March 24, 2014
“Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from Him. See that you go on growing in the Lord and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all He has done. Colossians 2:7
Our Almighty God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, the Creator, the Life-Giver, the Shepherd, the Living God, the God of Hope, the Restorer, the Redeemer, the Lover of our Souls…gave His BEST so that the insufficiency of our best was wiped away and replaced by a new and glorious, hope-filled, confident, redeemed, and blessed present…and future…
And this Truth is absolute and never changing…He is “I AM”…for every moment, for eternity. We anchor our lives in this Truth…in this Hope.
His BEST blesses…
And this Holy Righteous God delights in blessing His people, His sons and daughters with good things. He blesses by first loving each one of us and passionately pursuing relationship…the very purpose of creation was to have relationship with the most loving God…to walk with Him…to talk with Him…to do life with Him…and He sent His Son, who came willingly and lovingly to claim the souls and to redeem the lives of the captives, whom God loves…
And our Lord gave us His Body, the Church, as a blessing, as a community in which His people live to demonstrate, to magnify, and to bring glory to the One True God as they do life together…living as His Hands, His Feet, His Heart…
He delights in blessing His people…
His BEST empowers…
As we grow in relationship with our heavenly Father and as we draw nourishment from Him…we grow in Him and we become strong and vigorous (full of physical or mental strength or active force, with energy, robust) in all of the truth which He teaches us. He equips us, He prepares us, He anchors us, and He empowers us through His Spirit…with vigor, energy and strength, (the ability to resist being moved or broken by a force)…We are able through Him…
Yes, we are able to and are empowered by our Loving God and the Holy Spirit to navigate through life and through relationships which He purposely gives to us…
His BEST sustains and restrains…
And our Loving Father, knowing the weakness, the limitations, the fears of His children, sent His Spirit, His power to sustain and to restrain His people…in our weakness, He is strong…
One of the beautiful moms in my small group at MOM 2 MOM LHC shared with us that the many weather days, ice and snow days, began to affect her little family as they were restricted from outdoor activities…And child-hood illnesses had been passed around their family making the situation even more challenging. The long days at home were becoming tough for her two-year old and her four-year old, not to mention the difficulty for sweet mom as she navigated the rough waters of the long days. The events of this particular morning were already spiraling and sweet mom could see the writing on the wall…trouble was brewing; the behavior of her precious ones began to unravel. Already at her wits end, sweet mom quickly ran through her options and her immediate conclusion left but one solution! She very slowly, methodically, and intentionally put her hands together and began a verbal prayer, “Dear Jesus, you can see that we are really having a hard time today. PLEASE help the children and help me to have self-control…and help us to have a good day together…following the rules…Amen.”
Immediately her four year old jumped up from his chair and very dramatically cried, “Mommy, please don’t tell Jesus!”
And she added that they had a fantastic day…
They were sustained…they were restrained!
We laughed together when our friend shared her story and yet, that is exactly what our Loving Father wants us to do as a first resort…He wants us to come to Him…He wants us to depend on Him and He wants us to yield ourselves to His power and to His will and to His purpose…He wants to sustain us…to restrain us…but, we must ask Him, allow Him, and submit to Him…
One of the most amazing and beautiful gifts that God has given to mankind is the ability to communicate…and He created man and woman in His image…I think about the loving Hand of our Father as He reaches down to touch, to heal, to embrace, to sustain…and He communicates His love and His compassion through His touch. He communicated the world into existence through His words as He spoke…as He said, “Let there be…”
The gift of communication allows us to communicate through touch, through, life…through the spoken word and the written word…
I have always been intrigued by this gift that we possess…I have been intrigued with how we choose to spend the gift…
For years, I taught speech classes: as a grad student at Baylor teaching freshmen, in public high schools, in the home-school co-op, then in a Christian high school. We developed a curriculum titled, “Taming the Tongue.” The first unit of study consisted of teaching the absolute responsibility we have when we communicate, when we use the gift that God has given, whether we believe Him, in Him…we all are given the incredible gift…When one of the instruments of communication might fail…because of the miraculous cognitive ability of the brain…humankind will not be thwarted in its intention to communicate…and there is great responsibility in this endeavor. (James 3:1-12)
People write when they cannot speak…they sign when they cannot hear…a mother caresses her infant to communicate her love, when the baby is too young to cognitively understand, a smile or a hug when words are inadequate…I think about the catastrophic medical events which diminish the communicative ability in the traditional ways…suddenly a hand-squeeze, or the blinking of the eyes communicates far more to loved ones than words can possibly express.
There is life and death potential possessed by the power of the tongue, the spoken word. (Proverbs 18:21)
“Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” And he who had died came out…” (John 11) With words of His Father’s authority Jesus spoke Life in the face of death…He spoke forgiveness over His accusers; He spoke blessings over His followers…over seekers of Truth…
With words of man’s authority…”Crucify Him, Crucify Him”…Jesus was sent to the cross… (John 19) With words of man’s authority, horrendous historical events have occurred…bringing death and destruction…
The question we ask is “How will we choose to spend and to use this gift.”
A study was completed at the University of Maryland School of Medicine which reported that the average woman speaks 25,000words a day, not counting the words she speaks to herself, while the average man speaks approximately 7,000. Can you see the problem here…?
I have a dry erase board in my office that I use for writing messages. I write my thoughts on sticky notes and organize the thoughts into various points of spoken or written messages. I was preparing for a recent talk at our church and my board was literally covered with colorful sticky notes! Our son-in-love, Barry, walked into my office and saw the board and immediately asked, “What in the world is that?”…pointing to my board. I explained that they were my thoughts, etc…
Barry shook his head, stepped away from the board and laughed and said, “Wow, that makes my head hurt!” I laughed when I realized that even my written words were just too many for the male mind!
Scientists also report that there is a language protein present in the female brain. Basically, scientists are telling us something that all of us have always known, that women have a lot to say, everywhere we go! And we have to go many places and talk to many people every day in order to spend our words…and we spend them on our husbands and on our children. And the question is, “How will we choose to spend and to use this gift?”
Our words are power-filled! The “Taming the Tongue” curriculum requires that students search scripture and investigate and study what God says about this gift which He has given…which He intends to be used to speak life…
I have vague memories of my elementary school days, usually remembering the moments when I had to miss recess because I was a “busy-body” tending to everyone’s business…imagine that!
However, I vividly remember standing in a line in the hallway of my elementary school when I was in the third grade in Corpus Christi. I cannot recall what we were waiting for, but I remember that everyone was very chatty…and it was getting a bit noisy (I am quite sure that I was a major contributor to the volume) and suddenly, our teacher walked straight for me, I thought, but was actually after all of us as she snarled in a desperate voice, “All of you be quiet or I am going to snatch all of your tongues right out of your mouths!”
Oh My, I thought to myself. What was she thinking? Then I would not be able to talk anymore! (I am quite sure that is exactly what she had in mind)…I think that we believed her because dead silence followed… Poor woman. She was a victim of third-graders out of control in the hallway in front of the school office. We were probably jeopardizing her job by being unruly….Poor woman…But, her words had an everlasting effect on me…I do not remember much of anything else about third grade…but I do remember that day, that line, those words….words are power-filled!
And the question is, “How will we choose to spend and to use this gift?”
Each one of us has fallen victim to words miss-spent, unintentionally hurtful and damaging…or words which have been intentionally spent to intentionally cause hurt and pain. Either scenario has the capacity to shape a life…to send it towards the darkness of defeat, discouragement, and death of some kind…perhaps the death of hope or of joy…if left to human instruments and human jurisdiction and human authority.
As children, we all remember words which our parents spoke, perhaps in anger, but they were spoken and perhaps they stung…We remember words which employers might have hurled at us in a less than respectful tone…We remember words that our spouse spoke in haste, maybe frustration, maybe anger driven…
And most certainly, we moms remember our words which have been carelessly spent…on our husbands…on our precious children…
But our Loving Heavenly Father knows us and our plight…He knows our hearts and their battles…He knows our capacities and our weaknesses…and because of His ultimate, fantastic, miraculous love, He sustains and restrains us through the power of His Holy spirit…and the fruit of the Spirit is …self-control…Galatians 5:22
And be careful to spend our many words wisely…Ephesians 4:25-32
Just as our sweet young mom carefully and intentionally put her hands together to pray for Jesus to sustain her and to restrain her and her little family…we may do the same with our choices of our words…How will we spend them? Galatians 5:1 reminds us to be imitators of God…walking in love…and I think that means speaking in love…touching in love…hugging and smiling in love…communicating in God’s authority, His love.
I have a wonderful friend who chose to let go of some really hurtful words which she was victim to by someone in her family. For years the torment was present in her daily life…but through the power of the Holy Spirit, she was able to forgive and to let go of the very painful offense that words carelessly spoken had caused. But, she says that the hurt she experienced has made her much more conscious of her words and the effect they may have on a person.
And today, with social media…how incredibly important is it to guard our mouths and our tongues….because once the words go out…it is impossible to reel them in…to bring them back…to retrieve them…Proverbs 21:23
And the truth is, that God is aware of our thoughts…and He is aware of our words, whether anyone else hears or reads or sees…He sees the intent of our hearts…and He sustains us in His strength…and He retrains us in His strength!
And the question is, “How will we choose to spend and to use this gift?”
The truth is that most of us truly want to speak life into those we love…and we “want to want to” speak life into those people who are hard to love…
Our final consideration is what we speak to ourselves? The medical study suggested that women speak 25,000 words daily to other people, but this does not include words which we speak to ourselves. Jennifer Rothschild has written a fascinating book called, Self-Talk Soul-Talk. Self-Talk is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy technique which helps to identify negative talk to ourselves. She suggests that every person carries on dialogue with themselves and the very nature of our words spoken to ourselves has a dramatic effect on us and the way we relate to the world. So much of our behavior, our words, and our actions with others stems from what message we hear in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls. God’s BEST for us is to hear and to receive His message about how He values and how He loves and what He aspires for each one of us. Psalm 42:5, 11 “My soul…put your hope in God.” The author of this psalm spoke to himself to remind himself to trust His God because He could trust His God because He was trustworthy.
It is imperative that in order for our lives, our words, and our actions to overflow with life from the source of life, we must also speak words of life and God’s truth to ourselves as they, then, become an overflow into the lives of our loved ones, friends and associates. Our negative self-talk must transform into positive self-talk…truth-filled self-talk, hope-filled self-talk, God and Spirit-filled self-talk. All possible through the power of the Holy Spirit, as He sustains us and restrains us as we spend our many words…
How I love communication…especially from God, through His Word, through His people, through His creation….and I absolutely love communicating about our great and mighty Loving God!
But, sadly, I fall short of His expectation to speak words of life and edification…unless I choose to allow the Holy Spirit to lead me, to sustain me and to restrain me. And that is exactly what Jesus promised would happen…the Spirit would come to lead and to guide us…to lead and to guide me…to lead and to guide you.
My prayer is that each one of us would speak lovingly and boldly the truth about our Lord…the truth that His love has no dimensions…it has no limitations…it has no boundaries…and He desires to use each of us as vessels and instruments of His message of Hope, of Life, and of Love…
May we embrace and receive the power which the Holy Spirit offers to each of us to sustain us in His strength and to restrain us in His strength…as we live life together, in relationship with our Father and with His body the Church…
As He makes us strong and vigorous in His truth…and we will then overflow into our world…into our homes…into our families…into our children…into His Kingdom…
May we very intentionally put our hands together and kneel before His throne, and call upon the name of our Lord and say, “Dear Jesus…please help…”
“Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from Him. See that you go on growing in the Lord and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all He has done. Colossians 2:7
Abundant Joy,
