The Words You Say....

By: Rex Johnson, Director, Restored Marriage

Do the words you say really matter?  
Proverbs 18: 20-21 (NLT) tells us:
(20) Wise words satisfy like a good meal; the right words bring satisfaction.
(21) The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.

Your words have the power of death and life. The words you say are verbal seeds you sow into your spouse. It is important to chose your words carefully. It is important to examine the condition of your heart before allowing your words to escape your tongue. If you love to speak death, you will suffer the consequences. This can mean anything from nasty and negative references about your spouse to complaints about your current situation in life. You could be saying these things to your children, your neighbors, and even your pastor. But if you have learned to speak life – perhaps as simple as speaking aloud the scripture prayers available through Covenant Keepers – you will enjoy the peace and contentment of waiting on the Lord to work in the life of your spouse.

After all, saying the scripture prayers aloud and inserting a name in the prayer is consistent with the principle of Isaiah 55:10-11(NLT) which says “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed fro the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same within my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit.” What you are doing when you speak the word over your spouse is verbal seed planting.

You might be asking yourself, "So when you speak life into your marriage restoration and nothing seems to happen what do you do?" You have two choices, as I see it...

You can quit standing.  And Satan wins again.

Or you can stand on your covenant marriage vows, as painful as that may be, and believe that you just haven't seen the restoration yet. If you stand, you can seek the Lord for answers on where your life changes need to start to make you ready for marriage restoration. You can intercede for your spouse and the Lord will show you how to pray in each situation. And you can keep on planting those good verbal seeds, knowing that His word does not come back void and the seeds you have planted will grow in time.

Sometimes it takes a long time to see the fruit of the seed sprout. Often those verbal seeds produce fruit and you are not even aware. Perhaps you spoke about your covenant marriage vow decision to someone and they passed it on to others. Your testimony may have had an impact on another person’s life and you didn’t even know. If there's one thing we know here at CK, it's that you should never doubt the power of telling your testimony. Furthermore, in the book of Mark, the Parable of the Sower to be exact, the Lord Jesus tells us that is our responsibility to sow the seeds, but we are not responsible for the kind of soil they fall on. Meaning that He, the Lord, will take care of the soil, we need only to keep planting the seeds.

Those words you say ARE important. They are a testimony to all who hear. If you have children, the words you speak have the potential to influence and affect their thoughts and actions for generations. Family and friends may not understand your decision and may not agree with you right now, but at the point of your marriage restoration, they will often come forward to tell you of the impact that your words and faith to believe for marriage restoration had on them.

Speak life with every word out of your mouth.

Plant those verbal seeds of healing, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding, compassion and restoration. Water them with the Word. Expect that the words of life you have spoken will shined upon by God's grace and what you have sown will produce the fruit of restoration.