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Measured Words

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world. (Robin Williams)

Dear friend, listen well to my words; tune your ears to my voice. Keep my message in plain view at all times. Concentrate! Learn it by heart! Those who discover these words live, really live; body and soul, they’re bursting with health. (Proverbs 4:20-22)

The more talk, the less truth; the wise measure their words. (Proverbs 10:19)

There is much 'said' in this world today - much is 'believed' - much will not bear true under testing, though. Words and ideas can change the world, but heaven help us if we are speaking the words that will lead us astray in anyway. The wise measure their words - what does that mean to you? Words have a 'measurement' to them. They have an 'extent' - sometimes going beyond the intended meaning into the imagined meaning. They may actually be 'amplified' in the ears of the hearer - taken to heart - made real in the imagination. Words are indeed powerful. Is it any wonder why God gave us HIS words to ponder each and every day of our lives? They are the words that create the ideas that can actually change this world for the better!

We stand no chance of seeing the creation of wholesome ideas when the words we hear bring fear or emotional distress. What about the words we hear each day that just create more and more ambivalence toward someone or something? They are also 'creative' words, but what they create is just the opposite as those words of God that bring hope, peace, and clarity into confused and searching hearts. Words can incite and they can settle. They can build up and tear down. What powerful tools they are, especially when spoken with wisdom and grace. God asks us to learn his word - to commit it to our memory - not because he wants us to become 'reciters' of those words as much as he wants us to use them to guide our actions.

The words we speak fuel the ideas we will 'manufacture' in our minds. The more our minds focus on what is being 'created' within them, the more we will pursue those ideas - almost as though we were 'birthing' them into action. This is why God directs us to use our words wisely - to measure them - to ponder their extent and power. Listen first to his Words - then ponder them over and over again. This is what it means to commit them to memory - the pondering (mulling over) of them repeatedly. As we do, our ideas go through a process of being influenced by what it is we are pondering. The 'creative power' of his Word, in a mind that has been purified by the Word of God, can produce great things in a world that desperately needs peace, unification, and hope. Just sayin!
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