The Power of Words ~ Rabqa

Words are powerful. They can create or destroy, build up or tear down. The power of words is not measured by their volume or intensity of their delivery, but by their effectiveness in fulfilling their purpose. 

Powerful speech flows from an inspired heart, either for good or evil. 

An example from history illustrates the point. Sir Winston Churchill, the English war-time Prime Minister, inspired a nation to greatness by using his words to create a picture of victory in the face of certain defeat. His famous address calling the nation never to surrender turned Britain’s darkest hour into its finest. His words created faith in a nation & inspired the whole world to believe that good could come triumph over evil. 

On the other hand Adolph Hitler used his skilful manipulative way with words to inspire a nation to evil. His words were so powerfully motivated by the appalling intent in his heart that he nearly succeeded in his grandiose scheme of world domination. His words created fear & inspired men to do inconceivable evil on a colossal scale. 

The Bible perfectly describes the devious power of the words Ps 55:21 

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, 
But war was in his heart; 
His words were softer than oil, 
Yet they were drawn swords. 

Endless pictures of both good & evil can be woven by our words. What we say reveals what is in our hearts. God had the image the creation in His heart before the world ever was, When He spoke this image into being, His words created exactly what He had within Him, through the power of the Holy Spirit. In Genesis we see time & time again how God spoke the creation into existence Gen 1:3 

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 

This was God's first divine command which begins the process of transforming the chaos. The words "God said" appear ten times in chapter 1 as a means of bringing about life & order. The exact working relationship among the members of the Trinity in this process is not clearly defined in the Bible, see Col1:16. Light is the presence of illumination in general. 

We too create with our words. We bring things we see in our hearts into being through out mouths, just as God did. 

If our words are godly words we will create the lifestyle God wants us to have, that is heaven here on earth. If on the other hand our words are not godly they will create the lifestyle the devil wants us to have-hell on earth. The choice is entirely ours. 

Winners don't entertain thoughts or words of defeat. If we want to be winners in life we need to start speaking the way winners speak. The only way we can do that is to find out what God wants us to speak & to concentrate on doing the things He wants us to do. 

Words determine the shape of our lives. We live today in what we said about ourselves yesterday. Tomorrow we will live by what we say about ourselves today. If we don't like who we are today, then we need to change our words. 

If we can control our words then we can control our life. 

The Bible shows us that just as ships can be controlled by small rudders & horses by bits in their mouth, we can be controlled by our seemingly small & insignificant tongues. 

James 3:2-4   

For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. 

Bridle your tongue! Monitoring every word we speak may seem cumbersome at first, but it will serve to advance righteousness. 

Nothing can cause more damage then the tongue. Keeping our speech under control is a discipline believers must develop. 

As the pilots of our lives we need to set our mouths in the right direction. We can't simply turn them lose to say whatever we feel like. Our tongues can set our whole lives on fire. They can corrupt our whole person. 

If you are anything like me, you have probably wished that you had held your tongue. Maybe some reasonably innocent situation flared up into a major disaster all because of foolish words. Prov 18:6-7 

A fool’s lips enter into contention, 
And his mouth calls for blows. 
A fool’s mouth is his destruction, 
And his lips are the snare of his soul. 

Words can also do untold good. If the careless use of a rudder sends a ship on to the rocks, & wise use steers it through a narrow channel into a safe & peaceful harbour. Just like the yachtsman setting his course with a rudder we set our course with our mouths. What we say determines our nature & our life. 

There is one simple reason why words have such a powerful effect on our lives; that because words have enormous creative power. 

God created the world with words. When He said Let there be light!, the bible tells us light was! & God, who created us in His own image & likeness, put into us the same power to create with the words of our mouth. God framed the world with His words, & we frame our world with our words. Hebrew 11:3 

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. 

Our belief concerning God's creative act exemplifies the evidence of things not seen in verse 1 of this chapter. Which says Now faith is the substance of things hoped for & the evidence of things not seen Heb 11:1 

We have been given a unique ability to create a vision on the inside of us. Champions see themselves successful long before they taste it. On the other hand losers see defeat long before it happens. Success or defeat are birthed in the mind. Our mind needs to trained to think godly & positive thoughts & our mouths to release these 

same thoughts in words so that our vision inside of us becomes a reality. 

When the Bible says God made us in His image  it means, that we are spirit, just as He is. Each of us is a spirit who lives in a body & has a soul that is the area of the mind, will & intellect. Since we are really spirit beings, we have the same power as God to create any vision we see in our spirit-through our mouths. 

The Bible often refers to our spirit as our 'heart'. If we are not familiar with God & His ways we will have evil hearts. Our spirit will be dead to the things of God, our mind will be negatively programmed by the world our body will be involved in some form of carnality. If we are familiar with God & His ways we will have a 'good heart'. Our spirit will have come alive to the things of God, our mind will be in the process of being renewed by His Word, & we will be presenting our body daily to the Lord. 

Every person speaks from one of these two hearts, either good or evil. Even as Christians we can speak from an evil heart at times. For while our spirit is alive to God, we can still be held captive by our old ways of thinking & acting. 

Our words reveal what we really are like in our hearts. A good man will bring out good things from his heart while an evil man will bring out evil. Jesus made this very clear when He said it was not what went into a man that defiled him but what came out of him. Matt 12:34-35 

Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. 

This analogy demonstrates that the blasphemy was not merely an utterance of the lips, but an expression of character. 

Our words will always indicate what we are consistently seeing, hearing, thinking & doing. It's impossible to imagine a sports person who will not find a way to talk about sport, the thing that consumes his thoughts will always will always find a way through to his mouth. 

In fact every word we speak has its origin in our thoughts. Some thoughts remain no longer then the time it takes to think about them, & our ensuing words have little impact. Thoughts like that don't influence us to any great degree. Students everywhere are living examples of this. They cram dozens of ideas into there minds for an exam which are not there a day or two later! 

On the other hand thoughts that find there way down into our spirit impact us enormously. Thousands of thoughts invade our space every day. Our minds reject many of theses. So not every thought we have is conceived in our imaginations & birthed back through our mouths. But some get down into our hearts, & it's these that have creative power for good or evil when they leave our lips. 

We all know by experience how thoughts filter down into our spirits till the opportunity comes to speak them out. Generally they come out in fits of emotion: rage, abuse & anger that is when our fuse is lit by some situation we are struggling with. We give everyone a piece of our mind, then stand back & say we are sorry because we don't know where it all came from. 

The truth is, we know where it came from. Our mind & emotions have been rehearsing exactly what we would say if given the chance. 

When deeply meditated thoughts flow out into words we see the incredible creative power of words at work. What we say both creates & reveals the basic orientation of our lives. 

If we are programmed to the ways of the world we will constantly speak words of negativity & defeat. Like "the kids get sick every time we go on holiday", "David will probably die like his father at forty with a heart attack" "I just know I'll have an accident at that intersection one day" & so on. 

The amazing thing is that the kids do get sick every holiday, David does suffer a heart attack & dies, & you do have an accident, just as you predicted. 

We may think being negative is just being realistic, but what we are in fact doing is creating the very thing we fear. Even before it happens we picture it happening. That picture is so compelling that we really do start to believe it will occur. we are quick to tell every one who will listen about our fears. we become our own worst enemy, for the things we say will come to pass. We of course don't want them to come to pass, & live in hope & pray they wont. But they do. & they always will till we change the image of fear in our hearts to one of faith & bring our words in line. 

Another place we see the power of words is with anxiety. so many people feel that if they could just stop their minds going around & around all the time, thinking about all their worries & anxieties, they would be able to cope.& you know they are right Prov 12:25 Anxiety in the heart of a man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad. 

If our minds are always centred around our worries & fears, those images will be like a stronghold in our hearts. We will find ourselves speaking out about our problems to anyone who comes near us. By our words we can make our anxieties seem impossible to overcome. Eccl 5:3 For a dream comes through much activity & a fools voice is known by his many words. 

Dreams are often the products of natural anxieties, care & concerns, with little meaning behind them. Even so the fools words are many, with little meaning behind them. 

When we speak, we must be aware that the Lord hears every word we say. Presumptuous speech displeases Him & can bring discipline. 

The solution is to change our focus from the problems to the answers we truly desire. it takes the same time to speak the positive as it does to speak the negative. It is much better to say: 

"The children are always healthy on holidays", David will have a long & healthy life," Making the change is not easy We can't speak this way because we don't have a mental picture of the positive things in our hearts. The only picture we have is the well developed negative. We are like cameras that can't reproduce a positive picture because we are focusing is always negative.   

We may try to suppress our words, somehow knowing we should not be negative, deceitful, depressed etc. But if they come from established attitudes in our hearts we are fighting a loosing battle. The answer is that we have to change our hearts before we can change our words. 

The most effective way to change our hearts is to change our mind to think in a different way. The mind is the gateway to the spirit, & whatever gets down into our spirit through our mind will effect every single part of our being. 

God tell us in His Word that the way to change our mind is to renew it by the Word of God. Since God's Word is spirit & is totally positive, alive, creative, & energising, it's only natural that a consistent diet of such food will produce that image in our hearts. But on the other hand a steady diet of negatives, death, destruction, horror, doom & gloom will produce negative, fear-filled images in our hearts. 

It is not enough to determine by an act of our will that we are going to stop speaking negatively. As every sport minded person knows the only way to stop speaking defeat is to speak victory. & the only way to speak victory is to find out what God is saying & to say that. God's Word is absolute truth so when we speak we are always speaking what is true. 

There is only one way to get the word of God in our hearts  & that is by confessing it that is out loud-to God, to others & to yourself, until the Holy Spirit establishes it in your heart & your faith raises up to embrace it. Speak it out again & again, Now this is not a gimmick but a faith principle because we are told So faith comes by hearing, & hearing by the Word of God Rom 10:17. 

Be consistent in your reading & study of God's Word. Recognise that your faith will grow only as much as you feed on God's Word. 

When we hear the words of life coming from our mouths, they flow from the Spirit of God into our spirit. 

John 6 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, & they are life. 

Words don't have the luxury of being neutral. They come from one or two realms: the kingdom of light, which is God's kingdom or the kingdom of darkness which is satan's. One is for good & the other is for evil. There is no middle ground. 

Words will create either life or death, encouragement or discouragement, peace or strife, health or sickness, blessing or cursing, wealth or poverty, love or hatred. 

Every single day we have a choice to make between these two. We can speak words that produce life & health or words that produce fear & death. We need to deliberately set our mouths in the direction of our desires. If we want healing then we cannot afford to talk sickness. If we want peace we cannot afford to talk about anxieties, cares & worries. If we want success we cannot afford to talk defeat. 

God instructs us to choose Him above all else. If we make our choices according to the world's standards, we will be choosing the way of death,  because many things which seem right to the world are measured by secular humanism, which is very wrong to God. But if we make our choices according to God & His ways we will be choosing life. 

God tells us to obey His Word; the world tells us rebel against all types of authority & do whatever we like. God tell us to avoid sin; the world tells us to enjoy everything that brings pleasure without any thought of responsibility for our actions. God tells us to proclaim His promises by faith & walk towards their fulfilment; The world tells us to believe only what we see & stay grounded in our many fears. God tell us to give; the world tells us to keep.  God tell us to love & forgive; the world tells us to hate & get even. Whatever God says the world’s system is programmed for the exact opposite. 

Jesus told us that we were to live by the words that came from His Father, He lived by them & overcame death, hell & the grave. Our testimony can be the same, if we resolve to do & say all that is written. 

But He answered & said It is written "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Matt 4:4 

Jesus appeal to Scripture provides a clue for interpreting the Temptation narrative. Using the Word of God, He is victorious over the same temptations to which Israel had succumbed in the wildness, when they forced a test upon God in time of need. 

Do you want your words to produce what is good & peaceful in your life? Then you must know which words are God's that produce faith, & which words are the devil's which produce fear. Then you must speak God's words so that the Holy Spirit can establish in your heart the realities that those words express. 

As you heart changes, out of that transformed heart will come faith-filled words that will change your world. Ps 34:12-13 Who is the man who desires life. And loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, And your lips from speaking deceit. 

Trust that He will hear & answer. Guard carefully your speech. Know that righteous speech carries with it the promise of long life. 

  

 Acknowledgements Dr Margaret Court.