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Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your hosts of The Marriage of God podcast, and
Today in this episode we are going to be chatting about the truth that words are spiritual
Words are spiritual. Before we talk about that though, let’s talk about something that has been going on.
Well, the first thing, I’m a proud mama Elliot got another stripe in Jiujitsu.
Yeah, I got a photo of that. That was really cool
And I wasn’t there to see it, but you sent me the photo and I was so stoked for him. He’s been wanting that for a long time.
Coach gave a little speech afterwards, he said, because all the kids, they always want to stripe,
Especially when they see someone else get a
Stripe. And he said, would you want to a stripe if you have only been here a few times and I just gave it to you? Or do you want it when you earn it? And everyone’s like, earn it. And he’s like, yeah, because that little bit of tape or that new belt you’re looking for, it means it means something. It
Means the work you put into
It. So he encouraged everyone and said, don’t be worried about the belt or the stripe. Be worried about how good you are. That’s cool. Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. I haven’t gotten a strip in a while.
That’s all right. Keep showing
Up. The other thing I want to talk about is, so at the beginning of the year in January, we decided to do the marriage prayer challenge where we go through the 365 prayers for our marriage book, the Marriage gift, the one that we just came out with last year. And there’s a lot of people doing with us,
And even though we are the ones that wrote it, we’ve been surprised by it
In a good way. Yeah, we’re going through it each day, and of course we’ve missed a day here and there, and we will go back and try and catch up. But what’s crazy is we’re not manufacturing this. We’re not making this up, but it’s almost like every day’s prayer was exactly what we were dealing with that day
And spoke to it in some way.
It was very strange. So
I don’t know if that’s happening just for us or for others. If it’s happening for others, that’s pretty cool.
So if you have our marriage book, the Marriage Gift, and you’re going through it with your spouse and you have been experiencing something similar, would you let us know on social media, send us a message either at marriage after forgot, or Husband Revolution or Unveiled Wife? That’d be cool to hear. What about adventure school days?
So we took a break over holiday season, and then we just started back up with a little Valentine’s party, and then a friend of mine set up a market at a local coffee shop. Oh yeah. It was so cool. So I asked my kids, okay, which one of you are interested in creating a craft and selling it and earning that money? And both Elliot and Olive were interested, and so Elliot made, what would you call that? Bullet art
Bullet. Shells art went into our local gun range and salvaged old bullet shells, washed them up.
He decorated picture frames and these boxes, we called them treasure boxes. So that was pretty cool. And then Olive wanted to create headbands, so we got pipe cleaners and she made these kind of, I’ll call ’em wacky.
Those were really cute, wacky
Head come on. And
They’re like, they’re going all over the place. The girls
Loved these crowns,
Loved them, the girls love them.
But it was really cute. There was a handful of kids that they all did different things and they had a blast
And they had to learn about cells going up to people and saying, Hey, would you be interested in this headband? Because we’re at this coffee shop and there’s a lot of customers in there. That was really cool. They actually sold some stuff, made a little bit of money.
Yeah, learned about business. Yeah.
Awesome. We’re going to be getting into talking about words. Yes. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple episodes. We’re going to talk about it for a few more episodes and the power of words and what they mean.
In last episode, we highlighted, well, we talked a little bit about the biblical view and the how words can create world, the secular world of the power of words and what people think about when they hear what are the power of words.
But today’s episode’s going to be a little bit different, going into a little bit more depth, not just talking about the power of words, but why words are powerful and that they’re actually much more than just sounds. We make this idea of words, this idea of messaging and ideas that can be portrayed from this thing right here, this mouth, this tongue.
So we had a good conversation about this when we had friends over for dinner and you kind of randomly brought it up. It was just like something the Lord had been teaching you, and it turned into a really good conversation.
So I was thinking about this because we had this discussion. What brought on this topic for this season of episodes was us talking while we were dealing with my brother’s loss. And I was just considering the words that he would say and the words that I was hearing and how powerful they’re and how they can direct our lives. And then I was in the word of God and I thought about one John, which is what we’re going to talk about a little bit. And I started thinking about how much more powerful words are than we even realize that there’s something more than we even think they are, which is spiritual, they’re spirit. And so we’re going to talk about that, but we got to talk about it with our friends. And I just started rambling on about all this stuff I was reading in scripture and things that were coming up to me in my mind, and they were like, wow, okay. It was a really cool conversation.
So here’s a small encouragement side note for our listeners today that just to invite families over, get to know them that way, get to know them on a deeper level and share what God has been teaching you, what he’s been walking you through, or what he’s been revealing through his word, because those types of conversations are memorable and heart touching
And unique. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a fun little thing to talk about. It’s
Fun. Yeah,
It’s a good question to ask is what’s the Lord teaching you and see what comes up out of people. So in the last episode, one of the things we asked toward the end of it, towards the end of that episode was, whose words are you listening to? Whose words are you receiving or dwelling on or dwelling on? Yeah. Essentially what words are you having come in and then what’s coming out? And if you remember, we made this point to test everything because there’s so much on social media and movies and everywhere. There’s so much coming at us, so much messages, so much words, so much ideas, so many things that the world wants us to adopt as our own. And we got to test it. We got to test all of it. And what that means to test it is to take what you hear and line that up against something else. That’s how you test something. You take something and you have something to measure it against, and you see where they line up. And so that’s what we want to talk about today. Which leads me to the first section of scripture, which is kind of what catalyzed. Is that even a word? Is that how you catalyzed? Catalyzed? I don’t think so.
It reminds me of cows.
I was thinking catalyst was the catalyst for this topic, which is in first Joan chapter four, where it talks about testing the spirits.
I have to say something, this is really random, but I noticed I just did it. And video is a new aspect again for us. I was watching last week’s episode just to review it, and I was just curious what we look like. And I noticed that I was laughing a certain way. It’s because my lips had been so chopped and they hurt. They hurt. Yeah, mine does too. I just did it again. And so I’m like, people are going to think I laugh. Funny. They even catch it.
No. Here in Central Oregon, especially with all the snow we’re getting right now, it dries out the air, which is the opposite of what you think snow does, but it does. It dries out the other cold. Hey man, I wake up and my lips are so hurt. It’s like I can’t, oh.
So if you notice that I laugh funny, you can make fun of me, but it’s just because my lips are chapped. Okay,
Thank you for that. Now that everyone knows about our chapped lips, first John chapter four, starting in verse one, it says, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they’re from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world by this, the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and overcome them for hee is in you, is greater than he is in the world. They’re from the world. Therefore, they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So this has been a controversial scripture because this idea of test the spirits, what are the spirits that we’re testing? And so that’s what I want to use this scripture to be. The starting point of this whole topic,
What stood out to me right away is that we’re talking about words in this series, but just in the scripture, it uses words like confesses, listens and speak. And these are all around word usage. So that’s the first thing that stood out to me.
And that’s a good point because that’s something you’re going to talk about towards the end of this episode. So stay tuned. Jennifer’s got some good insights, this idea of the different ways that word gets used and the different ways of speaking, I should say. But the one thing I want to point out is it says, do not believe every spirit, which means there are spirits to believe, right? There are some that we should and there’s some that we shouldn’t. And then the next question is, well, what are those spirits andwhenever? You read the Bible and you come to something that you don’t, that kind of doesn’t make sense, which there’s quite a bit in the Bible that’s like, whoa, at face value. I don’t understand what this is saying. The best way for every believer to learn what the Bible means when it says something is to allow the Bible to define what it’s saying.
(09:51)
Sometimes it can be good to go commentaries and look up definitions and stuff like that, which I do. But really the Bible’s the best place to find a key for itself. Yeah, it’s a key for itself. So the Bible defines itself, so what the Bible says, and so that’s what we’re going to do is we’re going to break down some of these things, but we right here in this scripture, it says, test every spirit. But then it gives you the context by which those spirits are coming, where are these spirits coming from? And so it’s talking about testing every spirit, and it gives insight to those who confess and those who do not confess has to do with words. So when it says test every spirit, it’s saying test the words, the messages that certain people bring. So write in this one section, even without going through other scriptures, you can find out that when it says test every or do not believe every spirit, but test them, it’s saying what those spirits are that we need to test. If they say this, that’s not from God, if they say this, oh, that is from God. And so it’s all based around words. The context of this verse is actually false prophets. And so if you think about a false prophet, a prophet is someone who speaks on behalf of God,
Shares a message,
Shares a message. Yeah. A false prophet is someone who claims to be speaking on behalf of God or another way to put this. They’re speaking divine words like someone who says, I have a divine word or I have truth. That is divine Truth is from God. God is truth. So if someone comes to you and says, this is the truth, that could be the news, that could be a book, that could be a social media influencer. There’s lots out there, and they might have a message, and I’m not saying that they’re all false prophets, but when it tells us to test every spirit and not to believe every spirit, there’s messages and words coming to us from every angle all the time, and God desires us to test all of it. What is it that we’re receiving and saying, yes, I agree with that.
Something that popped into my head when you were talking is you said that they would say, this is truth. Are there going to be messages out there that say that is not truth according to your belief? So they’re saying it’s not coming out as attacking your belief or your theology or anything like that, but in a way it is because they’re saying, oh, that that’s not truth.
Yeah. If you believe in the creation story, then you’re believing false. That’s not truth. And I would personally say, well, no, that is truth because exactly what the Bible says, but this is the idea. There’s going to be people coming and saying what you believe or what the Bible says is not truth, or they’re going to say This is truth, but all of it, every bit of it, this is the spirits that the Bible tells us and warns us to test is these messages, these words. And so specifically the spirits in which we are to test are not the prophets themselves,
Not necessarily the people
That it’s coming from. Yeah, that’s a part of it. The Bible tells us to test the fruits of people. We can’t know their hearts necessarily except for the what comes out of their mouth. And so we could test the fruits of people to see what kind of people they are, but we’re to test the words. And the reason for that is there’s so many times in the past I’ve quoted someone and then someone says, yeah, that may be true, but you really shouldn’t listen to that person because of this, this, and this. That may be true and that may be wise, but just because someone is not a let’s say good person or they’ve done something wrong or they aren’t worthy of our listening to, but they say truth still, that’s still truth because I can test the words they say regardless of who they are.
(13:44)
And so this happens all the time because again, truth is from God. And so even there’s been times all throughout scripture where a wicked person presented truth or was even used by God as a prophet to tell God’s words to the world, to his people. So how do we know what words to listen to? How do we know what spirits to agree with? And so that’s kind of what we’re talking about. Verse five says this, the false prophets are from the world, therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. So it talks about, it says the false prophets are from the world and they speak from the world and the world listens. So there’s a message and there’s a listening to that message,
Which means there’s an understanding and there’s receiving an agreement and a believing and agreement with
It. And that’s what the job of a false prophet is, to give a message and to call it truth, to call it divine, to say, this is the way you should believe. This is what you should believe. This is how you should believe.
Sometimes when you use the word prophet or message, you kind of get stuck in a box in your head. I do. And so you have this ideal person or even situation like maybe a pastor who’s giving a sermon. When you say message, that’s what I think of something like that. But I could this be also in terms of someone just saying one thing, one line, one short message, one abbreviated message through social media or through a conversation at a friend’s house.
Well, I would say it says right here in that first verse, it says, for many false prophets have gone out into the world, there are many people with a message, with things to tell you to believe or things that they themselves believe, and then they preach it. We all do this on various levels, which is also, again, going back to why it matters what’s inside of us, because what comes out of us matters. And so there are many, and I would say this word, false prophet, it tells us, it says this is the spirit of the antichrist. So there’s messages that are antichrist and messages that are for
Christ, for Christ,
And that’s going to come from anywhere. And we got to be careful of that.
And then it says just to go on here, it says, we are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. And so you see a disagreement, you
See, and John, he’s explaining, he’s saying, those who listen to us, our words, those who listen to what we’re telling you, like Paul said, listen to what I’m telling you. Like Jesus said, hear my words. All these
Things only does listen to us. He’s saying scripture. He’s saying the words of the Lord, not just any,
Because what they’re saying is from God, because they’re being, it’s prophetic in a way that Holy Spirit is speaking through them. And that’s how, and then I want to end with scroll down just a little bit more. It says that what you just said, whoever listens, whoever knows, God listens to us, and he distinguishes between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So it gives two spirits by which we’re listening to things. These messages are coming in either it’s of truth or of error, either it’s lie or it’s truth, and that those are the spirits in which we need to test.
And when you say test at the very end, it says, by this, we know. So that’s how you know what at the end of the test, if it’s
Truth or error, truth
Or
Error. And that’s what we want to talk about as we get into this more is this idea of comparing things we hear to things that we know are true. Like I said, there was someone, I heard this analogy once, but it’s when counterfeit agents, people that are like fraud agents are trying to learn how to tell between a fake a hundred dollars bill and a real a hundred dollars bill. They don’t ever touch the fake ones. They spend thousands and thousands of times, hours looking at the real thing, smelling it, tasting it, feeling, I don’t about tasting it, but feeling it and experiencing the real thing over and over
And over again. So they don’t need to know what all the different variations of fraud could look like. No. They just need to know what the real
Thing is. They can feel a fake one and be like, oh, this doesn’t feel like the real one. So the reality is, is we don’t need to spend all of our time going and listening to all the lies out there. What we need to do is spend our time listening to the truth, listening to the words that bring life we’re going to talk about, so that when we hear a spirit or words or a message from anyone, we’ll say there’s something off about that. I don’t know what’s off about that. We need to figure out why that sounds off and we can actually test it pretty easily.
So just to summarize, we are told to test every spirit. We are told to distinguish the spirit of truth versus the spirit of air and really to consider where it’s coming from. It did list false prophets and the antichrist, or is it coming from God and lining up with his word or from somewhere else? So with all these things in mind, we are saying that words are spiritual,
Which it should make us pause for a second and realize, okay, if words aren’t just words and they mean something and they have depth to them and they encapsulate ideas and they can actually change people like we talked about, they can change minds and hearts, recognizing that they are spiritual things, recognizing that words are spiritual should cause us to be like, wow, I should be more careful about the things I say and not be so frivolous or flippant or quick to speak the Bible. Proverbs even talks about this being quick to speak rather than being quick to or slow to speak. And so we need to be understanding that our mouths, these tongues as the scriptures will show us can be very dangerous things. And also our ears over and over and over again, scripture will say, he who has ears, let him hear. And what it’s saying is, are you going to listen to the truth? Are you going to hear what I’m saying right now? Or are you going to let your ears listen to anything else? And we got to be careful of that.
So are there other areas in the Bible that show or support that words are spiritual?
Right? I do want to make a note. I don’t think that words are the only things that are spiritual. Of course there’s a whole spiritual realm, but I think they are spiritual things. It’s a spiritual thing. Words are, Jesus says this about his own words. And if what I’m saying is true, the Bible will prove it out in other ways, not just in this one scripture. Me taking it and saying, oh, see right here it says this, but it actually says it in different areas showing the importance of words. Jesus says this about his own words in John 6 63. It is the Spirit, holy Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
So there you go.
So he says that it’s the Holy Spirit who gives life. And the words that I’ve spoken to you are spirit and life. So the spirit that is here is capitalized for Holy Spirit. And the spirit that’s about the words is lowercase. He, he’s like, so the Holy Spirit gives life, and the words that I speak to you are spirit and life.
So that’s easy for me to grasp and understand because Jesus is spirit, right?
Well, he was a man.
Well, I know, but it says that the word was made flesh. And so there’s a connection there that I see specifically the words of the Bible are spirit.
Jesus’s words are spirit,
Right? So then how can you say that all words are spiritual?
Well, there’s messages and words that come out of us. We’ve been created in God’s image. And so the fact that we can create words and put together ideas and messaging to shift thought, to encourage or to tear down the Bible warns over and over and over again. We’ll get to some of these scriptures in a second about the power of the tongue. And it wouldn’t have to warn about those things if it wasn’t so powerful. True.
And the last set of verses that we read in John, or was it First John uses the word confesses, and that’s what we do, is we use confess scripture, but we confess scripture. We do say spiritual words.
Hopefully we’re doing it a lot and believing those words. Something that Proverbs says is very interesting, that shows words being used in another way. And it says, Proverbs 12, six, the words of the wicked lie and wait for blood.
It sounds very active of
Words, but the mouth of the upright delivers them. So what it’s saying is the wicked have words that are waiting to hurt, kill you, destroy you, break the way you think, confuse the ideas that you have, make you change the way you think away from what’s right. But this says, but the mouth of the upright, the mouth of the one who stands tall, the one who has his eyes on Christ, the one who is walking in the narrow path, the one who the upright, their mouth delivers them. And we saw that last episode when Jesus was being tempted by the devil, and he used his mouth to distinguish the lies that the devil was spewing to him, to defeat him. Used his words, he used his mouth. So the mouth of the upright delivers them. And that’s something that we see often throughout scripture is how the words that people share and say either condemn them or justify them, which is actually a scripture in the Bible as well.
Going back up to that scripture that you read just before this, what Jesus said about the words that he has spoken to us, our spirit and life, I just thought they’re not just spirit. They’re spirit and life. And that goes along with what you’re saying about the upright delivers them. If we want life, if we desire a full life, an abundant life, we have to be consuming his words.
Well, and that also means that on the converse, there can be words that are spirit and death, words that lead to death, that the way of thinking and the way it guides our life, which in the next episode we’re going to talk about this idea of how words can guide our life or death. So I got a question for you. What do you think of when you hear the word spirit?
Just spirit. I think my first thought is the Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit.
Capital
S. Yeah. We have context as Christians, so we think Holy Spirit. I think,
Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say in the scary world, the movie world, it’d be ghosts.
Yeah, ghosts. Yeah. This idea of scary movies, ghosts, metaphysical beings, they’re here, but you don’t see them. You can’t feel them. Maybe they can kind of blow your hair or something. Right? Don’s a
Scary episode.
Aaron. Sorry. They, they’re things that cannot be seen. Maybe somehow they affect the physical world. Maybe somehow you can sense that they’re around. That’s kind of a way we might look at spirits. They’re ghostly.
But it does it have to do with
They’re not in this realm. The physical. Yeah. Yeah. They’re metaphysical. They’re beyond the physical. They don’t have a physical body. And what’s interesting is when you describe how you might describe a spirit and take away the idea of it being a lost soul or anything like that, which is another idea of it’s like a ghost, but it’s a medical physical thing. It’s something without form. It’s something that exists around us, but we can’t see it or feel it. And that’s kind of what words are in a sense. And what I mean by that is words don’t have a physical form. You hear me right now. And even what you’re listening to, you’re listening to sounds being translated and wave forms, and your brain
Interprets and
Your brain, the meaning of brain is interpreting what I’m saying, but there is no physical things coming out of my mouth.
What about written the written word?
Well, words are just symbols of the ideas that we’re saying written form, which is another reason why the written word of God is so amazing. And books in general, the fact that we can write down ideas, and it’s pretty cool images. And I can read a book I’ve found out over the last handful of years that I really like fiction books. I’m not a big fan of nonfiction, but I love fiction. And I can be listening to or reading the book. And while I’m reading it, I’m hearing the voices of the people. They’re all different in my head. I’m envisioning, I can see scenarios, especially if the writer is really good at describing them. So just the words on a page are creating whole worlds in my mind, that’s a pretty powerful thing. So if we think about words in this sense that words are, they’re metaphysical. It’s not even, this is a tree back here,
New tree. If you guys are tuning in via YouTube,
Yeah, it’s back here behind Jennifer. It’s an olive tree. By the way.
Aaron got me that.
But that isn’t the word tree. That is a thing that we call a tree. Again, the word itself, the name itself is an idea. It’s a non-physical thing
To represent something.
Yeah. That is a physical object, of course. But it could be called anything. I mean, every language has another word for it, but the words themselves are not physical. And so if you think about it, the words that God created everything with spirit, Genesis one, in the word it says, the word of God became flesh. That’s in John one. And also faith comes by hearing the word. All of these things are very spiritual events caused by words. And I want us to, like I said earlier, pause and recognize what that means. And are we being careful with our
Words? Why does it matter? Why does it matter that they’re not just powerful, but that they’re spiritual?
Well, the Bible warns us about our words, about our tongues, about having self-control over them and what they can do. And so Matthew, not Matthew, mark, mark, chapter seven 20 and 22, 23, 22. And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. This is in context of people coming and asking about what foods they can eat and defile them because they have these dietary laws. And Jesus tells him, he’s like, it’s not what you eat that defiles you because that just goes into your stomach and then it gets expelled. And you know what he meant by that? He says, it’s what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within. Out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. These are the things that come out of a person. And if you look at that list real quick, go back up. Look at all the things that have to do with words. What? Evil thoughts. Evil thoughts. Those are words inside your head. Yeah. Adult coveting. I want that. And you see it in your head like, I need that.
I would say the word deceit.
Deceit, which is lying. Yeah. Slander, slander, pride, foolishness. Those are all ways of thinking and ways of speaking. That was more than half of those, that list of what comes out of a person. And I would imagine in some form or fashion, all of those other ones words are involved.
Do you want me to read this next one? Yes. Luke 6 43 through 45 says, for no good tree bears bad fruit. Nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit for each tree is known by its own fruit for figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a ramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good. And the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks
In this context. Jesus is saying, what’s in your heart is a treasure, I think in proverbs doesn’t say treasure up the words that I give to you when it’s talking about looking at words as precious gems and like wisdom. And so here you have this treasure in your heart, and it’s either a good treasure or an evil treasure. And he uses this idea of fruit trees. He’s like one kind of fruit tree can’t produce this kind of fruit and another kind of fruit tree can’t produce this kind of fruit. And so it’s warning us about what kind of treasure, what kind of fruit is coming out of us in regards to what comes out of our mouths, what comes out of our lives. Another verse is in James three, one through two, it says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness for we all stumble in many ways.
(31:21)
And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he’s a perfect man. Abel also to bridle his whole body. This truth is so profound because first of all, who’s the only perfect person? Jesus. Jesus. Which also means by this definition, he said everything perfectly always. And because he had a perfect mouth, because he was able to control his tongue, he was able to bridle his whole body, all of his bodily desires and cravings. He had under control. He was a perfect man. He never sinned. But it started with the words that he spoke that he even says, he says, I only speak what my father tells me to speak. The words I give you are my father’s words. He had God’s words perfectly always. And so him being the only perfect man was able to bridle his whole body based off of that. Think about the spiritual connotation of that, that if we have God’s words, we’re able to do more than we could in our flesh and even able to bridle our body better than we could without it.
He’s been trying to tell us, we just
Need to pay attention. He’s been trying to tell us. If you go on a few verses later in James, it says, look at the ships also, though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they’re guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet at boasts of great things, how great a forest is set a blaze by such a small fire and the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire, the entire course of life and set on fire by hell.
I know why you shared this one, but you should have saved it for the next episode.
We can.
We’re going to have to share it
Again. We’re going to bring it again. That’s really good. But this is just showing that our tongues the tongue. Without a tongue, you can’t make words. The tongue can set your entire course of life on fire or can bring life to your entire life.
I just want to point out that some people, even though they’re not using their tongue, obviously through social media or commenting, but you hear a lot about the comment section in social media and how
A blazing fire, I often go to the comment section on a post
Just to figure out what’s being said. But sometimes people can say some pretty awful things. And even though they’re not coming out of your mouth, they’re still coming out of your heart, whether it’s a keyboard or whatever. And that’s just like a side note to be cautious and really evaluate the things that we share online. Almost like there’s a disconnect. I think people could just say whatever they want and you see it. You see if you’re on social media, you see it and it can be really, really destructive.
That’s a good word. We could be done there.
I’m just kidding. No, we got more.
So here’s the question is what can we do? Because words are spirit. Our tongues are powerful and they can guide our life in a good way or a bad way, which we’re going to talk about next episode, like you said. And the Bible warns us over and over and over again on what comes out of us, what comes into us.
So we need to be guarding our minds, our hearts and our testing
What we’re hearing, and also being willing to be tested. I tell this to my church all the time. I want you in the word so that you can test what I’m saying. I don’t want them to just trust me and be, oh, I don’t even need to open the Bible. I trust everything he says. I could be wrong by accident. I could have an opinion of something that I’m teaching that needs to be adjusted, that is very real, not perfect Jesus with the perfect words of God coming out of me at all times. And so they need to be ready and willing to challenge me. Say, Hey, you said this, but it seems like that’s contradictory to this other thing in the Bible. So what can we do? Is that Corinthians? Corinthians? Yeah, ten five. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. This is a really famous verse. A lot of people have memorized this, but it’s talking about words. We destroy arguments. An argument is an idea. It’s a thought process. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a set of words used to debate.
Same with opinions,
Lofty opinions. And these specific arguments and lofty opinions are raising themselves against the knowledge, which is understanding the words of God. And were to take every thought captive. What are thoughts? They’re words.
So this verse isn’t just in context to, you’re talking with a buddy and he is arguing with you about a certain part of scripture and
You say, get thee behind me, Saint don’t argue with me.
No, I’m being serious. Sometimes you can hear something and you’re like, well, that doesn’t apply to me because I’m not in an argument with someone. You know what I mean?
No, you could take this personally in your own heart because often the things that we are struggling against our own thoughts. Yeah,
Our own thoughts can be in an argument with
The spirit. They raise themselves up against the knowledge of God. It’s
Called justification. And we’re trying to justify why it’s
Okay that we’re, yeah. God says this, doing something, God, this says to not practice sin, and yet I’m over here practicing this sin. Oh, but my situation’s different than, so God doesn’t, that’s not applying to me. No. That argument needs to be tossed out the window. Well, it’s a
Slippery slope because you start doing it there, and then you start doing it here, and then something else comes along and you just keep that pattern. But
Then it also goes to you’re sitting with a long time acquaintance and they sit down with you and they’re sharing something that they’re learning about life and they start saying stuff and you’re like, Hmm. And they’re telling you that you should also be believing this and doing this. We need to be able to destroy arguments in every lofty opinion that raises against God and what he has said. And we don’t just say like, oh, that’s good for you. Okay. We’d be willing to be like, Hey, actually I don’t agree with that. I think that’s wrong. Or in your heart, be like, no, this is false. You’re not receiving it. I’m not going to receive this. There’s words and messages that need to be destroyed because anything that’s going to come against the knowledge of God, it’s the spirit of error, not the
Spirit of truth. Do you have any personal experience that you can share in
With words?
Yeah. Well, in dealing with this and maybe thoughts or phrases you’ve had to take captive.
If anyone has been following us for any amount of time, and they heard my testimony about my sexual addictions in the past, I’ve mentioned this, but something I was actually believing and it kept me staying in bondage even though I was set free, was that I will never be free. That was one thing that I constantly felt because nothing seemed to work. It didn’t matter how sad I was about it, it didn’t matter how guilty I felt. It didn’t matter how much I read the word. It didn’t matter how much I prayed or I went to church and I just thought, oh, I’ll never be free. And that’s not from God. God says the opposite. It’s for freedom. Christ set you free. So stand firm in that freedom. Another thing that I believed is I’ll never be strong enough. And I know there’s a lot of people listening that they hear these exact words repeated over and over and over again. They say to themselves, they hear it from others, you’re not strong enough. You’ll never be strong enough. And I’m not saying in my own flesh, I’ll never be strong enough in God. I’ll never be strong enough in his word. I’ll never be where I need to be to be healed or to be in right relationship. And so those messages were messages that literally kept me stuck.
How do you feel like you took those thoughts captive, and are you still taking them captive today?
Well, it wasn’t until I was told words that showed me that those thoughts I was having were false until someone came to me and used that idea of taking every thought captive and saying, Hey, what that argument you’re giving those ideas that you’re believing, those words that you’ve received and you live in are false. Here is what the truth is. And he replaced those lies with the spirit of truth.
So was that like you heard those words and you saw the argument for what it was, and then boom, your mind is just automatically trained to see it differently? Or was this a process in understanding what taking that captive looked like, just trying to give some understanding
For those listening? I think that it was a multiple of different things. I think hearing it, the way it was said to me in the timing, in the grace and the love, but with full truth and not buffering me in any way, allowed me to first of all hear past the lies I was believing and finally hear the truth. And I believed it because it takes believing it because someone could tell you something again and you cannot receive it, not believe that. So I believed it and that made a big change. But even nowadays, recently, because this is something that the flesh and the enemy and the world, there’s constant messages and it can be very difficult and very hard. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had these thoughts or words, but I should just give up. This is too hard to keep going. It’s too hard to keep walking with God. It’s too hard to keep pressing on. And I hear that. And like you said, what did you do? Now I know like, oh, that’s not from God. That’s not what God has for me. Do you
Ever hear, I’m a new creation?
I do.
I know you do because you tell me that
I do hear that. Or I’m a child of God, or I get reminded by the Holy Spirit of the work that Christ did on the cross, and I remember that what he endured and that I’m capable of enduring that because he lives in me. And so yes, those, even now as a believer, so many years, 20 years, I have those thoughts. And it’s why the word of God says, Hey, I know you do. I know those are going to come. Many false prophets have gone in the world. Many false messages, many lies are out there, and here’s the tool to fight that and defeat that.
So
Good. How about you? I shared things that I’ve dealt with. What are some words that you’ve heard?
I think, well, I get this image of a rat in a wheel. When I think about my worry or my anxiety, I feel like I’m very prone to those types of thoughts and having to take those captive. And I’ve even had friends that I’ll reach out to in the midst of anxiety, Hey, I need prayer. I need help. And they’re very quick to remind me to take,
Which by the way is a huge step. You used to just hold
It all in, hold it all in,
And dwell in on yourself.
So just learning how to, especially if it has to do with a family member or my own health feeling like death is imminent or something like that, just being able to talk myself through scriptures that come to mind, that no one’s guaranteed tomorrow. And to be thankful in every circumstance. And also I have to tell myself I have to wait to freak out until there’s even a real diagnosis. And to avoid Google, because that could just
You pre freak out before there’s any evidence. Yeah,
I don’t do it as much anymore, but those are things that I have had to fight over time. And another just one word that I could give you that I feel like I have to take captive a lot is the word failure. And just I so easily label myself as a failure. I
Almost put that word down too. Really?
Yeah, man, that’s a hard one. Probably everybody relates to that in some way. And it’s hard because you feel like you don’t measure up and you want to so badly. You want to live righteously and live a perfect life and live like Jesus, but really, we don’t measure up. We do fail. We are failures. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve come to understand is I, there are times that I fail, but it doesn’t define me, which I allow it to do sometimes, and that’s when I feel paralyzed by it. But understanding that we are weak, like you said, I’ll never be strong enough. I will never be strong enough.
Shell say
In me is strong. I can rely on that.
But saying, see, this is where understanding the definitions of words and knowing how to decipher them matters. Because you could say we are all failures, but that’s actually not true because the Bible says that we’re more than conquerors, that we have victory in Christ, that so we may fail, but we’re not failures. We actually, we have Christ. We’re chasing towards the price. That’s
What we already have. The victory.
The only true failure is failing to receive Christ. So if you have Christ, you’ve won everything. You’ve won the lottery. That’s this idea. But it’s also why we’re told to run the race as if to win the prize going toward Christ. That’s what we want. And so I would say, you’re right. We do fail all of us, but those who believe in Christ are not failures. They actually have the Holy Spirit living in them.
I can receive
That, but this is why words matter.
But this is why words matter, and this is why we’re talking about it. We know that we still have room to grow in this area of understanding our words and what we believe about them. And
Always, always, I think it’s so interesting as we’re talking about how important words are and how dangerous words can be that nowadays with the power of social media and the internet, there’s so many teachers on every subject you can imagine. But specifically on the most important subjects, God, faith, life, the world, and in some sense, prophets, false prophets or true prophets. People that I’m not talking about prophets in the sense of telling the future. I’m talking about prophets in the sense of people that are giving divine truths.
You won’t even see them calling themselves prophets.
Some call themselves prophets these days. But no, the majority of the people that we listen to, the majority of the people that we follow to give us truth, divine truth, top level truth, this is life. That in a way, it’s prophetic. It’s them giving words to guide your life and saying they’re truth or in essence from God, whether they say that or not. And they proclaim to have the answers. They proclaim to know what’s missing from your life. They claim to know how to be better or stronger or smarter or wiser.
So in addition to testing every spirit and testing every word, we need to test every reel,
Every reel, every meme, every comment. We need to test these. Yeah. The easiest thing you could do is don’t listen to all of it. There’s too much noise. But yes, we need to be testing all of this. Filter it. Yeah. There’s even people out there that proclaim to know the future of the world. That’s prophetic. The world’s going to end. This is how the election’s going to go. This is what happens if we don’t change how we consume energy. You name it. There’s plenty of people out there that know exactly what the future holds and they don’t. The Bible makes that very clear that God knows. And so who are we listening to? Who are we following to give us truth, to speak spiritual things to us? Because we may not see everything as spiritual the way we should, but it is all spiritual,
And we should probably add what things? Our kids, I think we’ve already mentioned this in the last episode, but what things are we allowing our children to also enter in? And as they get older, they’re going to be making more choices, more independent choices in what they’re listening to. So we get to be guide their navigator for some time, and it’s really important that we teach them how to test.
And so just to reiterate what James three one says, it says, not many of you should become teachers that we who teach will be judged with greatest strictness. This is specifically talking in regards to God’s word, teaching God’s word. But if you think about it, everyone wants to be a teacher. And I do think we’re sitting here right now doing exactly what we’re talking about.
I wonder
How often do we sit down and we look through these notes and you’re talking about like, oh, I don’t like that, or I don’t think we should say
That. I get really critical in what we share,
But I appreciate that because we do need to be careful, and I hope at the end of the day we’re pointing people back to the word of God. Now look what Erin and Jennifer says, but look what the word says, which is why we try and use as much scripture as possible whenever possible.
I wonder, because you keep saying that there’s a lot of people out there that everybody wants to be a teacher these days, and you’re not talking about a school teacher. You’re just talking about in general, teaching other people how to do life and how to do this, how to do that, parenting,
Marriage, life,
Business. I wonder if they would even consider themselves as someone who wants to be a teacher or if they’re just doing it.
I think they’re just doing it now. I’m for sure there’s many that consider these things. And I’m also not saying that they’re not good teachers. I’m just saying we should be careful on what we’re teaching, how we’re teaching, what we’re sharing, what words we’re giving. What are those words rooted in? Are they rooted in me, myself, my fleshly desires, what I want to get out of it? Are they rooted in Christ, rooted in his word? And are we trying to get across to the world that message or something else? Remember, is it coming in the spirit of truth or the spirit of error? Some very good warnings, stern warnings that the Bible gives us In the book of Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, chapter 12, verse 35, the good person out of his good treasure brings forth good. The evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. And then it says in verse 36, I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak.
There’s a lot of ’em.
Yeah, and memorize. There’s a lot of, I brought this up earlier. The next verse says, for by your words, you’ll be justified. And by your words, you’ll be condemned. The words that guide our life are going to either justify us or condemn us. So I think we should be very careful which words we have, whose message do we have? What are we believing in this world? Do you want to read this next one,
Joshua? Yeah. Joshua one, seven through eight says, only be strong and very courageous. Being careful to do according to all the law that Moses, my servant commanded you, do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it for then you’ll make your way prosperous and then you’ll have good success.
This is God’s encouragement and warning to Joshua, as Joshua takes over the leadership of Israel. He says, be strong and courageous and be careful to do according to all the law of Moses Smith commanded you told you the words. He gave you the book of the law. This is like God saying, Hey, if you do everything I say, if you take my words seriously, if you believe them with all your heart and you walk in them, you’ll be prosperous, you’ll be safe, you’ll be strong, and you’ll have good success. His life, Joshua’s life, and his leadership was going to be predicated on God’s words. That’s what he desired. The words of God, the words of Jesus. They are spirits and they are life.
So we pulled out some scriptures in regards to our words, just knowing that words are spiritual and the implications that they have. This is really good encouragement. Along the same lines of what you just gave through Joshua. First Thessalonians five 11. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.
Yeah, these scriptures are showing, okay, words have power, words are spirit, words are life. So use your words this way. Yeah,
This is what’s going to build life. Hebrews three 13, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Again, these exhort, that’s a, use your words to strongly encourage against or for the truth, not against the truth, but for against lies and for the truth.
Timothy, first Timothy six 20 O Timothy Guard, the deposit entrusted to you, avoid the irreverent, babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.
He’s like, Hey, avoid the irreverent Babel. Avoid the words that are useless to you, and the contradictions that is falsely like the quotations called knowledge. He’s like, just avoid that. That’s going to be not good for you. And just lean on the truth.
And then the last one, Colossians one, nine. And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Yeah, it doesn’t say filled with his will, so it’s filled with the knowledge of his will. What does knowledge comes from words. It’s stored inside of us. Those words that we continue to repeat and meditate on, and that’s what Paul wants us to have. That’s what God wants us to have, is to be filled with the knowledge of his
Will, which I also love in the beginning of this verse, how it says that we have not ceased to pray for you, which also has to do with words. And it’s a good reminder and encouragement for us that knowing that our words are spiritual and knowing that our words are powerful, we should be using our words to be praying.
I love that reminder of prayer and also the fact that they’re words because we are sharing our words with God, which by the way, actually makes me think of how cool it is that when we don’t have words, it says that the Holy Spirit has words for us. Praise for us on our behalf. But before we come to an end, you had some stuff that you were studying recently that was pretty interesting, and I wanted you to share it. Well,
The first thing is in our last episode, we talked about, and I brought this up, the beginning of this episode, but just some differences, some contrast in biblical worldview and secular, and I like to bring both sides up. I think that there’s a lot to talk about. But in today’s episode, since we’re talking about words being spiritual, actually found a secular post from the, which is really interesting. The title of it was called The Spiritual Power of Words. So they also see words as spiritual. Huffington Post, huh? And then it said at the top, intentionally negative words can lower self-esteem and kill enthusiasm. Well chosen positive words on the other hand, can motivate and encourage dreams.
Yeah, I like that scripture. It says The power of death in life or in the tongue.
And I just specifically wanted to share that because in marriage, I think that this can be done so easily, but also so in a negative way it can work too well because we can really destroy each other if we’re not careful. So this is like a warning, but also an encouragement
Or really empower each other.
So our negative words can really lower the self-esteem of our spouses and kill the enthusiasm of our marriage. I know that when we are not sharing positive words with each other, we don’t even want to be around each other. On the other hand, well chosen positive words. That encouragement, that building up really motivates and encourages the wanting to be together, the wanting to dream together, the wanting to have a future and a hope moving forward. So just wanted to
Engage. So having them post is onto something.
So this article goes on to say, words spoken or written still hold power today. They can inspire us to achieve goals or they can hold us back from even trying. One simple sentence can make a difference in how a situation is perceived, which we talked about that in last episode of perception. That was really cool. That was towards the end. This is the phrase when you say you can’t, it means that you won’t.
That’s true. And I actually tell that to people all the time. I
Tell it to our kids, I say, because say, I can’t do that, whatever’s hard in their school. And I’d say, oh, we don’t say can’t.
This is actually exactly what my brother told me. Really? On the phone. He says, I can’t believe that. And I said, actually, you won’t believe it. And he said, you’re right. Yeah, because it’s not about can’t we only say that? That’s a powerful sentence
When you say, I wonder how many other phrases we say in our heads that we mean to say, but really it means it’s just we won’t. Okay. So that statement goes on to say that statement is profound in its simplicity. The meaning is clear. If you think you can’t, chances are good that you won’t. The power of words is psychological
And spiritual
And spiritual. So I just thought that this was interesting just on the basis that they’re agreeing that words are spiritual in a secular post, and that they have the power on our psyche, our choices, our belief. Something else that I found in searching about the power of words from a guy named Brian Bullock. He had a spoken words video that was really captivating, and there were certain parts of it that I just wanted to share with you guys. When other people say things really well, I just like to share the way that they said them. So he said, your words have the ability to shape your world. He said, stop talking death. Start talking life. In Genesis, the Bible is clear. God saw darkness. He saw chaos. He saw emptiness, he saw void, but he didn’t speak what he saw. He spoke what he wanted to see. And he said, let there be light. And you got to have the ability to do the same thing. You got to learn how to see chaos and speak peace. You got to learn how to see stress and anxiety and speak rest and confidence. You got to learn how to see fear and speak faith. You got to see craziness happening in the world, but speak order into your life. I just really appreciated the phrasing, the way he put it so clearly.
It’s really cool. And essentially he’s saying, we don’t have to just receive the word that the world gives us. We could speak the truth.
Going back to taking every thought captive, you don’t have to take the thoughts of chaos and stress and anxiety and fear and everything that’s happening either in the world or in the world around you, and just receive it. You test that and then you say, well, what does God’s word say about all of this or about me? So that was very encouraging, really. And so then, because it brought up Genesis one, which we’ve already been talking about, I did a little digging. There was that phrase where God said, let there be light. That really stood out to me. And I like to look up the Hebrew words of meanings to see if there’s anything layered in there, because God is so cool like that. I call it treasure. It just
Leaves little from the things that we’ve studied in Hebrew. I feel like the Hebrew language is a spiritual language. It’s so beautiful. It’s very intense and very deep.
So I looked up the word said, because not only is it a word, but it is what he used to bring order to the chaos. He said, yeah, he said, so in Hebrew, it is the word Amar, and it’s a verb, but it can be verbal or nonverbal. And I’m going to explain why. Actually, when I was digging into this, you and Elliot stepped into the room while I was listening to a video, and I told Elliot, this is what I like to do on my free time. It probably looked really boring to him, but he was like, oh, you think this is fun? I was like, yeah, I do. Maybe some of my interests will go onto them. But anyways, so verbal or nonverbal. So for example, in One Kings 1226, it says, andum said in his heart, and that phrase said in his heart is that Hebrew word Amar. But it’s also when God said, let there be light. And there’s also other, I mean, it’s used a lot throughout scripture in different meaning ways, apparently ways
From the most used words, right? In the Hebrew language. I feel like I heard him say that on the video when I was watching.
I don’t remember. I can’t confirm that. I didn’t write that note down. So Ome said in his heart, now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. So it was something that he believed and said inside of himself. He didn’t necessarily say it out loud,
But he still said it. Which is amazing to think that when we think thoughts, those are things that we’re actually saying,
And they can be just as powerful. I think that was why this stood out and was so interesting to me, because you can say it out loud or say it internally to yourself, and then taking it a step further, the ancient Hebrew language has pictures. So it’s a pictograph with the lettering. And so for this particular word, a mar, it’s an olive, a mem, and a rush. And I can’t draw these out for you guys, but if you wanted to look ’em up, the LF is like an X. The mem is a little box, and a rush is like a backwards are.
(01:00:59)
Okay. So I took that word and I was trying to search for what other people have said. What could the meanings of these words mean? And on a blog called a little perspective, it broke down this Hebrew word. And so the lf, it said the ox head, thus it means strength, power, or leader. The mem equals water, thus chaos, mighty or blood and rush equals the man, the head of man. Thus it could be head first, top, beginning, or man. And so then I’ll just quote them in saying this, the story being told seems to be power over chaos in the beginning. So power lf over chaos me in the beginning, rich.
So when God said just those letters are telling the creation story.
So they said, God exerted power over chaos. In the beginning when he said, Amar, I thought that was really cool. Another way that I wanted to see if I can look at these definitions of all off the men in the rush for myself and just see if you can order them a different way and if it mean anything. And so I took power, chaos in head, which whether you’re saying something or thinking it all come from your head, your mouth, or your mind. And so you can have, which can lead to power over chaos, power. Oh, power or chaos.
But I like the power over chaos too though, because I feel like our natural state is more chaotic than our ordered state, which is when we listen to God. Because when our flesh runs rampant, when our flesh just goes off on its own, it doesn’t feel good. It feels chaotic or out of control. And then the word of God brings that back into order. And so that’s really cool.
Thanks for bearing with me. All tried to explain that the word said, the verb used to create life as we know it has a spiritual meaning. And I love that. I love that God has put that there for us to explore, reminding us that we have the ability and responsibility to share and say words of life or words of death. The implications of knowing our words are spiritual is knowing that our words represent what we believe every day. So do we believe we’re set free from sin? Do we believe the best about our spouse? Do we believe prayer can actually transform us or circumstances? Do we believe our children are a blessing? These are all things that we probably run up against on a daily basis, if not thousands and thousands more. But we need to choose. We need to understand and choose if we’re bringing power
Over the chaos, over the chaos, which that was a really good way to end this, but I just want to remind everyone that the whole point of this episode was to show how spiritual words are and that words are spirit, and we need to test them like you were saying. So I love that breaking down of that Hebrew word. The Hebrew language is awesome. It’s really
Cool. Fascinating.
Awesome. So before we pray to close, I just want to encourage everyone, if you’ve gotten this far, you guys are awesome. These episodes have been long lately, but we’re going to work on shortening them. We’re getting used to video. So if you haven’t yet subscribe to our channel, you can like this video, you can also hit that little bell on YouTube to make sure you get notifications when we post new episodes. And if you’re listening on Apple or anywhere else, we thank you for being a listener. If you haven’t subscribed to our channel on wherever you’re listening to our podcast, like on iTunes or Spotify, please do so now. And lastly, if you could leave us a review, we’d really appreciate that. That’d be really awesome. The reviews help other people find the show. It helps the algorithms in all these podcasts and YouTube channels show our content to people. So yeah, why don’t you pray for us? Okay.
Dear Lord, thank you so much for the beauty of words. We thank you for language. We thank you for the ability of understanding what words mean. And we just pray, Lord, for our words. We pray that our words do give life. We pray that our words build each other up and build ourselves up in you. We pray that our words are life and life abundantly. And Lord, if there’s parts of us, parts in us, in our hearts that are not good, that not of you, we just pray that you would strip that away and fill it with you, fill it with your Word. And we just pray over our minds, Lord, that we are able to take every thought captive to obey Christ. And we just pray that you would continually mature our understanding of how to do that, and also just what the implications of our words mean. We thank you for just revealing that words are spiritual through your word, and we just pray that this would sit with us this week, that we would be intentional to evaluate our words and to submit them before you. And if again, there’s any parts of our language, our speech, our ways of thinking that you want to change, that we would surrender that to you and be transformed. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Amen.
