The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is a lie.
Words have the power to hurt deeply and permanently. You know it is true. Words also have the power to heal. The truth about words is found in the Bible:
Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Proverbs 12:18
Some of the Positive Effects of Words
The Power to Instruct:
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1)
The reason? Because of the tremendous influential power of the tongue when employed by a teacher or preacher, those who teach and preach are held accountable to God and to man for what they say. The beneficial uses of the tongue carry a great warning:
But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be dro`wned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:35-37)
This is our kind and gentle Jesus, Himself, speaking. He is not making this up. Not just the teachers, but everyone will be judged by the words they say.
The Power to Direct:
When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. (James 3:3-5a)
Although the tongue, so small, can direct the whole life of a man, notice the tongue also can be steered by a rider or a pilot. Whoever is at the reins or at the helm will determine where the ship or the horse is to go.
The Holy Spirit of Jesus is supposed to be our pilot. We cannot tame our tongues, but He can control our entire lives when we are surrendered to Him.
One way He does this is by urging us to control our input. We know that “garbage-in-garbage-out” is true for electronic computers, but we’ve forgotten it also is true for our brains.
It is.
What we see and hear goes into our hearts. And if you are a parent, you have the responsibility also to control what your children see and hear. As a parent, Himself, God holds you, parent, accountable for what your children listen to or watch on the TV, computer, radio, MP3 player, and telephone.
Garbage in, garbage out. Faith in, faith out. It is that simple. A heart filled with good things will produce an overflow of good words from the mouth.
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)
The Power to Encourage:
Sometimes our Pilot steers us into troubled waters where those around us are being tossed by storms. We could rescue our neighbors from these awful waves, but too often we find ourselves succumbing to the storms, drowning in demonic seas of criticism, grumbling, complaining, and fault-finding. We must overcome and rise above these storms and call on God in repentance, to guide and strengthen us against them.
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5:4)
Just do not go there. Instead, in these situations, stop.
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Ephesians 4:29)
Find something good to notice. Ask God to show you a reason to rejoice or compliment. When we begin with thankful thoughts, it is then that we can proceed, even with ideas for correction or improvement. If we begin with the bottom of our own ship filled with a swamp of filth, the first decent wave with sink us, along with those we would have rescued.
A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. (Proverbs 25:11)
Here I always imagine a silver bowl of Golden Delicious apples — inviting, refreshing, and royal. I want to be that.
Negative Effects of Words
Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:5b-8)
Fire has many great uses. We love it, when it is contained, to cook our food or warm us in winter or make our glass and steel. However, we know the dangers. We know: “Those who play with matches get burned.” Don’t we.
When we condemn, criticize, slander, gossip, lie, or curse, we are using the tongue destructively. Just like fire, which is destructive when uncontrolled, words are destructive when out of control. As with a spark of fire, it takes only one careless word to create a lot of havoc.
And like little children, we need our Father to be in charge of the matches, the sparks, our words.
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. (James 3:9-12)
You know.
One moment we are blessing God in church, and by the time we get to the lunch table, we are cursing men who are made in God’s image. Criticizing and slandering our fellow man is unholy. This should not be and will not be, if our hearts are right, because words flow from the heart. Nothing gives us away as much as our speech. It shows where our hearts are.
Bitterness, anger, and hatred in the heart it will come out through what we say and how we say it. The heart is the factory that produces all vile speech. The tongue is only the showcase window of the heart.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10
(Henry) Austin Dobson, by Frank Brooks (died 1937). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Ladies of St. James’s!
They’re painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays forever,
Their red it never dies:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her color comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,–
It wavers to a rose.
In January of 2008, the Jugendamt (Germany’s youth welfare office) and police officials surrounded the Gorber family’s Uberlingen home in a surprise raid. Mr. Gorber was away from home at the time of the raid, visiting his wife at a local hospital where she had been admitted, due to complications from her pregnancy with their ninth child. Despite the children’s repeated protests, all but the oldest son, age 21, and a daughter, age 20, were taken into custody by the authorities.
The siblings reported that the 7-year-old was gripped around the waist by a youth home music teacher, dragged kicking and screaming across the courtyard, and thrown into a van. The terrified 3-year-old clung to his 20-year-old sister so tightly that even the police and Jugendamt official could not separate them. Both had to be taken to the youth home, where at last the little fellow’s strength gave out and he was taken into custody. [ . . . ]
[ . . . ] This is especially out of the ordinary when nearly all other western European democracies allow for homeschooling by either constitution, law, or practice. Even formerly communist eastern European countries are loosening up their laws and regulations to allow homeschoolers freedom. Far from escaping the rigidly uniformitarian ideas about society that prevailed in Hitler’s Germany, today’s authorities seem to be perpetuating it through their treatment of German homeschoolers. [ . . . ]
I know people might read the title of this post and think I’ve decided to take a break from my usual hope-centered posts, but I haven’t; this post is also about hope.
A few years ago I was watching a show about ancient Rome on the History Channel. One of the most fascinating segments was on the incredible highway system the Romans had built throughout their empire. These Roman Roads were built to exact specifications to handle cart and foot traffic. This intricate network of roads facilitated trade and commerce as well as making it much easier for people to travel.
The traumatic what-ifs happen. They happen to very nice people. They can ruin sleep and even ruin life for people who basically did nothing wrong.
Sometimes we think what if about the future.
What if a tornado were to strike? What if a burglar came to the door? What if I miscarry? What if the thought police read my post? And on and on and on.
We call those what-ifs “worry”. We can make great use of them if we take notes, plan for the future, and then forget it. We stock the basement with candles, drinking water, maybe helmets, and then we relax. We lock the door or place a chair under the knob and then go on to sleep. We take our maternity vitamins and trust our medical pro. Etc. We do, in other words, whatever we can to avert disaster, normally, and then we go on to the next topic.
We call that wisdom.
We are bringing the scary future worries into the present, actual, factual preparations. Dealing with them in the present is what we should do. When we acknowledge actual, possible disaster, it does not seem so scary. When we use known fact to make ourselves safer, we actually benefit. We plan to succeed, maybe update now and then, and let the plan be enough.
Or we fixate on it and go through life abnormally worried about everything. What if the tornado sucks me out of the basement, what if the burglar comes down the chimney . . . We can drive ourselves crazy. We can have nightmares (if we’re not losing sleep.)
We suffer trauma when nothing has actually happened!
PTSD changes from POST– to PRE-traumatic stress disorder.
What a shame. How avoidable.
We call that waste.
However, sometimes we look back.
We look back on our past traumatic experiences and think too much.
We actually worry about things in the past.
Things that only might have happened.
But did not happen.
They are “what-ifs” from the past. There is no way we could ever go back to the past and be in danger from these what-ifs, but we go back there, mentally, and worry about what-if they had happened.
Now, I will grant that once we have experienced actual trauma, our brains are shuffled a bit. That is true. We do not walk through true danger without knowing it, without adrenalin, without fight-or-flight, without some sort of harm or terror.
But we sometimes do not stop there. Sometimes we worry most irrationally: We worry about the future, but we go back to the past to do it.
Sorry, but what we call that is just a bit wacko.
How do I know? I know, because I’ve done it, and I’ve seen others do it.
When my son fell out of the rolling car, I was sleepless many nights. He was fine. He was not crushed. The car did not roll into the street causing an accident. Someone was there to help. We all lived happily ever after.
But I worried.
For days.
What if my baby had been crushed. I’d have probably had to go to court. I could have had my children taken from me. I could be in prison. My poor baby would probably have died. Or worse. My poor teenager would have felt guilty. What if the car had continued rolling into the street, and had struck another car. Or another child. Two children could be dead right now. What if my teenager had to go to court. He was old enough to drive. He could have lost his privileges to drive. What if he had become suicidal….
This is only a fraction of what I suffered, and if you’ve ever gone down this path, you know it’s really a maze that keeps taking you back to the beginning. You never get out. The end of all this is either such weariness that insomnia is impossible, or else the end is insanity.
Oh. An added bonus is that some get to enjoy substance abuse. Why we don’t worry about that is a puzzle to me.
Okay. I did stop worrying about the past-future-what-ifs and I’d like to share with you how to do it, in case you find yourself needing to know.
Words have the power to hurt deeply and permanently. You know it is true. Words also have the power to heal. The truth about words is found in the Bible:
Home's Cool! 