Reading Time: 4:50
I’m a few days late on this week’s post. I think it’s because I have lost interest in words upon words. I spend my day thinking about words, I study words, I listen to words. After a while much of these words lose their meaning.
In a world of words, it’s hard when you no longer define the meaning of words with outcomes. In other words, if words do not produce response then they are idle words, meaningless, words that produce nothing. We speak a lot of idle words that have no value. The only thing they produce is a deafening din that drowns out useful words.
Therein is the intent of the enemy—to produce so many words that none of them mean anything. We, as Christians, get sucked into this by adding our words to the fray. The result is even the Bible gets drowned out by the noise.
The words of God are life-giving and transformative. They are different than the words of man. The Bible is “god-breathed,” meaning God spoke it into the hearts of men and they wrote down the very revelation God gave of himself.
After over 30 years of preaching, I find myself caught in the trap of too many words. There was a day a preacher could preach for an hour and people would respond. In today’s society they turn you off after 20 or 30 minutes, but then will turn around a talk to you for over an hour. I think the truth of the matter is they delight in airing their own opinions but care little about being changed by the truth of God’s Word.
My recourse in areas outside the Word is to not have an opinion. I have to work at this because I feel strongly about so many things. Holding my tongue is work. Of course, seeing what people do and keeping my opinions and gossip out of it has been a big part of my ministry. In other words, learning to mind my own business. However, the church is big into meddling in other people’s business. We are professionals at dining on fellowship meals and neighbors too.
That’s why it has become hard to continue to prop up my world of words in the midst of all the words flying about me each day. I’m actually praying for the Lord to help me keep my mouth shut about a lot of things, and like Paul told Timothy:
“2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct,
rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.
Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them
a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship,
do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”
2nd Timothy 4:2-5 NIV
If my words are not in line with God’s words, then I need to redirect and repurpose them into areas that are life-changing. That means finding people who actually want what I am selling.
Learning to speak less means learning to listen more. Those who actually listen choose their words well. During war they have a saying, “Loose lips sink ships.” During our days we can say it this way, “The more you speak, the less people listen.”
Being well informed makes a person more interesting to listen to. That means more input and less output. We live in a day where people will continually output the strangest ideas, yet resort to just screaming at you if you try to reason with them. Speaking over the top of people does not make them listen. Only “news” they can “use” will cause them to receive what you say.
In a world where people are quick a destructive with their mouths, as believers we must focus on only speaking the life-giving, transforming Word of God.
“If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God.”
1st Peter 4:11a NIV
Like Job said, there are a multitude of words within me that compel me to speak (Job 11:2). The prophet Jeremiah said that he had words that burned within him (Jeremiah 20:9). I think the answer though as to whether I should speak or not lies in determining whether anyone is listening or not.
“Do not be quick with your mouth,
do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven and you are on earth,
so let your words be few.”
Ecclesiastes 5:2 NIV
Pastor Brian Jenkins
Calvary Assemblies of God