May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be now and always acceptable in thy sight O lord our strength and our redeemer.
Our world is full of words … many many words … I was doing a bit of thinking about this sermon on the way up to a meeting in Dublin in the Train … I was literally surrounded by words
people chittering behind and in front of me … the tannoy system… the light display telling me where we were heading to … I had papers to read and emails to send … lots and lots of words
You might have lots and lots of words around you to … letters, advertisements, TV, Radio
Many words simply as a mother might say … ‘go in one ear and out another’ … we ignore them and their meaning
but other words stick … either for good or Ill and its these words I want to talk about this morning, these remaining words ... the ones that have power
The ones that have have stuck in our minds
Perhaps with the power that they were said, perhaps the heart behind them (again for good or ill)
- The school bully whose words have lasted years and decades longer than the milliseconds that the vibrations took to fly from their mouth to our ear
- The critical friend who said something we were willing to hear which had a hint of truth which enabled change
- The preacher who spoke a word in the right season which prompted us to think differnently
- The encouragement of a friend at the right time allowed us to assess our situation differently and built us up.
- The comfortable words from loved ones in difficult days.
This morning I would love to use my words to help you think about your words … James tells us that they have the power to change generations. I wonder if you have thought of your words like this?
As I speak about words today …
I wonder what words have inspired you?
what words have built you up?
What words spoken by someone have given you reassurance
What words from music or poetry, from public speech have you heard that you hold on to?
It is worth every so often pondering upon our personal vocabulary, our thoughts about individuals and about situations and thinking about how we can use our words differently.
Words are important
The prayer at the end of the psalm today is really important to me … Its the prayer that appears at the top of all my sermon scripts
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be now and always acceptable in thy sight O lord our strength and our redeemer.
I would love you to join with me as we ponder for a few moments …
As I ponder this poetic prayer from the psalms I wonder what words are acceptable in the Lords Sight? … and what words aren’t ?
what meditations of my heart are acceptable in the Lords sight? … and what meditations aren’t?
In other words
What needs to change in our thought patterns, what situations do we just need to hand over to God to deal with …
There are no easy ways to do this … we know this through life and work … through anyone we have a relationship …whether it be family, friendship, work or community there are a whole host of issues which pop up from time to time.
We are not responsible for other people’s actions or thought patterns … but we are responsible for our own
We are not responsible for other peoples words … but we are responsible for our own … we are responsible to ourselves yes … but also we are responsible for our stewardship of our words.
In the kingdom of God … we are called to be encouragers, to build each other up, to look out for the best in one another.
In our Gospel reading today … we are reminded of a few things ... that words spoken as questions can be used to challenge, to teach and to promote understanding
And that within the Kingdom of God words, Jesus’ words are important … particularly for life.
So what are we going to do about these words?
In a world where there are millions of words spoken, typed, written … we need to be discerning what words we are listening to and also what words we are going to use
We also need to not only look at the words we produce but the thought patterns behind those words.
If words can stay with a person for life we need to be very wary of those words we say, those words that we let utter from our mouth.
- In our life … in this our community… in our work
- How do we love our neighbour as ourself …
- This is our discipleship … in our ordinary everyday lives
- What words do you need to retract
- What words do you need to speak to build up to encourage
- What forest fires of words do you need to extinguish
what do you need to return to to say sorry for … to God, to others where you know your words have been unwise, foolish, hurtful
Lets be mindful of how our words have the potential to build up and also to tear down.
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