Don’t Waste Your Words

Don’t waste your words.

There isn’t enough time. Life is full of too many regrets already. There are already so many malevolent and selfish influences in the lives of the ones you love.

If you have a hard time imagining the importance of your words, imagine your fully grown children. Imagine having given an abundance of harmful, shaming, and discouraging words over the course of their lives. Imagine what that has done to their interior life. Their spirit. Their relationships. All from your mouth as their parent.

Now imagine having done just the opposite for 30 years. Words of affirmation, love, affection, support flowing steadily from your heart out of your mouth. Imagine their demeanor, their confidence, their countenance, their relationships.

You treat, or will treat, your children the way you treat everyone else. If you think that they will be different, that you will speak to them so differently and supportively just because they are your kids, you are mistaken. The way you treat the rest of the world will determine how you treat your children, especially with the words that come from your lips.

Our language is habitual, springing from the posture of our hearts, which is formed by where we settle our attention. The difference between a defensive, tense, unsafe, scared, angry heart and a safe, loving, gentle, restful, at peace heart is vast. Don’t waste your time rummaging in the garbage heaps of life that are so often called “pop culture” or “normal.” Reject it. Resist it. Run the opposite direction.

It is for this reason God wants us to consider all that is good and true and lovely and excellent and praiseworthy and admirable. Our hearts are constantly being shaped, and we settle into the taught modes of being we acquired from our family of origin as well as the paths of least resistance. No matter what others tell you or what you tell yourselves, our default is not goodness.

We are selfish creatures who flaunt the idea of tolerance like it is a good thing, but the fact of the matter is that tolerance falls far, far short of the biblical ideal of love. Though stated as the societal ideal, tolerance only lasts in us as long as I can do what I want without you impinging on me. Once you have hindered me from attaining what I want in your pursuit of what you want, I am no longer tolerant, and I’m sure as hell not loving. That is the ceiling of our tolerance, and if we were to be honest with ourselves, our ceiling is very, very low.

The biblical command is love. The type of love that sacrifices itself for the good of others. The type of love that builds others up and rages against moments when they are torn down. The type of love that fosters safety and support, encouraging others so completely and regularly that they believe in the God of possibilities’ ability to empower and uplift them. Yes, even them! And this is only possible from hearts that are rooted in the perfect love of God, whose attention never wavers and whose power never fails.

To settle our hearts in the love of God means to settle ourselves into the affection and delight of God over us. We sink deeply into his desire for connection with us, we embrace his open heart, and we marvel at the wounds on the body of Jesus that accomplished this for us. We affirm that nothing can separate us from this love. Nothing. And we live like it for the rest of our lives, knowing that if this were the one thing we knew of God during our time on earth, it would be enough.

Our words of love must spring up from hearts that have received and welcomed the divine words of love God speaks over us. And when faced with every other alternative, every other place we could spend our words, every other fountain they could spring from, every other purpose they could have, it becomes clear that there is only one place that truly deserves to be spoken from.

Don’t waste your words. Speak them from your heart of love, which has found its home in the heart of Perfect Love.