Sticks and Stones

Many of us are probably familiar with the phrase “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”. Now for the most part this is a very good motto to live by, we should try to never be offended when someone makes a rude comment or intends to wound us with an unkind word. 

There is however one area where words are indeed very powerful forces, and that is in the realm of our spirit. The Bible warns us of the power of our words several times in several different places. It is possible to bless or curse a thing without ever using the actual words “bless” or “curse”; The original Greek word for bless is eulogeia, and it means simply “to speak well of”. The original Greek word for curse is katara, which means “to speak down”.

So the lesson here is that whenever we speak well of someone or even something, we are in-fact speaking a blessing on that person or thing. The danger is that this principle is also true for cursing. Whenever we speak down about a person or thing, we are speaking a curse onto that person or thing. A vast majority of people have never been taught this… myself included. I know that I was never taught this in any church I ever attended, and I wish I had been because it could have saved me quite a bit of self-inflicted curses. 

Now I can not place the blame entirely on the lackluster teachings of many pastors today because the Bible does spell it out very clearly, it’s just that many of us either don’t believe it, or aren’t paying enough attention. For myself, the latter was true; I had read the scripture many times over, but it just never really sank in to where I had an “aha! Eureka!” moment and finally understood such a simple concept. 

Proverbs 18:21 makes it most clear: 

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” 

The very powers of life and death are unleashed by our own tongues. What we speak will very much affect us and our situations. I can tell you that before I learned this, I would not pay very much attention at all to what I spoke, because I did not understand the power I was wielding with my words, and when I spoke negatively, I did not understand why things would never go my way. Now I try to pay much more attention to my words before they escape out of my mouth. 

This is not an easy concept at all to put into practice, but it is of such great importance and so very powerful that I had to share it with everyone who reads this. The fact that it is not easy does not lessen the impact of it. I wish more people would teach this concept today because I believe it can help so many people, whom like myself were never taught this lesson sooner. 

So today let us take more notice of what we speak and realize the power that is actually in our words. Let us put forth a conscious effort to speak blessings into our lives and into the lives of others and not to speak death an cursing any longer.