The Power Of Words And How They Shaped Our World

Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your host of the Marriage After God podcast.

Hello everyone. Welcome back

For another episode,

And this week we’re going to be talking about our words, the definitions of our words and how that shapes us and our world.

But before we do that, I want to talk about something that we realized over this last month or so, starting this year off, I realized that this next 10 years of our life, of our marriage, of our parenting is going to be some of the most important years of our life.

Yeah. I use the word important. I think I would use the word pivotal because it’s all important really.

Yeah. It’s all important. All the years

Are important. All the different seasons we’ve been through important.

But there’s a few things that I’m recognizing. I’m about to turn 40, which is a big deal I feel, but in the next 10 years I’m going to be 50. But putting me aside, if you add 10 years to each one of our kids’ ages, and this is a good practice for us to do, to just think about it, we’ve already been, we’re in central Oregon now for over 10 years, and it feels like it went by really fast. And if I add 10 years to Elliot, he’s going to be 21 years old and 10 years. And Edith is who is our youngest, is going to be 14.

Yikes.

So all of our kids are going to be teenagers or adults.

Yeah. I know this has been something that’s been on your mind lately. You have a birthday coming up, so it’s natural that you’re thinking about these things. But I did read Habits of the Household last year and we did a podcast episode on this, and in the back of the book, he does break down this little chart that talks about the next 10 years, and he even says, break down their age. I think you remember this, and he had some questions along with it. So if you guys want a little resource or tool, it’s a really great book. You should go check it out. But it kind of talks about this whole idea of the next 10 years and why it’s important that we focus on it. And something that I wanted to ask you, Erin, is in light of the next 10 years, let’s say at the end of this next 10 years, looking back, what’s one thing that you would want to be a major highlight?

I want to make sure that starting right away, I’m getting very intentional on how I’m investing in my kids. Not that I haven’t been before, but in a different way. They’re going from, their

Maturity is

Changing. Yeah. They’re going to become full-blown adults. And so getting them ready for the world, helping them and their worldview, preparing them for business and entrepreneurship or

Working, whatever it is, it’s more intentional discipleship.

And then also making sure they have really good memories. Yeah,

That’s totally what I would answer. I’d be like the best things we could possibly do in the next 10 years. I want to do it all,

But we can’t only have the good memories. I know we have to teach ’em a lot. So I just feel like there’s a lot of responsibility on this.

Even with their schooling. I know the first few years are impactful and foundational, but as the kids start getting into elementary, junior high, high school, I mean, those are some pretty critical educational opportunities for them to grow in their understanding of, like you said, the world and launching them into adulthood. So I’m with you. I think it’s going to be a wild next 10 years.

And I think one more last thing is I really want to see my boys become strong spiritually, emotionally, physically, men, leaders, and my daughters to become godly, beautiful, strong women leaders. Cool. So that’s what I want for my family, but it’s going to be a lot of work. Let’s do that.

If you could ask the audience to consider one thing this week in light of this impactful next 10 years, what would you want them to think about?

I would want to ask them how much intentional thought they’re putting into who their children are. Are they thinking about that or is it because it’s easy to just, well, they’re there. We’re here. We kind of have our routines, but that’s good. But how about, man, have I asked really deep questions lately? Do I know who they are? Those are some some serious things that we need to be considering as parents.

I had this dream the day after Christmas that really hit me hard. One of those gut punch, heart wrenching, this matters a lot to me type of dreams. And I was shopping in an antique, it was like a warehouse, but it was super fun to get into all the little things that treasures that I was finding. And my kids were present, but I only saw parts of them like an arm or the backside of Truitt’s head, and I wasn’t really seeing their full picture face body. And then towards the end of the dream, there was this hallway, and Elliot was standing down away, and he turned around and he looked right at me. He probably was like 20, which is weird because that’s what he’s right know. Yeah, 10 years. And he had this look of just like he was proud and he loved me and joy, but satisfaction, I don’t know. Everything wrapped up in this expression. And I smiled back, but inside I was like crushed. It was like happened. It’s gone. Yeah. The time is gone. My chances were

How did we get all the way to this point?

Exactly. And so I remember immediately waking up from that dream thinking, oh man, whatever is going on in my life, I need to change to make sure that I’m not missing anything. And there was this urgency to it. And I remember sharing all of that with you. And ever since I have been super motivated to just make sure that every day I make time to be in their space, making eye contact, affirming them. And these are all things that I’ve done before and in the past, but there’s just even more intentionality,

Just

Recognizing in light of this. Yeah, yeah. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow. And I don’t want to regret or miss the things I could have done today or yesterday.

And I would imagine being in the season of losing my brother and being in grief also highlights that reality of tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. It’s promised to no one and that we have today, and that we need to be recognizing that and be intentional and focused. And so can’t be perfect, but we can keep

Trying. Keep trying. Yeah, for sure. Hopefully that encourages you guys today.

So this episode, we’re continuing our series on words and the power of words, and we wanted to talk about how words have shaped the

World and just how important they are and how

Important they are. And there’s no better way to start off by about talking the power of words and their importance and starting with the beginning. The beginning. Because whether you believe it or not, everything that is in this world, including you and me, was created with words in Genesis one, one through three, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let

There be light. Let be light.

He doesn’t say, and God picked up or God took. God made God. God said He only used his words. He only needed his words to create everything. And what’s amazing is so powerful in the New Testament, we learned this about Jesus. It says, without him, nothing is created. And the Bible calls him the word of God. And so words are so powerful that they were able to create everything. And that doesn’t mean that we, and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, have that same power to create things from nothing out of our words, but our words definitely dictate the direction of our life, the words that we believe, the words that we listen to, the words that we repeat.

And there’s

So much have power in our life.

There’s so much a part of our every single day, every day, every aspect of our life revolves around

Words and thoughts, which is what some more things we’re going to talk about is what’s in our thoughts. The power of words was recognized immediately, not just in God creating everything, of course, but when we have God telling Adam and Eve, you can eat of everything in the garden, but don’t eat of the fruit of this tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the serpent comes and immediately attacks God’s creation

Using the same power,

Using that same power, try and undermine, to try and defeat, to try and thwart. And so he comes and he goes to eve, and he doesn’t come with a weapon like a knife or a gun. I mean, those things didn’t even exist yet. He doesn’t

Force

Her. It doesn’t force her even. He uses his words. He says, did God say, and he uses his words to challenge God’s word. So you have immediately this conflict, this struggle between truth and lie. The struggle whose

Words

To believe, whose words are we going to believe? And so we know this from the beginning, that the devil, the serpent knew the power of words, and he knew that he needed to get her to listen to his words in order to accomplish what he wanted in her life. So his weapon to take power and authority from man, it was his words, it was to undermine. And that’s exactly how Satan intended to attempt Jesus. So we go from the Old Testament, Satan, the serpent, trying to get Adam and Eve with words, and then we jump to the New Testament and he does the exact same thing but with Jesus. So when Jesus gets led off into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, after being baptized to be tempted by the devil, the devil comes to him with words, and he actually comes to him with the word of God several times.

Manipulatively. Yeah,

Yeah. Misrepresenting, deceiving, taking out of context, using to get his own results, his own way. And how does Jesus respond every single time to the words that Satan brings is the words of God, which is exactly what Adam and Eve should have done. They should have returned with the deception of the devil and the serpent with God’s words. No, God said, don’t touch or don’t eat.

It’s cool to see how that is redeemed here, that Jesus was able to address him according to the word, and did the thing that Adam and Eve should have done. But it’s so interesting in talking about temptation and words because usually when you think of being tempted, it’s usually what you see with your eyes, what you want to touch, what you want to eat, what you want to consume. But when we’re tempted, do we actually hear words?

I believe believers do I believe believers? Do I believe Christians who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them do hear God? Because the Bible tells us that with every temptation, God will provide a way of escape. That there’s no temptation that is too strong for us to bear, and that when we’re tempted, there’s this fleshly response, either our eyes or our sense we’re having a sensual engagement. We see something that we want and our flesh wants it. But there’s a spiritual side to it that before we in the temptation, you haven’t sinned yet. It’s when you’ve made that choice, it’s when you’ve acted upon that and that

Internal dialogue of context.

Yeah, there’s this, you’re having this conversation with the truth and the lie, and often we justify it. We’re like, oh, I can just do it this one time. Oh, it’s not that big of a deal. But really what we’re doing is we’re convincing ourselves to go against what we know either know is the truth or what the Holy Spirit is telling us is the truth. So we’re having this argument with God against his word and our own flesh or the temptations word.

It was crazy. I just never saw temptation in light of the heavy usage of words before, but it’s totally right. In fact, this is really weird and a very kind of, what’s it called when it’s something surface level,

Superficial maybe

Superficial example. But we went out to dinner the other night and they offer complimentary bread and it looks so good and it smells so good, but I’m supposed to be gluten-free. And you were talking to me about something and you stopped and you were like, what’s wrong? What’s going on? What are you thinking about? Just get sitting in your face. And all I kept hearing in my head is, I want the bread. I want to eat that bread. And so I said that to you so you

Couldn’t even hear me.

I just really want the bread. I think that’s so funny. I never would’ve thought of that if we weren’t talking about this right now.

But yeah, I think it happens. I think unless we’ve totally shut the Holy Spirit up in our lives and it pushed him away so much, which we don’t want to be there as believers, we’re hearing the Holy Spirit, he loves us, and he comes and he’s going to remind us of the truth and righteousness and judgment and conviction, and that’s what the Holy Spirit does.

So what we need to do is be so acquainted with the word that we can distinguish the truth from the lie

And sensitive when we hear that conviction. That’s the Holy Spirit talking to me. I should listen.

Well, as we talk about the power of words today, and we wrap our heads around the importance of this topic, I’d love to also bring up the contrast of, we mentioned our biblical worldview of creation and the power of words, but I’d also like to highlight the secular world and culture and what they believe about words. Do they also recognize the power of words?

And I would say yes, because seen this in, when you think of the word propaganda, this is a term that was coined, but it’s based off of an idea that we can use words and messaging to control, to convince, to manipulate. And so words have always been messaging, and they’ve always been used to get an agenda across to get an idea across, to conform and to manipulate and to mold people.

There’s even movements out there. Or when you think of the media repeated words that will then, because they’re used in a specific way start to represent many words on a certain subject,

And they encapsulate ideas in these small packages, words that probably used to mean something else, and then they encapsulate an entire culture idea into it. So it hijacks it from its original meaning and uses it for something new, which happens a lot.

Another one is positive talk, like self-talk, just building up your confidence. But in the world’s way, I think of the guy with the headpiece that’s hyping up the audience and telling them how to do this, how to meditate on words that when you speak them, you actually start to believe them.

And that is also true because scientifically, biologically, there’s the power of positivity or if we say negative things, we’re going to have negative outcomes. If we say positive things, we’ll have positive, which there’s truth to these things. It’s like

They’re tapping into a spiritual principle,

Which is exactly what they’re doing, but they’re using it for their own themselves. Yeah, their own version of it to get God out of the picture when God’s like it doesn’t work that way.

Another term that you might have become familiar with recently, I feel like I see it a lot, especially on social media, is the word manifesting or speaking things into existence. And it’s this idea that if you say what you want or you’re creating your own reality,

Yeah, you’re going to do what God did essentially is you’re going to take something from nothing, and by speaking it, you’re going to create what you want for your life. And there might be some truth to those things, but that’s a hijacking of what God intended, and it’s turning it into a very secular, very pseudo spiritual unbiblical, un-Christian way of being. But it’s all operating in the same concept that words have power because people recognize that they know the world knows that words and definitions and messaging all have a power to manipulate and control and to bend and transform.

I think a

Person in a society

With these things speaking about the secular world is there for self and for your own will where a believer believes the power of words and believes the power of scripture, but has a heart for God, for his will, which

Is going to be the essential theme of this whole episode. We talked about Adam and Eve listening to the serpent versus God, Jesus listening to God versus the devil and trying to decipher whose words we have, which is where we’re going to end this episode, but for now, we’re going to be developing this picture bigger. How important have words been in society? How important are they? Now?

A few other examples just talking about the world and how they believe in the power of words. When I think of movie writers, screenwriters and they come up with their one liners or their quotes that are sticky and people walk away from a movie being able to remember them, I think that’s crazy.

And man, media, not just social media, but movies, music have shaped,

Entertainment

Has shaped much of the way we think as a society, sadly. And I talked about this last episode, just recognizing what are the things that I’m letting my kids listen to? What are the things I’m listening to that I’m allowing to have on repeat in my life, which then gets in you and then starts coming out of you. Yeah.

Another one is trending words. So words that were created, we see this a lot in younger generations, which you were just talking about the other day. There’s so many words that the kids saying the kids are using, and it’s like, what do they even mean? And who’s creating them and

All of that. It does blow my mind, the Gen Zers, and they have a whole new language almost. And I was asking her, I was like, who came up with these words? Did they come from some singer or someone on YouTube? Who knows? I don’t know. I couldn’t even tell you, but I’m sure someone knows. But there’s a phrase I want us to think about. And there was a reason it was invented, but it was sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And it was this phrase intended to say, when someone calls you names, when someone’s saying mean things to you, you can be stronger than that. They’re just words. But the reality is that’s so false

Because words are destructive

And it’s the way we hear them, and it’s the way we deal with them, which is why that phrase was come up. It’s like, Hey, you can actually deal with these words in a healthy way. But all that phrase did was is convinced the person saying it is your words shouldn’t be hurting me, even though they are, but they shouldn’t be because they’re just words. But words are incredibly powerful. We’ve all been affected by something someone said to us before, and it still plays on repeat in our heads and in our hearts, and it dictates the way we think and see the world.

Something that I wanted to share with you guys is a quote from Dan Gerofsky, the Jackson Eli Reynolds, professor in humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. And I’m just going to read it. I just like the way that he details this point. It says, understanding why and how languages differ, tells about the range of what is human discovering, what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity. So it’s kind of like this idea of there’s so many different languages out there, but when you break ’em down to their simplest of words and how each language shares that core value, it reveals more about the human.

And it’s true in every culture. There’s a word for mom and every culture, there’s a word for dad.

So it kind of highlights priority or value

Or human relationship and how that’s universal, but which that topic of finding that core, those connections in languages, brings me to the next section of this episode where we’re going to talk about some of the most powerful stories in the Bible that show the power of words. And you can’t have a conversation

About words without talking about the Tower of Babel. Yeah, yeah.

And so Genesis 11 verse one, which is the section that talks about this, it’s a short story of the Tower of Babel, the people of the world coming together. This is shortly after the flood, we’ll say shortly relatively, but it’s after the flood and they come together and they want to build a city and they want to build a tower to the heavens, and they say, let’s make a name for ourselves. Let’s make sure we’re great and remembered. And so they’re there and they’re building it. But in verse one, it says this. It says, now the whole earth had one language makes sense. This is when you think about the tower bubble, you think, oh, they all spoke the same language and that’s why they were able to work. But there’s a second part to this verse that I think is even more important than the same language. It says Now, the whole earth had one language and the same words,

Which is an

Interesting thing that it’s separated that

Way. It sounds like it’s saying the same thing,

But it’s not saying the same thing. Because here in America, here in the United States, most of us speak the same language, but we absolutely do not have the same words

Or even phrases. They mean different things. Yeah,

I might say something and it means something to me, you, but that will mean something totally different to another group of people in the same country.

So I was listening to a pastor talking about the power of words, and he brought up how the disconnect between generations of kids saying different things. And so he made the statement about wanting to go home and Netflix and chill and getting really embarrassed because his teenage kids told him afterwards, after the sermon what it

Really meant.

What it really meant. And he was like, oh, well, he thought it

Meant there was disco watching Netflix and hanging out.

Yeah, exactly. So you can see same words in the same language or

Same language, not the

Same meaning,

But not the same meaning. And so there’s a reason that this verse says this, because the point that the Bible is making is not that they just spoke the same language and that was dangerous. It’s that they all had the same ideas, the same agenda, the same words, the same definitions of those words. They were so unified that the Bible says this in Genesis 11, six. It says, God said, behold, they are one people and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will not now be impossible for them. So it wasn’t just that they had one language, it’s that there were one people.

So why would God want to stop them from being able to do the impossible?

Well, I think God does love when his creation does what it’s supposed to do. If he’s stopping them, then there’s something happening that they’re not supposed to be doing. Just like God telling Eve and Adam, you can eat of all these trees, but not that one. He had an order to it. So we have

These people coming. There’s probably a level of protection because he knows,

Well, there’s a pridefulness. So they wanted to make a name for themselves, not a name for God.

So they weren’t doing his will. No.

So even though they were unified, even though there were one people, even though they were doing this, the God himself says there’s nothing impossible for them to do now, which

Is amazing.

That’s incredible to think about because nothing’s changed about the human race since then, other than we don’t have the same words. We have a hard time with our communication. None of us like each other. We’re not unified. We’re not unified like they were. And so it wasn’t that he wanted to just stop them from doing something impossible and incredible. It’s that they were doing their own will. They were using the words that they had were not God’s words. So they had the same words, just not his. And that makes a big difference.

Well, we kind of see this truth being played out in today’s age with the construction of so many different technologies and structures,

Amazing technologies,

Amazing. And in a lot of ways, we have come together since the Tower of Babel in language. And not that we’re all unified, but even just knowing English is probably the most used language around the world, and a lot of people know it. There’s been a lot of growth toward understanding each other.

Well, there’s definitely, I would say just because in many areas we disagree as a humanity. There’s a lot of people on one side right now that all do agree on things that God doesn’t exist, that science is God. So they have all of this, their minds in one place. And we are in a very similar situation where man is trying to make a name for themselves. Man is trying to become like God. And that’s exactly what the serpent tempted eve with you will become like, God, you will know what he knows. You’ll understand good and evil just like he does. And so man is doing that. And so I think we are at one time in the place of Babel. Before that it was Noah is time. And the Bible tells us it’s just like it was a nose time. So will it be in the

End times? Yeah,

Until we’re seeing that again.

So we don’t have to go on a tangent with this topic, but I’d love to bring it up because it has to do with words, right? It’s pretty relevant these days in talking about technologies and being able to put our minds to something ai, and I know people have been hearing a lot about this lately, but it’s an entire

Artificial intelligence.

It’s an entire program on words and a database collection of words.

Yeah. Simple way to understand, because I actually barely understand it, but I listened to a podcast on it that was from some of the creators of some of the technologies out there, and they’re called large language models. And so they’re these super fast, super smart computers that are trained on languages and on information. So they’re filled with data sets is what they call, but what the AI does, what makes it artificial intelligence is it’s really good and really fast at predicting sequences of letters. So it knows if there’s an I, how likely an S will come after that. Interesting. Okay. And it’s calculating these

Instantaneously, and it’s just getting faster and faster

And faster and smarter, but not just with words. It’s large languages. So it’s not just letters, but then it’s whole words and then it’s whole phrases, and then it’s whole sentences, and then it’s whole paragraphs, and then it’s whole papers. And so it’s so smart now that it can write something and you won’t be able to tell that it wasn’t written by a human. And so it’s understanding the power of words,

And then you use words to kind of prompt it because exactly. We’ve dabbled in just trying to wrap our heads around it. And you can actually create pictures by just adding a few words into the little

Box, which is interesting. It reminds me of God creating everything with words.

And that’s really

Cool. Now we can type in a prompt and it creates a video, it creates a picture, and it’s like, what the made this whole thing?

I wonder what it would come out of if we put in there, let there be light. What?

Well, it’s got a whole plethora of history that I can draw from. So draw, it’s

Cool. Okay, well, we’re getting into futuristic stuff here, but let’s go back to an early invention that really changed the dynamic of language and

Words and shaped the world. The Gutenberg press. So this was the printing press designed by Gutenberg to mass produce printed articles, books, pamphlets, printouts, anything that they can quickly type pages and mass produce that page, 10,000 of them, thousand. I actually don’t know how fast it was, but

I’m sure it wasn’t that fast a lot.

And it was invented in 1440, which launched the printing revolution. But to understand that this was revolutionary on so many levels, it affected religion, politics, family, life, education so much more. And throughout history, we see the evolution of language due to this, the changing of power and conflicts and migration of people and the contents, the books that they brought with them. And I wanted to read this article. I found this little section. It says, the printing revolution occurred when the spread of the printing press facilitated the wide circulation of information and ideas acting as an agent of change through the societies that it reached demand for Bibles, which is really cool that it was the Bible that pushed a lot of this demand. Demand for Bibles and other religious literature was one of the main drivers of the very rapid initial expansion of printing. Much later printed literature played a major role in rallying support and opposition during the lead up to the English Civil War, and later still the American and French Revolution through newspapers, pamphlets, and bulletins. The advent of printing press brought with it issues involving censorship and freedom of the press.

Where’s that from?

I thought I put a note on here, but I don’t remember it. I was looking up the Gutenberg press and there was a whole article on it, on a slight talking about it’s how it affected the whole world, but with the ability, the ease of being able to now spread ideas like the Bible or pamphlets and bulletins, newspapers, things for politics came this idea of like, oh, we need to censor this and control this because that’s too easy. Interesting. Which is where we get the freedom of press now, which is a part of our constitution. It’s part of our Bill of Rights. But I want to talk about the Bible and how the printing press is one thing. It made it easy to get ideas printed and spread, but the Bible is this single handedly the most influential text in the whole of the world.

(30:51)
And so before the printing press, why Cliff, who did the first English translation of the Bible hand wrote each translation he hand wrote it took him about eight months to do each copy. But because the Roman Catholic church was in charge and Bibles were not allowed to be in English, they were only allowed to be in Latin. They were being destroyed almost as fast as they were being copied. So they weren’t being spread at all. And there’s only, I think a handful still in existence, these original translations, but the printing or the invention of the printing press allowed for that to become real. And so we have currently, we have 736 languages where the whole Bible’s been translated into it. That’s cool. Out of 7,000 languages, that’s not enough. That’s not enough. That’s 10%. That’s not bad. We

Should be able to do better now that there’s ai, I feel like AI would be able to really get a hand in

This. I wouldn’t put it past anyone to say that. There’s probably someone out there developing AI models on different languages and saying, Hey, here’s feeding it the language and then having it translate the Bible, which would be awesome. Here’s the problem. I wouldn’t even know how to check that. How would you know if I did it right? I you’d have to also know that language. And then the New Testament has been translated into 1,658 languages. So more of the New Testament’s been translated into more languages, and then portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,600 languages. But still, that’s only half the languages of the world. But it’s cool to know that the translations of the Bible spreading the word of Gods using these words to affect other cultures, other nations is massive. Talking about Bibles, I want to talk about probably the most influential Bible that was ever written.

The King James version.

King James version. And I just want, and I’m not saying that everyone has to read this version, I have copies of it. I like going back and forth. It’s a beautiful, beautifully translated Bible. But this article from Baylor University says this about the KJV and its profound influence on the world we know. It says, when we recall how English colonies were beginning to spread around the world in 1611, how a settlement was already developing tentatively in Virginia from 1607 with Massachusetts only a few years away, we realized how wonderfully the translators timed their work, how providentially over the coming centuries Christianity of the British Isles would become a driving force in Christian expansion worldwide in North America, Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. And wherever those believers went, they brought with them the same. They brought with them the structures and cadences of the King James Bible.

(33:54)
Whenever and wherever English speaking Christians debated their faith, when they debated the nuances of words and phrases, the words over which they battled were those of a common Bible translation, the one that appeared in 1611. So for generations, for hundreds of years, the 1611 Bible, the King James version commissioned by King James himself was the Bible that people talked about was the Bible that people used. And so if you’re our age and older, I don’t think anyone younger than us for the most part, probably grew up on the King James. But I want to ask you, if I was to ask you to recite John three 16, what would you say?

Our father, oh wait. I was going to do the Lord

Prayer. Not that one. John three 16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son for whoever should,

That whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Yes, which is the King James version.

That’s so funny. I went straight to the Lord’s Prayer. I know we did a series on it

Recently. Yeah, we were doing the Lord Prayer recently. But many of

Us guess it sounds a lot different than just the other versions out there.

Memorize the King James version of a lot of verses. Growing up, if you were raised in a Christian home, the King James Bible single handedly raised generations of people out of illiteracy because it was the only book they had. It was the only Bible they had. They didn’t have lots of, they may not have had books, but they had the Bible.

I think it’s a cool point that it said, any nuances that were discussed or debated came from the same text, which same words. I think that’s a really important value to have that even if there were nuances, they still only had the single text to look at. And today we have quite a few different versions of the Bible where there’s variations in it. And so what would you say to those listening right now about that? And is there any issues with that?

We should do an episode on Bible translations. It’s pretty interesting. I read a book by Leland, who’s a literary professor. His whole perspective was just trying to break down the literary validity of different translation theories. The two main being essentially literal or dynamic equivalence. And so essentially literal would be like your King James version, your E-S-V-N-A-S-V, those types of Bibles. And then your dynamic equivalence would be NIV, the message Bible being one of the most notable. But the idea is word for word or thought for thought. And so the word for word translations are going to stay as strict as possible to the original words and word order and just trying to find the most equivalent word in the host language. So if it’s food in the Hebrew, then they’re going to use the word food in the English where thought for thought or dynamic equivalence is trying to decide or define what the author was meaning and convey the meaning across with different words. And going into what we’re going to talk about in a little bit about this idea of changing definitions and changing words. It matters because Leland Reichen makes this point. He says in the Old Testament, when it talks of tense or in the Bible anywhere where it talks of tents like a tense, like you pitch tent and you live in it and it’s temporary. It’s a

Nomadic.

It’s nomadic. Yeah, it’s temporary. He’s like, if you take the word tent and you say, oh, we no longer live in tents. And so to make it more make sense nowadays, let’s replace the word tents with house, because most people live in a house. Most people don’t live in a tent anymore. But the problem is, is you lose immediately the purpose and the meaning behind the idea of a tent. It’s gone because this house is right here. It’s not moving anywhere. It’s not being folded up, it’s not being put on my back. It’s not putting put on a camel or a horse, but a tent does. So when Paul says this body is a tent, he means it. This is a temporary dwelling place. This is not our permanent home. And so we get an image of, oh, just like the people of Israel lived in tents, they were longing for a permanent home just like we do. This is not my, I don’t want, this is not my permanent home. My body’s not my permanent home. I have a permanent home in heaven. So understanding meanings and words and keeping original definitions and ideas matters.

Well, yeah, because when the story of Tower of Babel, God scattered everybody and confused their language. They didn’t have the same understanding. They didn’t have the same way of communicating, which made it

Very difficult,

Which made it difficult. It made it impossible for them to do what they had been doing.

And this is exactly what the enemy is trying to do in our modern culture and has been doing since the beginning of time, trying to confuse the language, trying to confuse the definitions, trying to rewrite the definitions, trying to get these people over here to believe one thing. And these people are here to believe another thing. And also we do that internally also. We try and redefine things for ourselves so that we can get away with what we want. Well, that’s not actually sin because maybe for them, but not for me. Is

That what that word really means?

Yeah. Is that what that really means? You got to really say, I shouldn’t do that. We do it for ourselves sometimes. So these continually trying to confuse and completely undermine what God has given us, which we keep going back to this idea, is whose words have, whose words are you listening to? Whose words do you believe?

So you grabbed some current examples.

I did. This is a light one. This is a lighthearted one. But when I say the word milk, I want the viewers and listeners to think themselves, what do they think of milk? How would they define that? And I bet you, depending on if they’re lactose intolerant or not, if they don’t like dairy, they might have a different definition of milk, right?

First thing I thought of was white liquid from a cow,

White liquid from a cow. But there’s going to be someone watching it now that’s like, oh, the first thing I thought of was almond. Yeah,

Almond milk.

Or someone’s like, the first thing I thought of was oat milk, or I even heard that there’s algae milk. I don’t even know who would be drinking that.

They probably have to drink it.

But when you think about this, you can have a carton that says milk, but what kind of milk is it? And is it milk? The actual definition of milk is this an opaque white fluid rich in fat and protein secreted by female mammals for the nourishment of their young. That’s the actual definition of milk.

So by definition it’s milk can’t be oat milk, almond milk.

Nope. None of those are milk by definition. Interesting. They’re not. They may be milk substitutes, but none of the cartons say that. It doesn’t say almond milk substitute. Maybe some of ’em do. But it says almond milk. But this is a current fight actually. There’s the dairy farmers that are trying to fight the FDA and force them to disallow milk, substitute companies from allowing the term milk on their curtains. They want it to be like almond drink because it’s not milk. And if you define it as milk, then what is real milk? If everything’s just milk,

It’s like a marketing thing.

It’s a marketing thing. But this is a lighthearted view of what’s currently happening in today’s world of

Redefining and relabeling things

Call this something else. So here’s some other examples. When I say the word awful. What?

Terrible. Horrible.

Yeah. It actually used to mean worthy of awe, which is the exact opposite.

Now we have awesome,

Which

I think is worthy of awe.

Yeah, we replaced it with awesome, but awful. Used to mean full of awe or awe full,

Didn’t know that

Worthy of another one is the word naughty? What does that mean?

Not good, bad, terrible.

You’ve done something sinful or wrong. Well, it actually used to mean has not or doesn’t have anything. Or is a poor person. So someone who is naughty, I was a poor person

Or has not wisdom

Lack, you can probably navigate how it transferred to what it means now without your devoid of good or I dunno. I dunno how we would’ve gotten here. The last one is the word nice. What does that mean?

Good kind? Yeah.

Pretty. Maybe it actually used to mean ignorant or foolish or stupid person.

Okay. Didn’t see that coming.

So these are what words originally meant, and now what they currently mean and how we’ve just adopted them in new meanings, new ideas, new definitions, totally changes them. So we can call someone a nice person and not realize that that originally meant they’re ignorant and we’re using that word in a positive way. It’s pretty interesting. There was a bunch of other words that I found the word silly or pretty, which don’t mean what you think they

Mean. Is it normal for words to change over time, to be redefined?

Well, yes. Like I said, we looked at this story of Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that the temptation was you could be like God, knowing good and evil or defining good and evil as some might define or describe that. And so Satan was changing God’s words and eve even changed God’s words. If you go back to that story, God says, don’t eat. He did not tell them not to touch it. Now, that would go without saying because you’re like, oh, we shouldn’t eat it. We probably shouldn’t even go near it. That would be like wisdom. But he said, don’t eat it. She goes, and the serpent says, are you surely going to die? Did he really say that? And then she says, yeah. He says, we shouldn’t eat it or even touch it. But that’s not what God said. She was even changing what she heard God say. And so over time, this is a normal human thing to do, to take words and redefine them all the time. And sometimes situations redefine words. Sometimes societies redefine words.

And you can see how that adds to the confusion. Yeah. And the disconnect of understanding When that happens,

I’m going to name say some other words that our current culture is, and the enemy is dismantling, destroying, redefining. And the idea is if you can take a word that means this and then say, oh, it could also mean whatever you want. Really what you’ve done is destroyed the word. You’ve taken away all meaning.

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So here’s some words I’m not going to go into how everyone watching can probably have their own ideas and things that they’ve seen and heard. But here’s some words, man, woman, masculine, feminine, marriage, sex, love, good, bad sin, and even Christian, those words get redefined to mean whatever someone wants them to mean. And that’s sad. It takes away the definition that God gave them and what he intended for them. And so if you can redefine it, if you can take these words that actually mean something and make them mean something else, then they lose. They’re true meaning and power

When we no longer have the same words or the same meanings, we see that lack of understanding in society and the confusion and that lack of communication. And really we can see it all the way down to relationships. So like a husband and wife who aren’t on the same page, who don’t use the same language or understanding, there’s a lack of communication

There. And I feel like that is a good way to define the current world we live in. We’re seeing a breakdown of language, of words, of meaning, of authority in those words. And our encouragement to our viewers, our listeners, is that we need to have the same words because the same thing that God said about those people in the tower, Babel is still true to this day, but he desires us to have that

We are

Unified,

But that we could do anything,

That we could do anything. But think about what that means as a church, as a couple, that when we have the same words, when we have the same language, when it comes from the same source, that’s powerful in many ways. So that leads us to the last portion of this.

I don’t think we’re quite at the last portion, but

Last dish portion. Okay. So the question for us is, and we’ve kind of been reiterating this, is whose words do we have God’s words that give life? Or are we listening to the serpent’s words instead that confuse, that diminish that steal? And that’s what we need to be asking ourselves is where are we? Are we getting our ideas from our thoughts, from our words, from

Yeah. Are we getting them from the word of life or are we getting them from social media, from our parents or family members or friends or our own critical voice that we hear internally that we struggle with? Or like you said, the lies from the enemy, the manipulation, the deception. Because words are really powerful. We’ve talked about this and how they can be really destructive. And if we’re believing the wrong thing, we can be entertaining confusion, which can lead to despair.

And it doesn’t mean that your parents can’t have the words of God or that a social media influencer can’t be proclaiming the word of God or encouraging you with words that are from God. But are we careful for that or are we just testing everything? Yeah. Are we testing the words?

Yeah. I didn’t mean to list it. It was they were all negative. I should have clarified.

No, but the idea is like, are we just not blankly, but are we just

Accepting what everyone around us is saying or giving or offering

And not knowing whose words those are and just saying, oh, we’re just going to receive that and we do got to be careful. You mentioned it. What is it called when you’re just scrolling and it’s like doom scrolling, doom scrolling. How much content we actually consume on a daily basis. And if you’ve ever watched the movie Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio, the idea of that movie is he goes into a dream and he wants to implant an idea into someone’s head. And that’s actually happening on a daily basis.

I feel like that happened to me once. I think many of you might have followed our story from the beginning, but when we were first married, the first four years, we struggled really terribly with intimacy and we really struggled and

We were on the verge of being done with each other.

And I was going back to college at this time, and I was sitting in a class and an older woman in front of me, she wasn’t even talking to me, she was talking to some other lady, but they were talking about relationship issues. And she used the word compatible in a negative way,

Incompatible

Incompatibility. And it stuck with me. And because I was vulnerable and in a state of my own frustrations and doubt and insecurities about where

We are and not going to God

And not going to God, I took what they were saying and then doubt set in. And I kept hearing that word incompatible over and over and over again. Not that I was meaning to entertain it, but you talked about inception. It was like it set in. And then I started to question, are we incompatible Because the things that we’re going through aren’t working for us. So that was just one example,

And that was a powerful example because that one word,

I literally had to break that lie. I could not believe

It. I actually remember you telling me that. What if we’re not compatible? And I looked at you and I was like, what? I was like, what are you talking about? But I remember that, and that’s that idea of inception. That was a movie. But it’s something that happens all the time when we’re vulnerable and not filling ourselves with the word of God. When we don’t have God’s words, then someone else’s words might slip in. And if we’re just, we got to be careful. If we’re just scrolling and you’re seeing thousands of pieces of content, thousands of ideas, thousands of words a day, and you’re just, you’re like, oh, it’s entertainment. Oh, it’s mindless. It’s not a big deal. You’re just letting all that in. Ideas are going to come in ways of thinking are going to be

Adopted, need,

We need to guard it. Yeah.

Proverbs 13, three says, blessed is the one who finds wisdom and the one who gets understanding. And I like this verse. It doesn’t talk specifically about words, but it does talk about finding that wisdom, which we know is the word of God and getting understanding. Yeah,

I agree. I think wisdom is not necessarily talking about words specifically, but this is how we understand words. It’s how we contest, what are we hearing? And it says, whoever finds wisdom in the one who gets understanding, they’re blessed. And this is what God wants for us starting in the beginning of this topic was whose words do we have? Wisdom and understanding points us to God’s words. What has he said about us? What has he said about who we are and who he is and how the world works? And when Christians have this, what they’re blessed by is that unification under one banner, under one set of words,

Which I love that just like how that quote you were reading earlier about the 1611 King James Bible and the nuances of Christianity, they were able to talk about it according to that scripture. No matter what, when we’re sharing about the word of God, when we’re learning about the word of God, no matter where we go in the world, we find other believers we can share the same language. That’s a really beautiful thing.

We may not relate in the way we live. We may not relate in the kinds of food we eat. We may not relate in the hobbies we have or the anything, but we can absolutely 100% relate on the word of God.

We early in our marriage, got to travel with a missions organization. We got to go to Zambia and Malawi. And that’s a long ways from here. And yet we found Bible believing people that we could

And can have a conversation with ’em about it.

Talk to them. I love that. I love that God’s language is universal.

And so whose words do we have? Why don’t you share about this study that you,

So in an article on full focus, Aaron Wildermuth shares how words help shape our perception of the world, which I thought this is interesting, especially in light of how we were talking earlier about the difference between a biblical worldview and secular, but just the power of words in general and how it shapes our perception of life and reality. In a study done in 2013, they showed volunteers two images and primed a group of people with a specific word about the suppressed image and the other group a wrong word about it. And so when they showed the two images, they could see the one image, but the other one was not so clear. Does that make sense? Okay. But the group that had a specific word about the suppressed image were able to see that image. So

They had a descriptor word, and so they could see clearly the word they had.

Yes. Wow.

So their vision was clear because of the word they had. Yes.

Which I think was so interesting. And the other group with the wrong word couldn’t see it.

That’s interesting. So that goes back to our, if we can change the definition of a word, we can’t see it. We can’t see what the image was meant to be, which is, so going back to the word marriage and the world is absolutely trying to dismantle that word and what it means,

Well redefine it. Yeah.

Well, but by redefining it, you lose what it means. And so as Paul said, he explains that it’s a mystery that it represents and that mystery is Christ in the church. So if you can redefine that one word,

Can you redefine Christ in the church?

Well, like you said in this example, you make the image that might be blurry to most impossible to see because of the wrong word you have for it now.

So it’s interesting when we think about our relationship with God and in marriage, just the world around us and how the words that we know and believe shape how we see and how we experience our reality. It’s so crazy. We talked about in interviews recently when we were discussing about the marriage gift, our latest book, we were talking about the power of prayer as a married couple. And I told you that I love praying in the morning because I then get to think about all the things that we just prayed for throughout the day. And it gives me better eyes to see those things with, because I’m expecting it, I’m looking for it. I don’t know an example off the top of my head, but if I’m praying for peace and unity in our relationship, you’re

Recognizing when we’re kind chaotic.

Exactly. Now in a negative correlation. So in a way, my heart is primed to see those positive things because we’ve already mentioned it in prayer in a negative way. If my mind is wrapped up on seeing you in a way that is unbecoming, like something that bothers me, a perception of you that

Which I never do.

No, this is just,

I never bother you. This

Is theoretical. If you do something along those lines, you affirm the negative thought I’ve had about you

In your mind. So

Then I see that picture and you’re looking for it. And I’m looking for it. Yeah. So I hope I’m making sense with all of this. But when it comes to marriage, I think it’s so important that we recognize the words that we hear, believe, and know toward each other. And so prayer could be a really great tool to use to be able to get your eyes and your mind and your heart primed to see the good, to expect the good.

It makes me think about all the things that we say to each other, which we’re going to talk about this in a later episode, but those thoughts are we allowing those to come out. And we’re like, oh, you’re always this, or, see, I knew you were going to do that, and we affirm the wrong words instead of,

And then that’s the picture that we start seeing, and we see it everywhere all the time.

Well, and then we may adopt them. If I’m saying ’em to you and you hear my words and you love me and you value things I say, which is why a husband and wife have the unique ability to hurt each other. Most people can’t do because

Of that. Or build each other up. In an incredible way. In an extraordinary way, which is what we want to encourage you guys to do. And so that’s, sorry for carrying on about that. I love it. Another thing, this is what makes the power of forgiveness so transformative and apology and repentance. Repentance. And when you communicate in marriage and you say those types of words, I’m sorry, I forgive you, I love you. Those have such a huge weight of meaning behind them. And when you are on the same page and you have the same meaning for words, you have that same understanding. What a clear picture, what a unifying experience that a couple can have because of those types of words.

Something that we’ve been trying to practice lately. It happens. We say something and then we are like, why do we say that we’re angry, we’re hurt, whatever. And we say something that we shouldn’t have. Instead of just saying sorry, or I didn’t mean to hurt you, which are true, but it defeats the or. It overlooks the point that we said something that we either didn’t mean or we did mean, and we want to repent of that. We don’t want to mean that of apologizing, saying, I’m sorry I said that. I shouldn’t have said that what I said was wrong. And actually calling out that we use words that were wrong, hurtful lies sinful. And so not just letting them come out and the Bible calls ’em careless words like we’re going to be judged for every careless word that comes out of our mouth, that matters. So

That was a lot to digest, but it was fascinating to me. Hopefully you guys got encouraged by everything.

In the next few episodes, we’re going to be talking about why words are so powerful that they’re more than just words. We’re going to be talking about words that we could sharing with ourselves, words to share with your spouse. And so we’re going to talking about a lot of stuff. We want you to stay tuned. If you have not done so yet, please subscribe to our channel, subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen or watch. And before we go, I’m going to pray. Dear Lord, we love you and we thank you for words. We thank you that you’ve given us the word Jesus, that he came in the flesh, that he died, that he resurrect from the dead, and that he’s now sitting at your right hand. And because of that, we get eternal life. We get access to you, father, that now we can communicate directly with you.

(01:00:01)
God, I pray that as Christians, we would recognize the power of words, God, that with words you created everything and God that you desire, that our words coming out of our mouth, our words that are coming into us would be from you. That we would test all the words we hear, that we would test all the words that come at us, father God. And we wouldn’t just receive everything at face value. And so I pray for everyone listening, everyone watching God, that they would be good at hearing your word, that they’d be good at knowing your word, so that when lies come, when false false words come, they can recognize them quicker. And so, Lord, we just ask that as believers, we would grow and our ability to understand the truth and to recognize the lies. And again, we thank you for Jesus and Him being your word over us, God and Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.