July 08, 2010
Power in Words
As believers we know there is power in the word of God, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double–edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb 4:12 NIV). However, I’m not so sure that we give much thought to the power in our own words. At a recent conference I attended the main session was presented by author and speaker Gene Griessman, Ph. D. His advice was to never stop working on communication skills, “Words have power…Once they are spoken they take on a life of their own. They can come back to bless you or to cause you pain.”
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Gail;
-----If you were to meet a man silently standing in the corner of a room, you would know very little about him as long as he just quietly stood there. That is why words and actions are so powerful and important. They are the only things we have for communicating ideas amongst us. Some may say art and music are also communications, and they would be right, but these are also merely the products of actions and words.
-----But we are not like the man in the corner. We are continually acting and speaking, seeing and hearing. Our lives are continually developing according to what we see and hear, while we must still act and speak. This presents the dilemma of sorting between what our lives have come to be, what they are becoming, and the many possibilities of what we might desire them to go on to be. What we are can be divided into what we know and what we are not sure about, both regarding matters of ourselves and matters of the general world around us. Often the lines between these can be thin, and we might act or speak from perceptions that have not fully developed and been thoroughly vetted into certainties. When the source of our actions and speech cross into our uncertainties is when we get ourselves into trouble. We may find ourselves committed to something we did not wish to become or had not developed the skill to perform. Or we may pass information that some latter discovered fact proves wrong. Worse yet, we may find the certainties about ourselves to be so boring that we feel tempted to pass information about others. -----”Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” (Prov 29:20) I can speak about this from experience, unfortunately. So I try to keep myself out of trouble by learning this rule of thumb: state only what you know, only propose what you perceive, and pay no mind to what is not your business.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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