word wounds

You give your mouth free rein for evil,

and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your brother;

you slander your own mother's son.

These things you have done, and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

Psalm 50:19-21

“Words will never hurt me.” Ummm… Yes they will. Choose to be hateful, spiteful, selfish, destructive, lying, or vindictive in your words and you will incur the judgment of God upon yourself. We cannot, as this psalm says, “give free reign” to our mouths. God holds us accountable for what we say.

Why do words matter? Words are an expression of our hearts. As Jesus Himself said “out of the heart the mouth speaks”. There is no better window to the soul than what comes off our lips! Our words, our expressions pouring out of our mouths, are the overflow of what is in our hearts. And we must take clear responsibility for what we say.

Our world dismisses this. “I was just venting.” “I didn’t mean it.” “I am just being honest with my feelings.” “I have to get it out.” “I was just joking… sort of.” All these deflections are further evidence we are giving our mouths free reign. And we think God doesn’t notice. Oh… He does.

There is immediate impact from weaponized words when they are set loose on someone. They have painful wounding power. Relationships are immediately damaged. Our own hearts are also damaged as we believe the words we say, a recoil effect that often creates patterns of repeated verbal abuse and sin that become very hard to break. We begin to believe the very lies and misinterpretations our free reign mouths spout.

God sees all this. He rebukes it. He calls us to repent of our verbal volleys and explosive exchanges. He calls us to submit our hearts and our tongues to His healing and control. He calls us to consider what we say.