Burdens

Have You Ever Listened to the Words You Speak?

By May 6, 2019 June 15th, 2020 No Comments

When I was a young convert, I read a book about the effect of our words on our children. I was a mother of two small children at the time. I began to listen to myself and it seemed everything out of my mouth was negative, fear, gossip, or a complaint. I experienced such a conviction. I prayed and repented. I was determined to change. I tried to control what came out of my mouth but my tongue seemed to have a life of its own. What came out of my mouth was like a wildfire, just when I thought I had it contained, something would happen and I’d spew again. I felt so defeated so ask the Lord to help me.

One day while I was gardening, there was a weed that had an especially long root in among my flowers. I pulled on it and it broke off. I was going to move on and just leave it. I heard the Lord say, if you leave the root, you will have to deal with again. Dig down and remove the root. He began to show me the roots of my speech.

My words originated in my heart, not my tongue. I could see my heart was filled with ugliness. There was anger, fear, unforgiveness, bitterness to name a few. I prayed, not just to change the way I talked but asked Him to get to the root of the matter. I ask Him to forgive me for all the unresolved issues I had stored in my heart and help me release the anger and fear. I knew even as the Lord was healing my heart, it would be a process to retrain the words of death to speaking words of life.

We have the power of life and death in our tongues. We can build up or tear down. Luke 6:45 says, 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. If our heart is filled with anger, then anger will be conveyed. Scripture also says, out of our hearts flow the issues of life. I’d like to challenge you today. Listen to the words you speak, especially when you’re tired, stressed or mad. What do you sound like? Are you speaking life or death?

Proverb 4:23 Jeremiah 17:9 Luke 6:45

I would love to hear from you. Rev. Denise Much at [email protected]