One of the defining memories of my childhood, literally one of the defining experiences of my life, if I’m being honest, had everything to do with a kid named Brooks Stevenson.
Every time I tell a story that makes somebody look bad, I change their name.
Every time I tell a story that makes somebody look good, I use their real name.
This is this guy’s actual name.
Please don’t stalk him on the internet.
But back when I was a kid, I had kind of a problem, and the problem was that everybody hated me, or at least that’s the way it felt like.
Kids pushed me, wouldn’t let me sit with them, called me names.
Kids would literally pretend to be my friend for a couple of days and then pull the ripcord and pretend they never met me.
There were kids I was friends with for a while, but then once they got an opportunity to go with a more popular friend group, they would not only ditch me but start mocking me and making fun of me because it gave them street cred with the other kids.
I was literally at the bottom rung of the social ladder for the early years of school.
But there was this kid named Brooks Stevenson, and he was exactly the opposite.
He was probably the most popular kid in school.
Everybody loved him.
He was the star of the little kids’ football team, and that continued to be true all the way through high school.
Everybody wanted to be his friend.
Everybody wanted to be like him.
Everybody valued what he said.
If he thought something was cool, the masses of kids thought it was cool.
If he thought something was dumb, the masses of kids thought it was dumb.
Grade school politics are wild, aren’t they?
But one of the defining moments in my life was the moment when the most popular kid in school, Brooks Stevenson, suddenly decided that he liked me.
One day, he just decided he was gonna change my life forever.
What he did was he just started talking about how he thought I was hilarious.
He would say, “Dude, Ellington is funny.”
He started talking about how he thought I was really interesting, how he thought I was really cool.
Literally, one time, a couple of kids were just full volume talking bad about me in the middle of English class.
I don’t know what the teacher was doing.
I don’t know why she wasn’t doing anything about it.
But in the middle of their Ryan trash talk session, Brooks Stevenson just interrupted them and said, “Actually, I think Ryan’s pretty cool.”
He started inviting me to sit with him during lunch.
And if you’ve ever been in grade school, you know that lunchtime seating was a big deal, right?
He started inviting me to play with him and his friends on the playground during recess.
He used his weight, his influence.
He used the power that he had in the sixth-grade pecking order to literally reach down to the bottom of the social order and lift me up.
He used his power of his words to break me out of unpopularity jail, and it actually worked.
When Brooks Stevenson declared that he thought I was cool and funny and worthwhile, the rest of the little sheep decided to give me a chance too.
It’s so weird to owe so much of the rest of your life to an 11-year-old, right?
And yet, this 11-year-old from Texas figured out something that so many of us as adults have still struggled to wrap our heads around, and that is that we can use our words in a way that changes people’s lives for the better.
Know what I’m talking about?
You can use your words in a way that changes people’s lives for the better.
Our Words Can Be Radically Life-Giving
We are picking up this morning EXACTLY where we left off last week in our series through the book of Proverbs.
If you weren’t here last week, here’s a quick primer: God’s word tells us that the direction of our lives will be determined by how we use our words.
The way that you use your words is going to determine almost everything about how your life goes.
And that can be good, or it can be bad—can’t it?
Last week, we talked about the way that words can be destructive.
But in the EXACT same way, God’s word tells us that our words CAN be radically life-giving instead of radically soul-crushing.
Just listen to the really beautiful way that the Proverbs describe this.
He says:
“The mouth of the righteous is a spring of life,
but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.”—Proverbs 10:11, WEB
He says:
“A gentle tongue is a tree of life,
but deceit in it crushes the spirit.”—Proverbs 15:4, WEB
He says:
“The tongue of the righteous is like choice silver.
The heart of the wicked is of little worth.
The lips of the righteous feed many,
but the foolish die for lack of understanding.”—Proverbs 10:20–21, WEB
He says:
“A word fitly spoken
is like apples of gold in settings of silver.
As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold,
so is a wise reprover to an obedient ear.”—Proverbs 25:11–12, WEB
Isn’t that beautiful?
The words that we use are powerful enough to radically, overwhelmingly, transformatively change people’s lives for the better.
Let’s talk a little bit about what that looks like.
I’m just going to dead sprint through a handful of things that the Proverbs has to say to us about how to use our words in a life-giving way.
1. Our Words Have the Power to Heal Conflict and Create Understanding
Our words have the power to heal conflict and create understanding.
What am I talking about when I say that?
Here’s what I’m talking about.
Proverbs 15:1–2 says:
“A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
The tongue of the wise commends knowledge,
but the mouth of fools gush out folly.”—Proverbs 15:1–2, WEB
Now, your translation might say “commends understanding” or “creates understanding.”
I actually like that translation just a little bit better.
Why?
Because it really gets to the heart of where conflict actually comes from.
Here’s something I think is funny: When I was growing up, I would always fight with my mom about this thing or that thing, and then an hour later or a day later or a week later, I would realize I don’t think she was actually saying any of those things.
Same thing happens with me and Elyse a lot of times.
Ever have something like that happen to you?
Here’s the reality: Most conflicts are misunderstandings, aren’t they?
Most people in arguments aren’t really listening to each other, are they?
Think about the last argument you had.
How long did it take you before you realized the other person wasn’t actually saying what you thought they were saying, right?
Almost everything you said was a shot fired against something they literally were not even saying.
Most of the time, when we are in a fight, we assume a bunch of things about the other person, and how much of it actually turns out to be true?
Very little, right?
Why does that happen?
It’s because our natural tendency as fallen, sinful humans is actually not to talk to each other; it’s to talk at each other.
And if you’re talking at each other, what you’re actually usually doing is talking past each other, right?
And so when we come to the end, we haven’t actually solved anything, and we still don’t even actually understand what the other person thinks, what the other person wants, what the other person’s looking for, what the other person’s trying to do.
So the cycle just picks back up every time there’s another disagreement.
Here’s the thing: They’ve literally done studies where they test this out, and what they found is that, overwhelmingly, almost all of the time, that cycle of conflict and combativeness and hostility breaks when one of the people changes course by trying to understand instead of trying to win.
You know what I’m talking about when I say that?
The conflict continues because you’re not trying to understand each other.
You’re just trying to beat each other.
The conflict usually ends when one of you tries to understand, when one of you stops fighting back and instead says, “Hold on, what did you mean by that? How come you think that? I’ve never thought of it that way. Why do you believe that? What is your perspective on this? How did you come to that conclusion?”
The overwhelming majority of the time, what happens is that the other person is so taken aback by the fact that you stopped arguing and started listening, that their combativeness starts to melt away too.
They stop arguing.
They stop fighting.
They start trying to explain themselves instead of defend themselves.
And then they start to wonder what you think, what your perspective is, where you’re coming from.
Suddenly, they want to understand you just like you want to understand them.
We have the power to change the way we deal with conflict.
We have the power to use our words in a way that helps us to understand each other and connect with each other, rather than treating everything like a zero-sum battle.
That’s number one: Our words have the power to heal conflict and create understanding.
2. Our Words Have the Power to Free People from Destructive Lies by Lovingly Presenting the Truth
Again: Our words have the power to free people from destructive lies by lovingly presenting the truth.
Once again, what am I talking about?
Here’s what I’m talking about.
Proverbs 16:23–24 says:
“The heart of the wise instructs his mouth,
and adds learning to his lips.
Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”—Proverbs 16:23–24, WEB
I also love Proverbs 25:15. It says:
“By patience a ruler is persuaded.
A soft tongue breaks the bone.”—Proverbs 25:15, WEB
It says, how do you convince people of your perspective?
You do it by being gracious.
You do it by being judicious.
It says you persuade people through your gentleness, through your patience.
That is the opposite of what we usually do, isn’t it?
What do we usually do?
Man, we immediately jump to insults, don’t we?
We immediately dive into attacks.
We immediately crank the heat up to 11.
We treat every disagreement, every debate, every conflict like it’s a full-on war and it’s take no prisoners.
We go into Perry Mason mode, right?
We just start pushing in and we keep pushing, and we keep pushing, and we don’t let up.
Have you ever noticed that that never actually convinces anybody of anything?
I don’t know how to tell you this, but Perry Mason is a fictional show, and the world doesn’t actually work like that.
It will not win you any debates; it will just make people stop wanting to know you.
There’s a reason for that.
It’s because aggressiveness literally shuts down our brains.
Our brains go into something called fight-or-flight mode.
Ever heard of that?
Fight-or-flight mode is the part of your brain that’s designed to help you either run away from a threat or kill the threat where it stands.
If a tiger jumps out from behind the bushes, fight-or-flight mode activates and you either bolt so that one of your buddies gets eaten instead because they’re slower than you, or you grab your spear and you jam it straight into its neck, and then you have roasted tiger for dinner.
Those are the only two things fight-or-flight mode is capable of.
Fight-or-flight mode is not capable of listening.
It’s not capable of understanding.
It’s not capable of reasoning.
Literally, fight-or-flight mode taps into the most primitive and animalistic part of you.
It is not capable of rational thought.
What does that mean?
That means that when we insult people and attack people, when we come combatively at people, it sends them into fight-or-flight mode, and they literally lose the ability to hear us or think about any of what we are saying.
But there’s a funny thing.
At exactly the same time, they have found consistently that when we say something graciously, literally when we say something that somebody does not want to hear, but we say it in a gentle way, a kind way, a calm way, a supportive way, their brain does exactly the opposite.
It causes their brains to shut down its defenses.
It causes their brains to open up.
It causes their brains to become more willing to think rationally, to consider new ideas, to seriously ponder difficult things that don’t fit within their current worldview or belief system.
Graciousness, judiciousness, calm, patience—literally makes us more open to considering what the other person is saying.
They say that our brains interpret winsomeness as safety.
They interpret gentleness and graciousness as the opposite of a threat.
Our brains literally send the message to us that this is coming from a friend, not an enemy.
What does that mean?
That means your picket signs will not do anything, but your gentle, compassionate, loving, kind, gracious, patient, understanding words might actually break through somebody’s walls.
And that matters, because right now, our culture is beholden to so many destructive lies.
Destructive lies about love, destructive lies about sexuality, destructive lies about money, destructive lies about where our worth comes from, destructive lies about government, destructive lies about God, destructive lies about what children should be exposed to, destructive lies about how we should live, destructive lies about what we should value, destructive lies about marriage and friendship and wealth and power and so many other things.
And these destructive lies are literally eating people alive, aren’t they?
The destructive lies that our culture has indoctrinated so many of us into are literally draining the life from people.
And the most important thing in the world for them is to be set free from the grip of those lies.
Which means what?
That means that if we will actually go to them, if we will actually have those hard conversations, if we will actually confront those destructive lies that are laying waste to their souls, but we do it in a gracious, gentle, patient, loving, winsome, understanding, calm, compassionate way, then for so many of them, we can actually free them from those destructive lies.
We can actually change the course of their lives.
We can actually give them their lives back by lovingly presenting the truth.
That’s number two: Our words have the power to free people from destructive lies by lovingly presenting the truth.
3. Our Words Have the Power to Protect and Defend People Instead of Tearing Them Down
Again: Our words have the power to use our words to protect and defend people instead of tearing them down.
I love Proverbs 11:12–13. It says:
“One who despises his neighbor is void of wisdom,
but a man of understanding holds his peace.
One who brings gossip betrays a confidence,
but one who is of a trustworthy spirit is one who keeps a secret.”—Proverbs 11:12–13, WEB
Now, what is that talking about when it says remain silent and keeps a thing covered?
Isn’t that talking about not talking?
Actually, no, it’s not.
It’s talking about two things.
Number one, when you keep a thing covered, it means you are protecting people from being crucified for their mistakes in the form of gossip and rumors and slander.
Know what I’m talking about?
Ever have somebody straight up ruin your reputation by spreading your business?
Ever had somebody literally just overhear something you said, completely misunderstand it, and they go run out there and tell everybody?
Ever have somebody just take the most painful moment of your life and then use it as an opportunity to go and talk about you?
They said, “Oh my gosh, she’s on her second or third divorce.”
“Oh my gosh, his card declined at the store. I hear they’ve been having financial problems. I guess they’re not very good with money.”
“Oh my gosh, CPS was at their house the other week.”
“Oh my gosh, is he falling back into that same addiction once again?”
And on and on.
It’s like, hey, thanks.
I’m literally drowning over here, and instead of throwing me a freaking life raft, you decided to go whisper about the fact that I was drowning.
Don’t you love that?
The first half of this is that we can use our words to stop the rumors, stop the gossip, stop the game of telephone.
When someone tries to gossip to us about somebody else, we could say, “Hey, why don’t you stop right there. I don’t want to talk about their business, and it actually really upsets me that you’re talking about their business to me.”
So what, do you talk about me to other people?
People, out of curiosity?
What if I went and told people all the things I know about you?
You have the power to do that.
You have the power to stop the rumor mill in its tracks the moment it reaches you.
And at the same time, number two, you have the power to defend people in rooms they aren’t in.
Know what I’m talking about?
We’re used to people talking about us behind our back.
We’re not used to people defending us behind our back.
And yet, that’s exactly what you can do.
When someone starts to trash talk somebody in your presence, you can jump in and defend them.
You can jump in and say, “You know what? I don’t think that’s the full story. I don’t think we understand what led to their divorce. We weren’t there. We don’t live in their house. I don’t think we know anything about his money problems. We don’t know why he has money problems. We don’t know whether he pissed it away or he spent his savings helping his elderly mother get rehab for her knee. We don’t know what the story is with his addiction. We don’t know all the work he’s put in to kicking it. We don’t know all the steps he’s taken. We don’t know all the triggers he’s had to avoid. We don’t know what led to this. Why are we talking about him like that?”
We have the ability to demand that people treat others like human beings, at least when they’re in our presence.
That’s number three: We have the power to use our words to protect and defend people instead of tearing them down.
4. Our Words Have the Power to Help Heal the Wounds Inflicted by the Destructive Words of Others
Know what I’m talking about?
Our words have the power to help heal the wounds inflicted by the destructive words of others.
Proverbs 12:17–19 says:
“He who is truthful testifies honestly,
but a false witness lies.
There is one who speaks rashly like the piercing of a sword,
but the tongue of the wise heals.
Truth’s lips will be established forever,
but a lying tongue is only momentary.”—Proverbs 12:17–19, WEB
All those destructive words we talked about last week, they have a toll, don’t they?
They do damage, don’t they?
Some of us grew up in settings where we were constantly on the receiving end of the radical destructive power of our parents’ words, or our teachers’ words, or our friends’ words, or our family’s words, and so on and so forth.
Some of us grew up being told that we were worthless.
And here’s a funny thing: when almost everybody in your life tells you that you are worthless from age zero all the way to age 18, eventually you start to believe it, don’t you?
“Worthless” becomes your sense of identity.
It becomes your sense of self.
Some of us grew up being told again and again that no one will ever care about us, and eventually we started to believe it.
We started to see ourselves as that person that no one will ever care about.
Some of us grew up being told over and over that everything we do is wrong, and eventually we came to believe that everything we do is wrong, so we feel guilty about literally every single choice we make.
If we make choice A, we feel guilty.
If we make choice B, we feel guilty.
If we make choice C, we feel guilty.
If we don’t make a choice, that is a choice in itself, and we feel guilty about that one, right?
We have literally lost the ability to believe that anything we do ever could possibly be right, and so we live in a constant guilt spiral.
We have been in a 25-, 35-, 45-, 55-year guilt spiral.
Am I touching some nerves?
Some of us grew up being told that the world would be better off without us.
And to this day, it has been decades since anybody’s actually told us that.
It’s been decades since anybody’s actually treated us that way.
But that’s where we find our sense of self, our meaning.
We may literally consciously hate the people who told us that, but we still believe the things they told us deep down in our bones.
And so every time things go really wrong, we wonder, should I just remove myself from the earth?
Should I just put myself out of everybody else’s misery?
Listen, none of these things are true.
These are not truths.
These are just wounds.
These are wounds that were inflicted on us by people who should have loved us, people we should have been able to trust.
But instead, they decided to use the radical power of their words to destroy us from the inside out, from the ground up.
And so what we need is healing.
We need those lies to be replaced with the truth.
And here’s the thing.
Now you have the power to use healing words to bind up the wounds that were inflicted on people by the destructive words of others.
Now listen, you do not have the power to fix the damage that was done.
You’re not magic.
Wounded people have to make the choice to pursue healing.
You cannot heal them from the outside.
But what you can do is use your words to cut through those destructive lies that they were told.
You can use healing words to cut through the destructive lies that wounded them in the first place.
You can use your words to build them up in all the places that the world has torn them down through the years.
This may sound ridiculously simple, but you have the power to tell people that they’re not worthless.
You have the power to tell people, “I care about you right now.”
You have the power to tell people that the world would not be better off without you.
The world is better with you in it.
I know that because my life is better with you in it.
And more than that, I know that because the God of the universe created you on purpose.
He created you out of love, and He loves you with an everlasting love.
He loved you before you did anything.
You didn’t have to do anything to become worthy of His love.
You didn’t have to do anything to get His attention.
You didn’t have to do anything to get Him to care about you.
You didn’t have to do anything to get Him to want you.
You didn’t have to add value to His life before He would let you in His door.
He created you, and He stamped you with His image, with infinite worth, infinite value.
And He loves and values and wants you so much that when your sin created a wall between you and Him, He came down from heaven and He went to the cross.
He went through the most brutal and humiliating and unendurable death imaginable so that He can wipe away your sin, adopt you into His family, and make you His own.
That is the truth about you, and that truth supersedes everything, absolutely everything, that anybody has told you about yourself throughout your life.
That’s number four: You have the power to use your words to help heal the wounds inflicted by the destructive words of others.
Everything About Your Life Can Change for the Better
And here’s what all of this means for us: Everything about your life in this world can change for the better—IF you learn to change the way you use your words.
And that’s hard—right?
I’m not gonna act like this is some sort of “three easy steps” thing.
It’s not.
This is a radical, life-altering change that goes all the way down to the foundations of who you are, how you think, the stories that you tell yourself ABOUT yourself and everything else in the world.
So the very thought of changing your life by changing your words might sound impossible.
Unattainable.
Like it’s pointless to even try.
But listen: It’s not.
You CAN do every single thing we’ve talked about together this morning—no matter how hard it sounds at first.
And I’ll tell you WHY: It’s because it’s not dependent on you.
This doesn’t come from your willpower alone.
It comes from the Holy Spirit who lives within you.
This is Christianity 101.
We’re gonna have a quick theology lesson.
The Holy Spirit dwells within you.
The Holy Spirit is at work inside you.
The Holy Spirit descended on you and is now changing you from the inside out.
The Spirit is conforming you into the image of Jesus.
The Spirit is taking off your old self and putting on a new self.
The Spirit is putting to death your old sinful ways and instead is bearing the fruit of the Spirit in you.
What are they?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and so on and so forth.
Where do those things come from?
They come from this compassionate and humble and peaceful heart.
And what this means is that you have hope.
You walked in here unbelievably discouraged because of the broken state of so many of your relationships.
You have the power to change those relationships.
You walked in here so demoralized by how hopeless so many of the parts of your life feel.
God has given you the power to change every single one of those parts of your life.
You came in here in despair about the way that you have sabotaged so many things through the years.
The Lord has given you the power to change every single one of those things.
And it all starts with changing the way you talk.
Listen, start today and you can fix your marriage.
You can heal your relationship with your kids.
You can undo the damage you’ve done to the friends you’ve betrayed.
You can go and you can bind up the wounds that your old, destructive words created with the life-giving words of healing.
If you would adopt this today and then watch the way God uses it to transform your life, and then this church, and then our whole surrounding community.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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