the most powerful tool we have…

remember the story in the old testament of the tower of babel that building project that GOD stopped because they were so prideful.  HE stopped the project by taking away their most powerful tool.  HE didn’t take away their hammer, HE didn’t take away their chisels.  HE took away their words. 

words are the most powerful tool that we have.  you can use them to build.  you can use them to tear down.  “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can…”  words can hurt a child’s heart.  words can shatter a husband’s dreams.  they can crush a wife’s self image.  or you can use same things – words – to build another person’s life.  do you realize the power you have this week to change somebody’s life?  with what you say, a word of sympathy, just looking them in the eye and saying i understand what you’re going through.  or maybe saying, i don’t understand what you’re going through but i care about it even though i don’t understand it.  or saying to them i love you.  you have the power to change somebody’s life with a word this week.  who is it?  take a minute to write it down.  who will i bless with a word of sympathy this week?  i won’t give up on you?  who needs to hear that word from you?

you bless people when you show courtesy, mercy, sympathy and you bless others when you speak honestly.

that means you talk about a problem in the relationship that you’d rather not talk about.  if you’re serious about blessing other people you must care enough to tell the truth even when it’s painful, even when it’s inconvenient, even when you’d rather ignore the problem and sweep it under the rug.  you do it because you value the person in the relationship. 

listen, most people, even married couples, have nobody in their life who loves them enough to tell them the truth.  they don’t have them.  they don’t have anybody in their life who loves them enough to say, this is out of whack in your life and you need to work on it.  people know what needs to be said, everybody in the office knows what needs to be said to that person but nobody is willing to say it. 

millions of relationships are destroyed by dishonesty.  i couldn’t tell you the number of couples that i’ve met who have been married 20, 30, 40 years or more and are still living at superficial level in their relationship because everybody just wants to “make nice, don’t rock the boat”.  we all know that there’s an area in our life that we need to talk about but we don’t want to talk about.  it’s the elephant in the living room.  what elephant?  i don’t see it!  so we live in total denial.  and there are areas of your life that you are chicken to talk about.  you’ve decided whenever we bring this up it causes pain in our relationship so we’re just not going to talk about it.  that closes a door to a deeper level of intimacy. 

just a thought from the front porch…