SAY WHAT?

Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit – you choose.
Prov.18:22
An experiment is said to have been carried out in the western world to
find out the power of words. The research involved a class of young
students which were divided into two groups and sent into two
different rooms. They were to speak over boiled rice which had been
kept in these rooms. In one room, they were to say curse words which
included “ugly” and in the other they were to say good words which
included “beautiful”. The outcome after a number of days was that the
rice over which good words were consistently spoken turned out
golden yellow in color while that over which curse words were spoken
turned black-brown in color. Both rice portions came from the same
source and were supposed to be decaying. The story may either be
concocted or real but the truth behind it is in no way demeaned.
In Mark 11:12 – 14, we see the account of Jesus speaking in response
to the fig tree which means the fig tree spoke initially. When Jesus
spoke to it, according to Matthew’s account, the tree withered
immediately. (Matt. 21:19) We have the authority to talk back at the
things in our lives that are not going the way we want them to. When a
work of our hand is not going the way we envisage, it is making a
statement directly opposite to what is written in Psalm 1:3b. Every
aspect of our lives answer to what we are saying and some of those
things are not words but actions and reactions. The way we dress for
example is a statement to the world of the worth we place on
ourselves. Dress the way you want to be addressed even if you can’t
disclose your address yet. Dress for where you are going and how you
want to feel not where you are or how you feel. God called us as His
children to be thermostats and not thermometers in our surrounding.
We call the shots.
Our country is answering to what we the citizens are calling it which
unfortunately is sometimes the echo of what foreigners, who do not
know Nigeria like we do, are calling it. We are royalty and we ought to
be mindful of the things we say because kings don’t make passing
remarks, they decree and the subjects enforce it. We have been given
the gift of a mouth that cannot be contradicted (Luke 21:15). So, watch
your words because they form your world.
Perhaps one of the things that set David apart as a man after God’s
heart was that he was wise enough to have prayed to God to set a
guard over his lips. (Ps. 141:3). We might want to take a cue from him.