My life has greatly improved since I started to live by a motto I call “Shut Up or Shape Up.” The Word of God says that the tongue has the power of life or death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. I was thinking about that, and I realized that we all love to talk! This means all of us. And if those who love it eat its fruit, we need to be thinking about what fruit our words are producing. Is it good fruit or rotten fruit? The Bible also says that the tongue holds the power of life and death. Frankly, that freaks me out. It freaks me out that we have so much power. I can’t even comprehend that much power, and I hold that power in the words I say. Now whether they are producing life or death- that’s up to me. I can think back on relationships in my life that were altered for good or bad because of things that were spoken.

My parents tried to teach me the power of the tongue because, well, a lot of time I would say not very nice things. There is a verse they made me write every time that went “Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only such a word that gives edification according to the need of the moment that it might give grace to those who hear it.” I can write that even now from memory, I’ve written it so many times. I figure I wrote that more times than days I have lived, and I’m twenty-nine years old. It wasn’t until my twenties that I really understood what that verse meant. I hear that on average a person says 2,000 words a day. When my head hits the pillow at night, I’m certain I’ve met my quota. I’ve probably doubled it. I spend the whole day talking! I communicate a lot – for work, with my family. And although we communicate in the moment many ways, the most powerful by far are the words we speak. That verse, the one I know so well, it says “according to the need of the moment.” Am I taking advantage of every moment I am able to communicate? Not just to stop myself from saying not nice things, but actually use the opportunity to speak life to people?

I credit the fact that I picked up basketball and the fact that I became a good basketball player to one of these moments. My dad and I were shooting hoops outside when I was eleven years old. Like most growing, awkward, eleven-year-old girls who hardly even touch a basketball, I was doing terribly. My dad was giving me a few pointers here and there, and then I did something right. He stopped and said, “Christine, if you keep doing that, you’re going to be a great basketball player.” Those words were powerful. They spoke life into me, and because of that comment, I would go out every day and practice for two hours. I was only eleven years old, and those handful of words from my dad created something that became a huge part of my life. Just as those words held the power of life, I have also been given words that killed. When I was only nine I was singing and someone told me I was terrible and should never sing. Before that, I loved music, loved listening to it and singing along, but after those powerful words, that died in me. I went through a silent period, and even at church I would sing only faintly because I was self-conscious of my voice. That one off-hand comment, and it wasn’t until eight years after that I finally got my voice back. The power of life. The power of death. You choose every time you open your mouth.

It’s true, with children, words are incredibly powerful. You probably have a couple examples of your own, where words changed the course of your life for the better or for the worse. But it is even in the briefest, seemingly insignificant encounters we have every day that we hold this power of life and death. It used to be that when I would run into cranky people at the grocery store or at a restaurant, I would want to tell them they were giving bad customer service. But now, I try to speak something powerful over them. I’ve been challenged with the sheer amount of people I speak to every day to view it as opportunities to actually affect someone’s destiny in a positive way. Even in those few minutes you exchange words with the checker at the grocery store, you’re in a position to change their entire day. I want to be an infectious person. I want to be a person who can completely turn someone’s day around.