Sunday, 7th December 2014
Shimu Kathy Poon
Following from last week’s sermon, this week we again talked about how we can change our life by changing our words – learn to say what God says. Our words belong to us and we must be responsible in how we use them. In the Book of Proverbs 18:21, it says “the tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit”. Words are valuable, they are containers for power and they can produce life or death for us and all who hear them. Therefore, it is important to know what to say, but too often we talk about how we feel or what we think, instead of about what God’s Word says.
So how do we learn to say what God says?
1. Study the Word of God Diligently
We all know that God calls King David “a man after God’s own heart”. In Psalm 1:2 says, “But his delight is I the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prosper”. Many of the Psalms that Kind David wrote talk about the importance of God’s Word, and even David begins the Book of Psalm by saying that we are blessed if we order our conduct and conversation in the law of the Lord. We cannot say what God says unless we know what He has said.
2. Speak Truth, not Facts
What is truth? God’s Word is the truth. Then what is fact? Facts are the circumstances in our life right now. One of the best ways to have a mouth filled with wisdom is to always speak the truth instead of speaking facts. God’s Word is truth and it will prevail over the facts in our life, if we release it through speaking. Talking about what we think, see and feel is one of the easiest traps to fall into. The things we see and feel are so real to us and we consider them to be the truth of what is happening in our lives. But they are not the truth, they are the facts and facts can change, but the truth never changes.
As we learnt how to speak by saying what God says, we also need to know how to respond when others say negative words to us. There are two kinds of righteousness. The first kind is righteousness through right behavior and that is the one we are most familiar with. The second kind is God’s righteousness. It is His gift for us and it comes by grace through faith, not by how much “good things” we have done. This gift has already been paid for by the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. So how can we be righteous even though we still make mistakes daily? The answer is: knowing that God sees you as His righteous child, but He still deals with your bad behavior. He never expect us to do anything unless He gives us the ability to do it first.
So when we truly understand that we stand in Christ as a righteous child, we know our identity then we will have this sense of security like an anchor in our soul. We will not be easily offended by words from others. We can listen to those negative words and believe what they say, or we can choose to look to God’s Word and believe in what God says.