The Value Of Words

And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your "Yes" be "Yes," and your "No," "No"; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Matthew 5:36-37

Imagine for a moment that you are living in Jesus' time. It is before Jesus has begun His public ministry. He is a carpenter in your local town of Nazareth. You have asked Jesus to make a table and chairs for your dinning area. You're on a deadline and you must have it in a week. You agree on the price of $100 for the table and chairs and the date of one week for completion. A week later you arrive to pick up the table. You lay your money down on the table and Jesus says,

"Mr. Smith, I am sorry the table is not ready, but the chairs are. I ran into complications. Also, I can no longer honor the price I gave you. It is now $150 instead of $100."

Two years later you hear about this same Jesus who is preaching to the local townspeople. How are you going to view this Jesus? You probably won't give much credence to His message because of your personal experience. Our lives have an ability to reinforce the message we stand for, or they can violate it and make it totally ineffective. This literally happens all over the world in different settings with Christian believers. Our message becomes ineffective because we have not done what we said.

We all know people who, when they tell us they plan to do something, we can expect them to follow through about 50 percent of the time. However, we know others who will follow through almost every time. The only time they don't is when something falls outside their control.

There are times when we are unable to perform or deliver what we promised due to outside influences. The key to turning these potentially negative circumstances into a witness for Christ is communication. If we are unable to pay a bill on time, we must communicate with those we owe and make a good faith effort to resolve it within our means. In these cases, God's purposes are being performed as well if we seek to do the right thing.

Or if we are in a business meeting and things are said that do not match up with our spirit, we need to convey this to those present. But we need to think through how we are going to respond so that we are being a faithful witness for God through our words and not just venting how we view the discussion taking place in the meeting. It is important to voice your opinion(s) but do so in a manner that is God honoring and glorifying as well.

Do your words mean anything to those who hear them?

Do you sometimes say things that you need to, but not in a manner that is honoring to God or to the other person(s)?

Do you make commitments and fail to follow through on them?

What would others say about how you follow through?

Ask the Lord today to show you how you are doing in this area. You might even want to ask three people who are the closest to you about how you are faring in this area of your life—be quick to listen and slow to comment, because there is value in the words you speak.