10-13-08 – Next Steps: The Power of Words

Words . . . Words . . . Words – do you ever think about them. I take my words for granted all the time. I speak a lot of words in a day, but rarely do I truly think about the power that they have. When I get my gun out of the closet I’m always aware of the power that I have in my hands and I’m always very careful with it, because I know there is great power in my gun. When I drive down the road in my 6000 lbs. truck, I’m aware that I need to be very careful, because one wrong move and I can hurt myself and others – I can kill people with my truck. I was an electrician for 20 years and I was always careful around electricity, because I knew there was power there that could kill me and others. But my words . . . I don’t think of them as having power. Guns, automobiles, and electricity – they can do incredible good and incredible harm, but my words . . .?

 In this series, we’ve been looking at this idea of seeking God first.  We said that we can seek other things first, like money, or success, or pleasure, we can do that, but that takes us down a certain road, and like the roads that we drive on, each road takes us in a certain direction, and we become a certain kind of person when we go down those roads.

 

We said that if you put winning in the box, then you might look like Bobby knight, when he starts throwing things because he’s not winning. If you put money in your box, and that’s the most important thing in your life, then you can end up like Howard Hughes. The thing that we put in our box, the thing that we say is most important in our life, the thing or person that we focus on takes our lives in a certain direction and we become a certain kind of person. 

 

God calls us to seek him first.  Jesus said, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33 (NIV

When we seek God first, the appetite within us for “more” – more pleasure, or more money, or more success, or you fill in the blank – is finally satisfied, because we were made with a vacuum shaped space inside of us, which can only be filled with God. When God is not first and foremost in our hearts, then there will always be emptiness; there will always be an ache; there will always be a hunger or craving for something more.

 

So, this morning we are going to be talking about the next steps toward putting God first in our lives, because there is always a next step.

 

The greatest commandment in the entire Bible is to Love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength – to love God with all that we are – to put God in the box of our lives, as the main purpose for why and how we live. Because when we make God the single greatest focus of our lives, of our marriages, of our jobs, of raising children, of everything that we do, that takes us in a direction that takes us down a road -a road that leads to personal transformation, where we become the people that God created us to be.

 

How do we get God central in our lives? How do we put God in the box? How do we let God be the rudder and direction of our lives, so that we can become all that he created us to be?

 

The next step that we are going to look at today is Power, and specifically the power of our words. You may not know it yet, but you and I were created for great power. But how we use that power is extremely important.

 

I find it very interesting that we go to school 13 or more years of our lives, but in the educational system we are never taught who we are.

 

When I was a kid I used to hear the old saying, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. You and I know that saying is not true at all. Words have great power to hurt. They also have great power to heal, give life, and joy, and love, and value, and ultimately healing.  Words have power, and that’s the next step that we’re going to dive into today.

 

The great English author Rudyard Kipling said that “Words are the most powerful drug used by humankind” And it’s true isn’t it? Words are like drugs – When we’re sick we go to the doctor and they give us a prescription for a medication to kill, that which is bad inside of us. Good words, like good drugs, help us heal, they make us feel good, and they give us health and life. 

 

Other drugs have the ability to alter how we perceive reality – they give us false realities, they make us hallucinate and see things that aren’t really there. Likewise, if a person is told often enough that they can’t do something or that they are stupid or that they aren’t good enough, if they are told over and over, pretty soon they believe what they are told – we begin to believe in false realities. Words are the most powerful drug used by human kind.

 

And when someone overdoses on drugs, we find that drugs kill. If you or I receive too many negative words – they kill the heart, they kill the soul, they rob us of our joy, they steal our goodness and when that happens, I get depressed, and I feel like I’m dead on the inside. Words have the ability to assault and ravage us. Words, like drugs, have the ability to kill.

 

Drugs and words have the ability to change us for better or worse, they have the ability to heal us and make us feel good, or they have the ability to hurt us and make us feel awful – almost dead. Words have the ability to make us high on life or to make us feel like we’d rather not live. Words have great power. Words are the most powerful drug used by human kind.

 

Words have the power of life and death – proverbs 18:21

 

First Peter 4:11 says this about how we are to speak. Peter says, Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God.

 

We’ve talked about this some in the past year, but I find that I need to often review this principal in my own life, because I tend to forget how powerful my words are.

 

So let’s go back to the beginning. Let’s go back to the creation story. Let’s go back to Genesis 1, and ask the question “How does God speak?”

 

In the beginning, God speaks the world into existence.  God speaks more times in Genesis one than he does anywhere else in the Bible. And every time God speaks, something great happens. When God says, “Let there be light”, his words have power to create exactly what he said. “Let there be . . . and it was.” And God says, Let there be the sun, and the moon, and the stars, animals, flowers, birds and fish, and the words that God speaks have great power to create the world around him, and everything that he says happens just as he speaks it.

 

In Genesis chapter 1 we see five things that are true about God’s word. Every time that God speaks five things happen. Every time that God speaks, his word:

 

1.   Has Power

2.   Forms the world

3.   Gives life

4.   Produces Goodness

5.   Produces Order out of chaos

 

At the end of Genesis 1 we are told that we were created in God’s image.  You and I were created in the image of God.  We are not God, but rather, we are created in his likeness. We resemble God, in the same way that a picture resembles the real thing. We are smaller, less powerful, less knowing, less able to speak our world into existence, but . . . But we still have great power in our words to create our world. Not the same power as God, but great power none the less.

 

God gave us the same ability to create and the same method for creating.

 

Whoever speaks must do so is one speaking the very words of God. 1 Peter 4:11

 

You know what that means right? When I speak, I am called to speak words like his. I ‘m

called to know that my words have power and they form the world around me. I am

called to speak words that give life, that produces goodness, and that produces order out

of chaos

 

I am called to speak words that give people value – that make them feel good about themselves. I am called to encourage, care, and love the people around me. We are called to speak words that create goodness, and words that take a bad situation and make it better. We are called to give life, to give joy, to give hope, to give encouragement, to give care, to give peace, to give value and self-worth, and to give love to those around us. We are called to love our neighbor as our self.

 

Every time God speaks, something good is created. Can we say the same thing about our words? Every time that you speak and I speak, can we say that we create goodness – can you say that you leave somebody better off than when you found them?

 

When we speak the words of God – when we speak goodness into someone else’s life – when we are patient and kind, and caring, and considerate, and thoughtful, and encouraging, and loving these kinds of words are like giving someone an antibiotic or a drug that will heal them. We have all been hurt by words and actions and our words have the ability to kill the hearts of those around us, or help them to heal and live in a state of health.

 

Words are the most powerful drug used by humankind

 

Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God. 1 Peter 4:11

 

Am I speaking God’s words?”

Do I realize that my words have power?

Do I realize how I speak has an influence on how my world is formed? What kind of words am I speaking to my spouse, to my children, to my co-workers, to my friends, and to complete strangers? The words that I speak have power and they have the power to form the people and really, my world, for good or for evil – according to God’s will or contrary to it.

 

Jesus said, The thief came to steal and kill and destroy, but I came that you may have life, life abundant – John 10:10

 

Am I siding with the thief who steals people’s self-worth and value? Am I stealing what God put inside of another person by how I speak to them, or am I speaking in such a way that I am siding with the king of glory – am I giving them abundant life?

 

Speak those words that you yourself would like to hear from others. Love those you find yourself next to as much as you love yourself. Love them with your words!

 

Sometimes we hurt those closest to us the most with our words. Sometimes we say things to loved ones that we would never say to someone we didn’t know.

 

Here’s a video that will help us review and understand a bit more about the power of our words. http://www.sermonspice.com/videos/10775/power-of-words

 

“Words are the most powerful drug used by humankind”

 

Whoever speaks must do so is one speaking the very words of God. 1 Peter 4:11

 

The greatest commandment in all the Bible is to Love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and with all of our strength? The question is, “Why?”

 

What Jesus said gets at the bottom of it. Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

 

Our heart is central to how we speak. Think of it this way.

 

How many of you have ever fallen in love? I think this is true for all of us. For me, when I fell head over heals in love with Shannon, I thought of little else. She captivated me. I needed to know more of her. I needed to know all of her. There was so much goodness in her that I was not satisfied with enough – I had to have all of her. And now, because I have loved her and she has loved me for so long, she is no longer separate from me, her love lives inside of me. It has transformed me into who I am today.

 

When we seek to love God like that – When we become captivated by God in the same way that I became captivated by Shannon, when I say, I need to know more of you, God, and where a say, I need to know all of you God, and where I say, “God, I am not satisfied with anything less than all of you, – when I seek to love God with all of my heart, with all of my soul, with all of my strength, when I seek to know God with all that I am, When I seek to put God in the box of my life, when I say, God, I want you to be the central purpose for how I live, then God is no longer separate from me, because it is at that point that he and his love now lives inside of me. That’s what love does. It gets inside of you and it changes you.

 

When God’s love is inside of us, it fills up our heart with his Goodness and his Life, and the words that we speak come out of that overflow. When we love God with all that we are, then his love overflows from our mouth into all the people around us.

 

Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

 

God came to earth in the person of Jesus, and Jesus came declaring the kingdom God. And he said this. Jesus said, The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21). The kingdom of God is inside of you. What does that mean? The kingdom of God is within you.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment in all the Bible is to Love God with all that you are. Why?

You and I were created to live with God in the box. You and I were created to live with God as the central purpose in our lives. You and I were created for God to be at the heart of all that we say and all that we do. You and I were created for God to be central to all that we are. We were created for our lives to revolve around God, and when we do that, the word of God – that same powerful, creative, good, live giving, chaos demolishing word lives inside of you and you become all that God created you to be on the inside. The inside of you becomes a place that is like heaven. Hell can be going on around you, but peace, joy, and love are still going on inside of you.

 

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21)

 

The very essence of heaven is going on inside of you!

 

We were created to have God in our heart. We were created for God’s love to be central to who we are. We were created for God’s love, and for God’s word, and for God’s power, to be inside of us, and when we speak, we begin to speak the very words of God. We were created to join him in the creation process. We were created to speak as he speaks. We were created to speak the world into existence. We were created in such a way, that when we speak, we would create goodness and life and create order out of chaos.

 

We were created in the image of God, We were created to be in loving relationship with him, and God gave away some of his power when he created human beings, so that we could join him in creating goodness in the world.

 

Maybe you’ve never thought about being a co-creator with God, so I want to talk about that for a minute. I’m convinced that you know this, but you’ve never thought about this in this way.  We started out today by saying the old schoolyard saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, and we all know how untrue this is.

 

For all of you who don’t speak much. You know who you are. You’re kind of quiet. Maybe you’ve been hurt by other people’s words, and so now you don’t talk much. Here’s the deal. We are like cracked pots . . . or crackpots – no, no, no. We are like clay vessels and we have cracks in our souls, because we’ve been hurt by others – often times by their words. We were created for love. We were created to be filled with love. That’s why God calls us to love our neighbor as our self. We need love to live, but we leak. You were created to speak love, to speak life, to speak goodness into those around you, because they need that. If you remain quiet, your spouse, or child, or parent, or friend, will grow empty, they will become depressed, they will not think of themselves as being valuable. You were created to speak the words of God. You must speak the words of God.

 

Whoever speaks must do so is one speaking the very words of God. 1 Peter 4:11

 

They are the words of life.

 

But there is another group that has the opposite problem. Our problem is that we like to speak too much. I fall into this category. The proverbs say that if you speak many words, that sin is not far from you. The idea here is that when we speak too often, we are not really thinking about the power of our words. We just throw them out there without really thinking. God gave us two ears and one mouth, so that we might listen twice as much as we talk. Those of us that speak to much, must be careful and weight each words and speak fewer words, but speak them in a way that we are always speaking God’s words.

 

Whoever speaks must do so is one speaking the very words of God. 1 Peter 4:11

 

“Words are the most powerful drug used by humankind“. What kind of drugs are you giving to the people around you? What kind of words are you speaking? Are they God’s words? Are they giving the people around you – your spouse, your children, your parents, your co-workers, the checkout clerk at the grocery store – are your words giving those people life? Are they creating goodness? Are your words creating chaos or are they creating order?

 

Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. What’s in your heart? The words that I speak in my life are like a doctor’s stethoscope listening to my heart. The words that come out of my mouth are an indication of how much of God is in my heart. Sometimes what comes out is not pretty.

 

Too things as I finish up:

 

One, know that this is a journey. The words coming out of your mouth and the heart that they come from will only change by God, but he doesn’t heal us all at once. God is a gardener and it takes a while to grow new ways of being – new ways of speaking. It takes time. Be patient, but be persistent.

 

I hear this phrase again and again from husbands and wives, where he or she will say something like, he says that he’s a Christian, but if you could just hear the things he says to me, or if you could just hear the things she says to me.”

 

This is important: the thing is not, how perfect our words are, because we all live in a broken world – a sinful world, and it lives in us. The important thing is not if people say things that are not of God, because we all do, but rather if you can see our words to us getting better. Speaking the very words of God is a process, not a line that you step over. It is a journey. Please ask God to help you with patience in the journey.

 

“Words are the most powerful drug used by humankind” What words are you using?

 

God calls us to speak the very words of God. 1 Peter 4:11 How are you doing? Let’s pray and ask for God’s help in this.

 

See also James 3:4-5