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4th Jauary 2025
SaturdayReflection
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"Sam Storms"
Lead Pastor for Preaching and Vision
at Bridgeway Church
"Your Words have the Power
of Life and Death
- Proverbs 18:20-21"
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There is a frightening world of difference between a bolt of lightning, on the one hand, and the luminescence of an insect, on the other,
so also between saying the right thing at the right time and the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Lightning can stir awe and wonder at the power of nature.
It can also kill and wreak devastation.
Such, too, are our words.
They can bring life and joy and encouragement and hope and healing when spoken in the right tone and at the right time.
They can also denigrate and humiliate and destroy if we do not carefully monitor and control their use.
There is simply no way to exaggerate the life-giving and life-taking power of our words.
"Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits"
.... Prov. 18:21
In Matthew 12:33-37 Jesus confronts the religious leaders of his day with this stunning statement:
"Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil?
For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned".
Our words, our speech, what we say and how we say it, is so perfectly a reflection of what is in our hearts that, according to Jesus, there won't even be a need to list or evaluate your works on the day of judgment.
All that is needed is a recording of your conversations, both public and private.
Your words will either make it clear that you are a born again disciple and lover of Jesus, or they will betray you as one who knows nothing of God and his saving grace.
That, dear friend, is sobering to consider.
If you want to know how important words and speech are in Proverbs, consider this one fact:
approximately 150 verses in Proverbs are devoted to the tongue, to our speech, to our words.
Or again, one of every six verses in Proverbs talks about how we talk.
Again, the reason for this is that the tongue is either the greatest of blessings which may accomplish a world of good, or it is the most lethal and destructive of weapons, able to generate endless evil.
Have you ever stopped to think that how you define the gospel, at least from a human perspective, determines eternal life and eternal death.
One person declares, "Salvation is ours by faith, not by works," while another declares, "Salvation is ours by faith and by works."
The difference between saying "not by" instead of "and by" is the difference between heaven and hell.
Today we rarely hear anyone speak of fornication.
Rather, someone is merely sexually liberated.
People aren't drug addicts; they are chemically dependent.
It's rare that you hear the word homosexual;
now it is same-sex attraction or alternative lifestyle.
People don't kill babies; they terminate pregnancies.
Men and women don't commit adultery; they have an affair.
Which words we use and how we employ them makes all the difference in the world.
And in Proverbs it becomes very clear, very early on, that you can easily recognize the fool by his speech, just as you can recognize the wise person by his.
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This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request
"Sam Storms"
was born on February 6, 1951, in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Both of his parents, as well as his sister, Betty Jane, were Christians.
Sam was raised in a Southern Baptist context and came to saving faith in Christ at the age of nine.
In 2008, Sam became Lead Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he served for 14 years.
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