Friday Fight 16 - The Weight of our Words

Every Friday, when I wake and pray, God places something on my heart to help me fight darkness beginning in the mind. Today is FF16.

The Weight of our Words:
How often do we honestly pay attention to the words we speak or those comments expressed over us?

This lesson is a bit more complicated because some of us may have strong habits that will need to be broken.
Do you begin sentences with "I wont’t be able to _____" or "I am always going to ____." Sound familiar at all? I'm guilty! Our words have tremendous power, and we can speak life, or we speak death.

While shopping, I heard a mom calling her young son a brat (yes, he was misbehaving) and would always be one. When we apply titles like this, how do they continually impact us? How long do they travel around our minds contributing to how we view ourselves? If we speak something enough, good or bad, it is accepted, and we act accordingly.
Suppose, in trying to process a deep hurt, we become angry. We all react to pain differently. There is a huge difference between hearing phrases like we are "acting crazy" instead of "are crazy." One label is removed after calming down; the other negatively attacks our character. Sadly, many words like this become adhesively damaging over time.

How does darkness use our words? Words can either nurture or contaminate our identity and God's plan for our lives. We hear them, others hear them, then darkness twists them to manipulate a negative identity. Powerful words negatively defining a person is speaking death over them. Not a physical end, of course, but slow suffocation of the soul.

We are all guilty of destructively labeling ourselves, our children, relationships, and our lives with our words, then watching those words spoken become a reality. How do we fight? Be aware of your comments and their weight, damaging or encouraging. Try not to label a person; instead, label their temporary actions. Do not to say infectious things about yourself that would offend you if spoken by someone else, not even family. God created us all in His image; let's try to convey His life over ourselves and one another!

Proverbs 12:18

Pastor Shannon
New Life Church