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Do You Eat Your Words?

Recently someone told of her husband who sent her an article via phone, “How to declutter a closet in nine easy steps.”
If my husband did that to me, I’d want to get rid of all the “clutter” and buy another wardrobe!
All of us remember unkind words.
Usually those words weren’t meant to hurt, but to encourage (as in the case of the husband with the tips to organize).
But as I considered that wardrobe I’d buy (and not from a thrift store), I remembered words I’ve said that weren’t so nice.
Words that required an apology.
Most of the time they flew out of my mouth without a thought in my head.
How could I have been so mean?

Words… that’s one of those love languages. We feel loved by what people say, or maybe feel unappreciated by what they don’t say.
Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances. Proverbs 25:11
Words at the right time can give peace, comfort, and stability…or they destroy, damage, and kill.
How do you comfort with words?
Sometimes it’s not what you say, but what you don’t say.

He who restrains his words has knowledge. Proverbs 17:27
The Bible say, “man is not corrupted by what he puts into his body, but what comes out…”
The statement “Garbage in, garbage out.” Holds true with words.
As for a rogue,…he devises wicked schemes to destroy the afflicted with slander, even though the needy one speaks what is right. Isaiah 32:7

While waiting for my thirteen-year-old to finish baseball practice, I overheard his teammates talking. All they said was cursing! I had been cheering them all season, thinking how mature they were becoming by their discipline…but their mouths showed me otherwise.
When I asked my son later, he said, that’s why he helped the coach out on the field.

Words show your heart.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight. Psalm 19:14
How do you make your words acceptable to God?

We must know His Words.
We meditate on His Words. We eat them.
How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Psalm 119:103.
God’s Words are worthy to be eaten.
You can’t expect to have a full vocabulary by reading and listening to First Grade Readers. Frog and Toad are great, but you need to move beyond that.
Same is true with your devotions. You can’t live on Daily Devotionals, and grow beyond that.
To change your words, you must know God’s.
Study Him, not what everyone else says about Him.

They shall hear my words for they are pleasant. Psalm 141:6
All the utterances of my mouth are in righteousness. Proverbs 8:8
We recently helped a friend go to Teen Challenge (a one-year program that helps young men become functional after drug/alcohol abuse).
When they enter the program, they’re allowed only one book, the Bible. They designate times for devotions, chapel, and church. They structure their entire day around knowing the Bible. They saturate their minds with God’s Word.
Yes, they had chemical dependence. They had trained their minds to need drugs to help them function. But they re-program their habits and “needs” to think about God.

Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You. Psalms 119:11
Do you treasure God’s Words?

Don’t know what to say? His Words give the answer.
To make you know the certainty of the words of truth. That you may correctly answer him who sent you. Proverbs 22:21

What we think, we become.
A man doesn’t suddenly become a “dirty old man.” His mind was there his entire life, but now he’s uninhibited to share it with others.
A woman doesn’t suddenly become a crabby old lady. She was never thankful throughout her life and now it shows.
Time will tell.

Do you want to reflect peace? Show grace? Give comfort?
His words are true. Pure. Right.
Your word is very pure, there Your servant loves it. Psalm 119:140

How strong are your words?
God created the world by His very Word.
His Words have strength and power.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:12-13

God tells it like it is. He doesn’t love you by telling lies.
Dividing joints and marrow is painful. Being laid bare before God’s eyes makes you vulnerable.
Sometimes God requires you to expose yourself for others to heal, for others to gain strength, for others to know Him. Those are hard words.
“Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?” Jeremiah 23:29

Words gives meaning.
Everything He says will come to pass.
Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words. Isaiah 31:2

They are eternal. They don’t change.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:8

Our words can bring comfort, show grace, bring strength. Not because they’re our words, but because we share God’s Words.
And they don’t require an apology, even though they may cut, and pierce.
But I only know them by eating them…savoring them…knowing them.
And if you extract the precious from the worthless, you will become my spokesman, says the Lord. Jeremiah 15:19 b.
What you eat, shows by what you say.
Do you speak His Words?



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