striving, not by religious performance, and certainly not by begging God to repeat what He already accomplished at Calvary. The bridge over that gap is built by the words of your own mouth. Step into your identity today. Confess your reality. And watch as the glorious, finished work of Christ explodes into manifestation in your everyday life.