Life Beyond the Noise

Correction is something all of us need but few of us can tolerate. I admit, I’m one of those people that don’t like to be proven wrong. It’s a work in progress and something the Holy Spirit has been dealing with me about. Recently, I was lamenting about the areas in my life that are “broken”. The Holy Spirit said to me, “When something is broken, what do you do?” I answered, “You fix it.” He replied, “This is no different. Instead of focusing on all the ways your life needs to change, start taking steps to change it. When the plumbing in your house breaks down, you don’t sit around and ask me to give you the strength to fix it. You just fix it.” I actually tried to argue with God about it, and I said, “Well, what if someone doesn’t have the money or the knowledge to fix it? What if they don’t have the means they need to make it whole again?” His answer was, “Stop thinking about what you don’t have. That’s the spirit of poverty speaking. The only people who sit around and lament about not being able to do what they need to do are the ones who expect to never be able to do it. They expect to always be poor. The ones who do what it takes to fix it (whether it’s the plumbing or the brokenness in our lives) don’t think about it-they do it. To them, faith is an action verb.” An area he has convicted me to “just fix” has been my mouth and my thoughts. That’s not easy.

The words we speak can be poison or they can be life. For the last several years, every major hurt that I have endured was due to either words that were said to me or about me or words that should have been said but they never were. There have been people in my life who brought death to me because of their words…and regretfully, there have been so many times I have engaged in that same behavior myself. There were also people who should have been speaking life to me when they knew I was hurting but (for what I’ sure are various reasons), they chose to remain silent and it ended up affecting our relationship. “Life and death is in the power of the tongue.” (Proverbs 18:21) The Bible tells us we can choose to either live with blessings or we can choose to live with curses. What comes out of us- whether it be the words coming out of our mouths-or the words we type out with our fingers- comes from our hearts. If you ever want to better understand where you are at as a person, pay attention to what you say (or type, or even imply). “The good man produces what is good and honorable and moral out of the good treasure that is stored in his heart. The evil man produces what is wicked and depraved out of the evil in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of his heart.” (Luke 6:45)

I’ve been shown that when we use our words to bring death to the things that the Father has given life to, then we are revealing a horrible state of our heart. All of us have the gift of grace because all of us will miss the mark where righteousness is concerned, and that includes the reckless way we use our words. I have been convicted of using the gift of grace as an excuse to not gain maturity. When we ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit then we are nullifying The power of everything Jesus did and accomplished on the cross (and it’s working in our lives) because we are choosing to focus on the irrelevant. The spirit of poverty often causes the state of our heart to be unrighteous because spiritual poverty is the opposite of the power of the cross. If it doesn’t stand up to the word of God and the cross, then it should be irrelevant in a believer’s life. Speak life to life and speak death to death. Grow the things of the kingdom and release the things of the wicked. Receive grace when you miss it (because we all do at times) but strive to grow in maturity and be obedient in the leading of the Holy Spirit in your life. Stop using grace as an excuse to keep drinking milk for the rest of your life because it’s more comfortable and allows you to willfully mess up and get by with it. (1 Corinthians 3:2) You have been given the ability to watch your words because the power of the Holy Spirit has the power to change your heart. You can’t have one without the other.

As an opinionated person who loves justice it can be hard to know when to shut my pie hole. Do you have trouble speaking life instead of curses to not only your life, but to the lives of the people around you?