Word Up!
“If anyone can control his tongue it
proves he has perfect control over his life.” James 3:2
As a kid, visits to the doctor were always
important to diagnose what was going on inside of us.
When you go to the doctor and he sits you down on one of those tables,
the first thing he or she says is, “Stick out your tongue.” Then he takes a
thermometer and sticks it under your tongue.
Why? Because for one reason or another, your tongue tells what’s going
on inside of you. If you want to know
what a person is really like, look at their words, look at how they talk, look
at their conversation…it tells you what’s going on inside of them.
Something that we discover is that we
love to talk. Statistics testify to that truth. In one year, the average person will speak
enough words to fill 53 one thousand page books. You will spend one fifth of your life
talking. One guy said he spent the first
2 years of his daughter’s life trying to teach her to talk and the next 16
trying to keep her quiet. The average
American will have 30 conversations a day…unless you text (and it will be 90
conversations). In one year the average
person’s words would fill 100 books of 220 pages each. The typical man speaks 20,000 words a day and
the typical woman speaks 30,000 words a day.
Phyllis Diller’s husband once was asked, “Do you resent your wife having
the last word?” He said, “Actually, I’m
delighted when she gets to it.” Oh, how we love to talk!
Robert Schuller tells a story about a
banker who always tossed a coin in the cup of a legless beggar who sat on the
street outside the bank. But,
unlike most people, the banker would always insist on getting one of the
pencils the man had beside him. "You are a merchant," the banker
would say, "and I always expect to receive good value from merchants I do
business with." One day the legless man was not on the sidewalk. Time
passed and the banker forgot about him, until he walked into a public building
and there in the concession stand sat the former beggar. He was obviously the
owner of his own small business now. "I have always hoped you might come
by someday," the man said. "You are largely responsible for me being
here. You kept telling me that I was a ‘merchant’. I started thinking of myself
that way, instead of a beggar receiving gifts. I started selling pencils --
lots of them. You gave me self-respect, and it caused me to look at myself
differently." Words gave him power.
Our words determine the success of the
most important things in our lives. (Our success and failure is directly
connected to our words…and I’m not talking about our vocabulary skills).
The most important things
in life are affected by what we say:
1.
Success of marriages
(#1 on every marriage counselors list is our
Communication skill).
2.
Success of parenting skills.
(Top achieving children usually have
a parent who told them they could do
something).
3. Success in relationships with people.
4.
Success in business dealing.
5.
Success in being used by God.
6.
Even our relationship with God.
(God can’t use people who
are not proper mouthpieces in the world; 2 Corinthians 5:20 says,
“We are God’s ambassadors”).
Whenever you find places in these
areas where you have succeeded or failed, it usually comes down to the words
that you have used or not used. Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your conversation be always full of
grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Use
words that build up rather than tear down.
You never know how it can change your life…or someone else’s for that
matter.
Terry Risser
Reflections
1. Do you find your words more edifying or
criticizing?
2. What person in your life can you build up
today with words of life?
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright
2014- Terry Risser
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