…Words hurt me. Words break me. Words have brought out the best and worst in me. Back at home, you could ask anyone and they would say to you that I would “jump off the deep end” whenever someone would speak words that hurt or disagreed with me. Words were something that I carried around like an 4 year old floaties around my arms. They were trying to keep me afloat in the “deep end” but were causing a rather large scene.
Something has begun to change.
How many of us would say, as children, “Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? How about the phrase, “I am rubber, you are glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you”? I can remember saying these childish phrases once or twice, and believing them…never.
Whether we like to admit it or not, words stick. We are not rubber and others are not glue with words bouncing off me and sticking to you. More often than not we are sponges. We absorb the words and plant them deep within our hearts. They form insecurities, fears and false identities. These words tear us up and cause us to flail around with old floaties when we should be swimming into the arms of Jesus.
I have begun to realize just how much weight words have, good and bad. Words can bring death or they can bring life. Let me say it again. Words can bring death or they can bring life.
Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” Words hold power.
How can this change my thinking from jumping off the deep end, to sitting poolside with God to hear the words that others have to offer? How often do we bring words that are spoken to us or over us to the attention of the one who spoke with power in his words? Why don’t we bring these things to the God who spoke life into existence with his words? Who said that I had to do this alone? I can take off the floaties and swim to the God who spoke my life into existence.
I have learned just how powerful my words are. I can speak life into one of my teammates. I can speak life into them by calling them up to the Man or Women that they were created to be in the image of Christ. I have learned that my teammates hold power in their words. They can speak life or death over me. They can raise me up, or push me down. And I can do this to myself too. I can speak life or death to myself when I look into the mirror or when I rebuttal my own thoughts. I have the power to speak life. Our words have power.
Power means responsibility too. We have the responsibility to speak life over people, and we have the responsibility to accept the life that is spoken over us. We also have the responsibility to come to Jesus before we speak words, and after we hear those words. God is the ultimate say in who we are as men and women living life out for his namesake.
