What you say can have a lasting impact on others. What you say and how you talk can also reflect your knowledge level and your understanding of the world. But what you say first and foremost is a showcase of the kingdom of God. What you allow to come out of your mouth directly points back to the kingdom work that you are doing, and it is perceived by others as a representation of the language of God.
If you were to fill your daily vocabulary and speech with vulgar words and hateful comments, what do you think that shows to other people about God? If we as Christians are meant to be a representation of God’s kingdom here on earth, how would speaking out of anger, frustration, judgement, and gossip represent Him? The problem is that it doesn’t.
We need to change the way that we approach how we talk to and about others. We as Christians need to better represent God’s nature to those around us, and showcase His love to the world. This requires a hard rewiring of our brains and what we allow to be processed and spoken. Our culture has trained us to believe that we can say anything that we want, but our job is to understand what is not beneficial to our wellbeing to speak aloud.
Words can hurt, more than most people often realize. I have been the recipient of some extremely harmful words, and I have also unfortunately been the one to deliver such words to someone else in a fit of frustration. I have seen on both sides of the equation what that can do to a person. I can still remember some of the things that were said to me when I was ten years old or younger. Words stick with us. Gossip is a toxic habit, and when left unchecked, can ruin relationships and trust. Words have the power to do damage, and we must treat them as such.
The way that you speak to others, and the way that you speak about others, says more about you than it ever does about them. We must be careful what we let slip between our lips.
Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” I love that Paul, the Apostle that wrote Ephesians, directs the focus to other people. Even though we are the ones speaking the words, they have a direct impact on those around us, and we must be conscious of that.
So what does it look like to speak life and love into other peoples’ lives? I can think of four main keys to speaking in a way that brings forward the kingdom of God, rather than pushing it farther away from our reality.
- Think before you speak.
I know that I am a repeat offender of speaking without thinking through what I am going to say. Some instances of this had much more severe consequences than others, but all-around, no good ever comes from hasty speech. “Insert foot in mouth” is a good phrase for this common mistake.
Ask yourself these questions before saying anything:
Is now a good time to be saying this?
Is what I am about to say really necessary?
Will what I am about to say help the person that I am saying it to?
Can what I am about to say be portrayed as judgmental, and why?
Is any part of my urge to speak fueled by frustration, envy, rage, or annoyance?
Can I say this without adding malicious sarcasm?
Can what I am about to say be misinterpreted, and if so, how can I be more clear about my meaning?
2. Practice life-giving speech.
If you are not typically the kind of person who vocalizes your thoughts towards others, try it. Start small, maybe with compliments, and move on to what you are thankful for in a more general sense. Saying things out loud helps to will them into reality, and eventually, it will become second nature to you to talk about the things that bring your life joy.
Focus on the good, and process the bad. Do not suppress what you are feeling strictly to stay positive. It is necessary to process and think through everything that you are feeling in order to figure out how you want to respond to it. But practice vocalizing more of the positive and retrain the way that you approach the negative.
3. Remove unnecessary words form your vocabulary.
This is a hard one. Think about the words that you have added to your vocabulary either out of habit, or maybe through the cultural expectations of where you live. For me, it’s a handful of curse words that definitely should not be coming from my mouth, ever.
I always say that I am going to stop swearing, but can never seem to actually begin the practice. I make excuses that I want to be able to have a curse word-free vocabulary before I have kids, but that is just enabling me to continue the habit a little bit longer. I need to not have someone or something else be the reason why I stop talking the way that I do. I have to be willing to stop the behavior for myself and for how it represents the kingdom of God.
This practice of removing unnecessary words from your speech ties in directly with the first point I made of thinking through what you are going to say before you speak. Oftentimes I curse when I am being reactionary, the split-second response that comes out when you stub your toe, or step on a LEGO. It takes a lot of hard work and determination to continually watch what you say and filter out the unnecessary words, and this is a practice that I am far from perfect at but want to be better with.
4. Filter what you listen to.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying “monkey see, monkey do.” But that phrase is also true in another way: what monkey hears, monkey will say. In this example, we are the monkeys.
In a world of near continuous noise, it is hard to filter what you hear. But you can be selective in what you listen to. Your Spotify playlists, the podcasts and radio stations you listen to, all fuel what you think about and inevitably say.
If you only ever listen to music with curse words in it, then chances are that you will become numb to the effects of those words and begin saying them yourself. You will become accustomed to hearing them, so why not reproduce them in your own vocabulary? This is a slippery slope that is hard to recover from.
Most, if not all, of the time I spend driving is either in silence or listening to a Christian radio station. I use that time as a mini worship session. It sets me up for a more positive outlook on the day, and equips me with words to speak into my life and into the lives of others around me. Find something that works for you in the quiet moments of your life, or just let the silence be present rather than drowning it out with noise. Give your own thoughts time to breathe for once.
Watching what you say can be difficult, but it is not impossible. We have to be willing to work at it every single minute of every day in order to retrain the way that we talk. Being constantly surrounded by media and other people that don’t see a problem with such negative and unhelpful speech is tough, but we must learn to thrive in the setting we are in. We cannot change the reality of where we are, but we can choose to change the way that we let it affect us and how we respond to it.
So what will you do? Rise above the cultural expectation to slander your neighbor with gossip and words of frustration? Or will you let the habits of your society and the customs that it follows flow into your life and shape the way that you think and talk? Choose to be light-bearers and speak joy and life into the world around you. Let’s bring God’s kingdom to light through the way that we speak.
“Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.” 1 Peter 3:10-11
