After college, I lived with two buddies.
It was a classic single guy pad. We ate taquitos, didn’t clean our bathrooms well, and watched way too much TV.
There’s always tension between roommates and one of ours was around money. I can remember when one of my roommates came home after making a major technology purchase. I was shocked to see what he had purchased just a few weeks after we had an issue with a rent payment.
Angrily, I pulled out my phone to text our other roommate some mean, even biting, comments. As soon as I hit “Send,” I heard a ding across our apartment. To my horror, I glanced back at my phone to discover that I had not sent the message to our other roommate. No, I had sent those comments to the very person I was tearing down. He walked out of his room and we had a “challenging conversation” that night.
Many years later, I haven’t forgotten that experience, nor the feeling in my gut when I realized what I did. It's true, that night I failed to watch my words. But the real problem was not my words; the real problem was the content of my heart. My words were the manifestation of a problem in my heart. Like all of us have experienced, eventually what’s in our hearts shows up in our words.
We often learn what’s in our hearts through our interactions with people.
Consider Acts chapter 9 as a case in point. This chapter recounts the experience of Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul had been headed to arrest Christians, yet he encounters Jesus on the road and is blinded as a result.
Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord!” he replied.
The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas. When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying to me right now. I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again.”
“But Lord,” exclaimed Ananias, “I’ve heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem! And he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest everyone who calls upon your name.” But the Lord said, “Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel. “
Ananias was fearful of Saul (known to many by his Greek name, Paul), wanting nothing to do with him, much less to lay hands on him. But God showed Ananias that He had redeemed and called Saul to be His messenger. After initially protesting, Ananias went and Saul’s sight was restored and he became filled with Holy Spirit.
In this instance, Ananias had an encounter with God and he ultimately responded with worship. He surrendered his will and committed to serving God’s will, speaking God’s words over Saul. By laying hands on Saul, God united their hearts and He began to move in the hearts of other believers’ to call them to see Saul as a brother.
You’ve likely never been called by God through a vision.
But have you ever heard words come out of your mouth that reflected a gap between how you saw someone and how Jesus saw them? I certainly have.
Our words should drive us to worship. We can either worship God out of a spirit of brokenness and repentance from how our words have revealed sin in our hearts, or worship God out of gratitude for how our hearts have been transformed by His grace. When we worship like this in community, worship unites our hearts with God’s and one another’s in such a way that leads us to find new words to speak life into others.
In the Bible, the term for “speaking life into others” is simply a blessing. Throughout the Old Testament, fathers would give sons blessings, speaking life or death about their future based upon God’s direction or their character. Proverbs 18:21 reminds us of this. “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.”
Speaking a blessing isn’t just about saying what’s true; it’s also about speaking in faith what God will do. This is precisely what Jesus did in John 1:35-42 with Peter. Jesus spoke Peter’s new identity. When we meet Peter here, his name is Simon, which means “wishy-washy”. Yet Jesus declares that he is Peter, which means “rock”. This blessing shifted one man’s focus from who he was to who Jesus would make him to be.
Our encounters in worship with Jesus can do the same for us. Worship resets our hearts. As a result, it also resets our vocabulary.
We live in a time where many words are spoken in ways that tear down. In contrast, worship unites us with words that give life. This is one reason why I believe the song “The Blessing” by Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes has moved so many followers of Jesus. These words speak life over us, resetting our hearts and our vocabulary.
So before you hit “send” or “publish” today, pause and reflect on your words. Look back at the words you spoke yesterday and consider what they are revealing about the state of your heart. Consider how worshiping Jesus and spending time with the truth of who He is, and who He is making you to be, can change how you speak.
Our worship can unite our hearts and transform our words!
Scott Savage is a pastor and a writer who believes he has the best last name ever. He leads Cornerstone Church in Prescott, Arizona. Scott is married to Dani and they are the parents of three “little savages.” He is the creator of the Free to Forgive course and you can read more of his writing at scottsavagelive.com.
