CHAPTER 1

The Impact of Words

Therese was a fabulous worker, friend, and colleague. Everyone in her office loved her—from her bosses to the cleaning lady. She always had a kind word for everyone. One of her best assets was her amazing ability to help people feel good about themselves. She could make someone whose feelings had been hurt feel like they were the best thing since sliced bread. She could make an insecure colleague feel like a genius. Her sense of humor always lifted others’ moods and made them laugh even if they were annoyed or unhappy. Not only that, but she was smart—very smart. In her five years on the job, she had received three promotions, and her employer had recently told her that she was on a fast track toward a management position. If things continued the way they were going, she could even expect a vice-presidency within just a few years.

One evening while working late on a project, she discovered that her boss had made a bad judgment call in a speech that he had written and asked her to edit. He had included a foolish joke that some could find offensive. Therese picked up the phone to leave him a voice mail and tell him her thoughts. “What were you thinking, boss?” she said. “Don’t you know the CEO will hate that joke? And he has no sense of humor.”

Unfortunately, instead of sending the voice mail to her boss, Therese inadvertently pressed a button that sent the voice mail to everyone in the company. The next morning, chaos ensued. While Therese wasn’t fired, she didn’t get that next promotion—or the one after. The push of a button had sealed her future at the company.

That’s an extreme incident, but there are many others today that have far greater consequences. Children no longer tease one another; they bully each other, and bullying isn’t an exception among students—it’s the norm. It doesn’t just happen at school or play; it happens on the Internet, too. In fact, a new word has entered our vocabulary: cyberbullying. Facebook is now sometimes used as a weapon.

Never in the history of the world have words been so cheap, quick, irrevocable, and viral. Through cell phones and the Internet, we now have texting, e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In addition, we have radio, television, and printed media. Words are flying around in the atmosphere like never before. As of June 2010, 77.2 percent of all Americans use the Internet (267 million people). One quarter of the world’s population is online. Forty-one percent of all Americans actively maintain a profile page on Facebook, which generates one billion pieces of content every single day. U.S. awareness of Twitter has exploded from 5 percent in 2008 to 87 percent in 2010, and by now the figures are even greater. In 2010, more than 17 million Americans used Twitter and the average number of “tweets” per day in the United States alone was 15.5 million.

Obviously, there are good uses of all these forms of communication; however, there are many disturbing consequences, including online bullying that has led to teenage suicide, identity theft, child safety risk, pornography addiction, and ruined careers. Job applicants lose out because of Facebook accounts of bad behavior; workers send ill-advised e-mails before thinking.

People have destroyed relationships by typing their most secret thoughts in e-mail and then pressing Send before realizing how revealing the message was. Owing to the information available today, personal privacy has all but vanished. Sadly, anyone can say anything about an individual—whether it is true or not—and it is out there floating around in cyberspace just waiting for someone to access the information. People’s reputations have been destroyed by what others have said and yet their words held no truth at all. You might say that we have a “word explosion” going on, and we have yet to see what damage will be caused by it unless people learn the power of words and make a commitment to use them in a godly way.

We Eat Our Words…

I am sure you have heard someone say, “You are going to eat those words.” It may sound like a mere statement to us, but in reality we do eat our words. What we say not only affects others, but also affects us.

Words are wonderful when used in a proper way. They can encourage, edify, and give confidence to the hearer. A right word spoken at the right time can actually be life changing.

Proverbs 15:23

A man has joy in making an apt answer, and a word spoken at the right moment—how good it is!

We can literally increase our own joy by speaking right words. We can also upset ourselves by talking unnecessarily about our problems or things that have hurt us in relationships. Not too long ago I had a disappointing situation take place with someone I considered to be a close friend and I noticed that each time I talked about it, I would have a difficult time getting it off my mind for the remainder of the day. I finally realized that if I wanted to get over it, I was going to have to stop mentally and verbally going over it again and again. People kept asking me about the situation out of genuine concern, but I ultimately realized that I had to answer, “It is better for me if I just don’t talk about it.”

The words that come out of our mouths go into our own ears as well as other people’s, and then they drop down into our soul, where they give us either joy or sadness, peace or upset, depending on the types of words we have spoken. Our words can even oppress our spirit. God desires that our spirit be light and free so it can function properly, not heavy and oppressed.

When we understand the power of words and realize that we can choose what we think and speak, our lives can be transformed. Our words are not forced on us; they formulate in our thoughts and then we speak them. We can learn to choose our thoughts, to resist wrong ones and think on good, healthy, and right ones. Where the mind goes, the man follows. We could also say, where the mind goes, the mouth follows!

You don’t even have to be talking to someone to increase your joy with your words. The mere confession of good things is enough to cheer you up. I have written a great deal about the power of confessing God’s Word out loud, and I will continue to do so because it has been one of the most helpful things I have done in my life.

When you get up in the morning, if there is something you need to attend to that day that you’re not looking forward to, you can say, “I dread this day,” or you can say, “God will give me strength today to do whatever I need to do and to do it with joy.” Which of these two statements do you think would better prepare you for the day?

“A wholesome tongue is a tree of life,” says Proverbs 15:4 (NKJV). According to scripture, God has given His...