HELEN SANDERS
6-19-2021
WORDS

When I was a young girl, I had an autograph book. There were many things that friends wrote in it, some of which were silly. I collected everyone’s “autograph” that I could. My choir director wrote, Don’t B♭ (be flat), Don’t B♯ (be sharp), just B♮ (be natural). I thought that was a unique thing to remember. One day my aunt came to visit, and I asked her to write something in it and this is what she wrote. “Words, like thoughts, sometimes fall back dead, but even God himself cannot re-call (bring them back) them once they’re said.”

That saying stuck in my mind. Words cannot be taken back once they are spoken. We can ask someone to forgive us for our careless words, but the sting stays within a person. Sometimes they never recover from these words. Likewise, good things spoken will last a lifetime and people will remember the kind things we may have said and can affect their lives.

In Proverbs 18:21 it says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit of it.” Imagine my friends that every word we speak either brings death or life. We eat the fruit today of what was spoken yesterday, last week, last month and last year. Words are very powerful instruments of life or death.

God spoke the world and all of its creation into being by words. He said in Genesis, “let there be” and there was. We need to think before we speak and determine if what we are speaking will bring death or life.

Years ago, we were in a church service, and we were taught about the principle of Proverbs 18:21. We realized that our words were destroying us. We were saying things like “It never” or "I’m always", or something that was bringing death. We had to choose to change what we spoke. We became very careful with our words.

Later, when we were pastoring on the West coast of Florida a boy about six was told by his teacher that he was stupid and that he would never learn anything. His mother related this to me. I took him aside and told him, “You’re not stupid because you don’t know something, you just haven’t learned it yet. You will learn it because you can do anything with God’s help.” Years went by, and we moved away from that area. We visited and saw this boy’s mother and dad. Those words stuck with him, and not only did he do well in school he graduated with honors. Words brought life to him.

What about your words? Are they bringing death to you or life? I pray that you choose life.