More on God's Powerful Word

… Wow. God is continuing to burn this message into me, it seems, at every turn. The words we speak are POWERFUL. In fact, according to scripture, they hold the power of life and death. That’s one of the easiest verses to merely interpret figuratively, diminishing the authority of its absolute truth. (There are certain power packed verses, I think most of us glance over, thinking “Oh… that’s nice”).

Tonight I was reading a book entitled Heaven by Randy Acorn. On page 12 he uses such a poignant example from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair that it makes my skin crawl. He sets it up this way:
…Puddgleglum, Jill and Eustace are captured in a sunless underground world by an evil witch who calls herself the queen of the underworld. The witch claims that her prisoners’ memories of the overworld, Narnia are but figments of their imagination. She laughs condescendingly at their child’s game of “pretending” that there’s a world and a great ruler of that world…

She says to them hypnotically, “There never was any world but mine,” and they repeat after her, abandoning reason, parroting her deceptions. Then she coos softly, “There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan…”

I find it easy to put myself in the shoes of the captives, as many times I have succumbed to similar prisons spiritually. I think about the power of those words to abolish hope, which renders me ineffective, depressed and - without intervention - dead.

In The Silver Chair, it is not until Puddleglum begins to speak (not think) words of encouragement, life, hope and truth that the witch’s spell is broken and Rilian the king of Narnia comes to slay her.

C.S. Lewis was an allegorical master at depicting our spiritual lives. It is the exact same way for us. The Word is our Sword. The Word is living and active sharper than any double-edged sword, in fact (Heb 4:12).

I feel a little cooky saying “speak The Word,” but it’s not cooky; it’s Biblical. I’ve been sitting on my most powerful weapon for 17 years! It’s not a magical antidote, but the Word of God does hold power that we can’t even fathom.

I have been reading Proverbs almost everyday for a couple months. (Oh the wisdom I desire to imbibe). I don’t have a count off hand, but there are sooo many verses talking about the power of words, the wisdom in holding your tongue, how pleasant words are like honey... James 3 talks about the power of our tongue. In Mt. 12:36 , Jesus says we will be judged for every idle word. And what’s up with all of the blessings and curses spoken with words in the O.T.? Right? Something to them?

All of these things make me have such a reverence for what comes out of our mouths. I’m almost afraid to speak anything because I know all too well my natural propensity to say stupid or hurtful or meaningless words. But my prayer is that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart would be pleasing in God’s sight (PS 19:14) and that no unwholesome talk would come out of my mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it might benefit those who listen (Eph 4:29). A tall order. Thank God he doesn’t give up on us and that he loves us through the process.