How easily words fly from our lips, especially when we're hurting, ill, depressed, or afraid. And yet, it's during those times we need to be most diligent to "zip it."

Why? It goes back to the way we're made, our "divine design." We're created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27). Not just a two-dimensional copy, but a fully-functioning 3-D model.

When God created the earth as we know it, He did so by speaking words. "'Let there be lights...' And it was so." (Gen 1:14-15) "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." (Heb 1:3)

Science has only recently discovered the existence of the quark, the smallest particle of matter. At the sub-atomic level, quarks respond to, of all things, sound waves. Why? Because that's what they are made of. Sound. The spoken Word of God created and continues to sustain them, after all this time.

What does that have to do with us? With our day to day existence? Well, at the sub-atomic level YOU are made up of quarks. And your quarks respond to sounds. What sound do your quarks "hear" the most? Your own voice.

It's been proven again and again: you can "talk" yourself into a better mood, into a different perspective, or even into (or out of) pain. But it takes a conscious choice to change what we're saying. We talk so much and say so many silly things, often we aren't even aware of the effect our words are having on us.

For example, there's a story of a woman who was in the hospital with a fever of undiagnosed origin (an FUO). Despite all the tests and treatments, doctors could not get a handle on the source of the fever in her body. Finally, one doctor sat down with her at her bedside, just to chat. After a nice conversation, he asked her, "Do you say that a lot?"
"Say what?" She asked.
"I keep hearing you say "that just burns me up" when you're talking about things that bother you, or things you disagree with. Do you say that a lot?"
"I guess I do."
The physician asked the woman to cut that phrase out of her vocabulary, just on a whim. She did, and within a couple days, the fever left and didn't come back. Her body was responding to her words.

It's really quite simple. Until you try it.

Our minds and bodies are conditioned from birth to respond to words--our own and other people's--and the words we've spoken, or heard, over and over again, have created deep channels, or ruts, that have to be filled in before we can create new pathways. That takes time. And effort.  But it can be done. Ask God for help, for grace, to "get a grip on your lip." Tell friends and family you're going to change the way you talk about yourself, or about some situation in your life that's troublesome, and ask them to provide a "check" for you when you slip up.

Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit."

Change what you think, how you feel, what you believe, by changing what you say!






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