How our words shape our ways
I read about a study that was run in a workspace once that ended up sending an employee home sick.
Well, not really sick, but feeling sick. Allow me to explain.
All the coworkers were told to do the same thing every time they passed the employee’s desk. They were to simply ask him, “Do you feel ok?”
Of course, he would reply with, “Yes. Why do you ask?”
They were asked to say, “You just look like you aren’t feeling well.”
I’m sure by now you’ve already figured out the results: that employee went home before lunch complaining that he wasn’t feeling well.
Our words shape our ways, y’all. Or, as the wisest man who ever lived once wrote, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21, emphasis mine)
In his paraphrase, The Message, Eugene Peterson said it like this, “Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.”
The third chapter of James doesn’t pull any punches when it speaks about how our tongues are actually set on fire by hell itself, and that even though the tongue is one of the smallest parts of the body, it holds some of the greatest power.
If an experiment can send a coworker home feeling sick when he really isn’t, imagine what else our words could do? Perhaps this is why Paul was so clear when he was writing to the church in Ephesus about what our words need to do.
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, emphasis mine)
Too often, we use our words to justify ourselves, or to rant about how we’ve been wronged, or to brag about all we’ve done, but Paul says that our words should be used to build up others, and be shaped by their needs, for their benefit.
Our words have the power to shape our ways, but also to shape the way for others.
I think when Paul was writing those words, he may have been remembering something that he’d heard the disciples talk about, something that Jesus had said to them as they walked the dusty roads of the Middle East.
No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. (Luke 6:43-45, emphasis mine)
When Paul warned about unwholesome talk, he used the same Greek word that Jesus used when he talked about bad fruit. That may be the key to making sure we use the power of our tongues in a way that shapes the Kingdom in others.
We store the Kingdom in our hearts, so that Kingdom words come out of our mouths. After all, Jesus could not have been any clearer when He said that the words we speak are coming from the heart we’ve filled.
Our prayer needs to be the same as the one King David prayed in Psalm 141:3: “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.”
Your words have the power of life and death, and your mouth is the gate. Choose wisely, friend, whether you allow words of destruction or construction to pass through it.
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