Our words have power. They can lift people up or bring them down. They can heal or they can hurt. They can speak God’s truth or the enemy’s lies. And we have the ability to choose, every day, the way we use our words. The Bible says: ‘May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight’ (Psalm 19:14 NIV). When we stop and think, are our words pleasing to God? We can end up saying things in the heat of the moment, we criticise others and promote ourselves, or we tear ourselves down by saying that we’re not good enough. Controlling our words is something we all struggle with. Maybe this is why words are mentioned so many times in the Bible. In James, we’re taught that the tongue is hard to control. ‘The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image’ (v.8-9 MSG). And if we don’t try and use wisdom when speaking, our words can have bad consequences. When we’ve criticised others, we may quickly forget what we’ve said to them, but those words may stay with that person for their whole life. It can take years to break off things that other people have spoken over us. ‘It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that’ (James 3:5 MSG). Instead, the Bible tells us to ‘Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone’ (NLT).

What Now?

Think about the things you’ve said to others so far this week. Ask God for forgiveness for any words that haven’t been pleasing to Him.