The power of the spoken word

Sally Oakes's picture

The psalmist prays, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

How would our speech be changed if, before we uttered a word, we prayed this prayer to God? If we kept that in the forefront of our minds, we would be very aware of and very careful of our language.

Words have power. Even before we can read, we learn this. When we were 2 years old, most of us learned to say, “No!” It’s an important milestone in our lives because it marks the point at which we learn we are individual human beings with wills of our own and that we do have some influence over our circumstances.

This is all before we could even begin to read James’s admonition in chapter 3 to watch our tongues. We learn as very young children that the words we speak have power to them. Most bullying on playgrounds is verbal taunting and no matter how often an adult says, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” we’re not convinced. And it’s probably because the adults know better. Words can hurt more easily than they can heal.

So when as youth or adults we read James 3:5, “So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And it doesn’t surprise us a bit.”

Because we’ve all, at one time or another, been the subject of a rumor. It can ruin careers, marriages, friendships ...

Renowned preacher Fred Craddock once told about the time he followed a guy down the line in a cafeteria restaurant and the guy took a 5-cent pat of butter and hid it under his plate so the cashier couldn’t see — a little thing that revealed something big about his character. I thought about that man. I imagined that he might have been among those who were dressed up in the after-church crowd at Piccadilly and that it was me who saw him do it. And I thought to myself, “cleaned up or not, that gesture makes his whole body look dirty.”

The same way, a single careless word can sully the Christian message. Our speech can stain an entire body — can ruin a career or, worse, create divisions within a church. I’m not talking about healthy divisions. I mean the destructive ones where one group is trying to get ahead for their own agendas. If we are walking in the light of God, our speech should show it.

To not control stains the whole body. To build on that, refraining from poisonous talk takes the stress on the body away. Studies have been done on the effect of negative language people ... It takes 72 hours for your autonomic nervous system, the nerves and chemicals that respond to stress, to calm down after witnessing or being the recipient of negativity and criticism. Has anyone ever said something to you that you just couldn’t get rid of for days? It can take over a day for our own autonomic nervous system to calm down after we participate in criticism of someone or something else.

On the other hand, speaking positively builds up — praising the good rather than berating the bad. That doesn’t mean not correcting, say, bad behavior; it means to refrain from berating — there’s a difference. Some say it takes ten “atta boys” or “atta girls” to make up for a single lapse of the tongue. This does not mean empty praise; that doesn’t ultimately build. It means to consciously put things in a positive way.

If speaking positively builds, then let me take this one more step. Put spiritually, speaking the name of Jesus Christ is to speak salvation — for us, our families, our churches, and for our community. If the tongue can be used to deceive and tear down, it can also encourage and build up.

Neither James nor the psalmist seems to think that this tongue-taming is a natural outpouring of the love of God in us. Rather, it is a discipline learned through prayer and practice.

There is power in the spoken word. What we speak, what we put out there, becomes real. I don’t mean in the way that Shirley meant when we drove past a very large UMC and I jokingly said, “there’s my next appointment!” She said, “that’s going to be your appointment then, because you put it out there.” That’s superstition put in religious language. Rather, I mean that speaking something actualizes it. Does it not make sense, then, to actualize uplifting and upbuilding things rather than negative, critical things?

Our speech can control what’s in our hearts. How much better if we not only refrained from negative language, learned to speak positive language, and made a real effort to speak God language.

Our spoken words serve as a way to clarify holy events, or to make the meditations of our hearts real. To put them “out there” where the words can be heard and sensed and understood so that our faith in God can be heard and sensed and understood.

Take five minutes today and think of positive words to either say out loud or to write down. I guarantee you’ll get a little “faith lift” and it will show.

Sally Oakes is pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church, 607 Rivers Road, Fayetteville, GA 30214. Phone: 770-964-6999 or 770-964-6992, or e-mail bethanymnc@bellsouth.net.

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Spear Road Guy's picture
Submitted by Spear Road Guy on Tue, 09/22/2009 - 11:59pm.

That's coming from an Atheist.

Vote Republican


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