Narrow Way with Steve Phillips Word Worth
Radio stations charge an average of N16 per word during a 30 minute program. That’s about N100 for every 7 words you speak. How much is your Word Worth? If you were to be charged for every word that proceeded from your mouth, would that change the way you speak? Of what value are your words?
God evaluates words by their quality weight: we by their quantity and volume. The Lord pointedly asked Job: “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” –Job 38:2. Word Worth.
We can speak only from that which fills our hearts. A shallow man who knows little but what he has scavenged from the smoldering rubbish heaps of this world, can only speak worthless words. A man who is only an echo of what has entered his ear, can never speak with convicting weight; he has no weight.
And so his words multiply to no profit and his life passes with a wearisome repeating audio script that no one wishes to listen to again. “In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking” –Proverbs 10:19.
“Words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but the lips of a fool swallow him up. The words of his mouth begin with folly, and the end of his mouth is wicked madness. Yet the fool multiplies words” –Ecclesiastes 10:12-14. “A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are the snare of his soul” –Proverbs 18:7.
What fills the heart, fills the mouth: spewing forth through loose lips. When the inner man is not restrained, neither will that untamed tongue. Vanity embraced is vanity expressed. Word Worth.
“The tongue is a little member of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity that defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. No one can tame the tongue; it is an unruly evil and full of deadly poison” –James 3:5-8.
The tongue, while railing and boasting of great things, takes refuge behind the teeth should attempts be made to silence it. Curling lips expose bared teeth. Beware then when speaking in the hearing of a fool, lest he turn and tear you to pieces.
Man is endowed with two eyes, two ears, and one mouth; wise he is who engages them in that same proportion. Only he who thus receives wisdom through eye and ear can speak forth Words of Worth.
But discretion is driven out by lips that utter every impulse. An ever-active tongue hears nothing but itself, and so the tongue that never rests has little of worth to be heard. No Word Worth there. A landslide of lips buries many thing, but not the folly of its origin. Sealed lips quarantine the tongue.
Open lips reveal that “a fool has no delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own heart” –Prov.18:2. But “he who has knowledge, spares his words” –Proverbs 17:27. That is Word Worth.
Beware of a two-tongued man: A scorpion’s barb is affixed to each. “A lying tongue hates those it crushes and a flattering mouth works ruin” –Proverbs 26:28. A snake smiles but shows no teeth: thus is flattering hypocrisy. “There is nothing reliable in what they say: they flatter with the tongue” –Psalm 5:9.
“May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that speaks proud things. Our lips are our own! Who is lord over us?” –Psalm 12:3,4. In a fool, the energy supplied to the tongue surpasses that given to propriety. And so “their tongue parades through the earth” –Psalm 73:9. Vacuous noise: no Word Worth.
“He who guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from troubles” –Proverbs 21:23. Yet how is that possible when the tongue is a wretched unruly wild thing no one can tame? By prayer.
“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips” –Psalm 141:3. Then, by God’s Word. “By the Word of Your lips I have kept from the paths of the destroyer” –Psalm 17:4.
“Take words with you and return to the Lord” –Hosea 14:2. Words of Worth, not of emptiness.
Beware: “Every careless, idle, unfruitful, useless word that men shall speak, they will give account of in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” –Matthew 12:36,37. Studied words with restraint are more potent than a tongue’s torrent.
“Let the Word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom” –Colossians 3:16. Only therein will your inner man be transformed, your mind renewed, and tongue tamed. What is your Word Worth?