Words of life and encouragement...

To wake each morning and discipline my tongue to spread belief, hope, and life into people is one of my main objective each day.  My mouth is so prone to complain, be sarcastic, spread gossip, and tear down others that it takes a concerted effort each morning to bring my tongue under the Lordship of Christ.  To let him rule over this unruly member of my body.

Today I was reading in Proverbs.  My wife mentioned on our date last night that she was reading a chapter of Proverbs each day lately and some of the benefits of that, so this morning I decided to do the same.  There are some amazing nuggets of truth tucked in each chapter of that book of axioms and maxims.  I’ve learned that down through the years the ones that mattered when I was a teen, don’t affect me so much these days, while others that I blew by in my early years now hit like a hurricane and land in my heart with deep meaning.

Today I was reading Proverbs 10 and two particular phrases stuck me about my words and how I choose to use them…

Vs. 11 – “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.”

Vs. 21 – “The lips of the righteous nourish many.”

The metaphor speaks of water and food.  To souls starving for encouragement, words of life are like a meal after a famine, a drink of water after a drought.  I don’t think many would argue that there is a malnourishment of verbal encouragement in most of our lives.  We get a fair share of external and internal critique, but rarely are we blessed with words of life that call our hearts out from the grave like Lazarus.  “Come forth!” 

When someone takes the time to share nourishing news with me, I can feel my heart fill up with hope.  It’s like 1 word of life can dispel 12 words of doubt.  1 word of nourishment can eclipse 5 words of negativity.  1 “yes” can trump 20 “no’s”.  It’s like in Monster’s Inc. where they discover that “laughter” generates 10 times the power of “screams”.  I think that’s a brilliant part of that movie that comes from a real life observation.  It’s true.

So I want to be more like that today and in the days to come.  To bring life and nourishment and laughter and hope and encouragement and belief and love and motivation.  This is what the righteous do to reflect the glory of God.  May it be so.