Speak Life

“Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the mind and healing to the body.” - Proverbs 16:24

Photo by Arwin Neil Baichoo on Unsplash

“Don’t stop writing.”

That was the essence of what the letter from my eleventh-grade English teacher said a year or so after I graduated from high school. He’d handwritten the letter on stationery that had a dragon up in the corner. Maybe the dragon symbolized fear and Mr. Martin wanted me to slay the dragon with my pen.

I have no idea how he knew I had indeed stopped writing. Maybe he didn’t. And I have no idea why he took the time to write to a student he hadn’t taught in two or three years, other than he was that kind of teacher. But I remember how I felt after reading that letter – like he was breathing life back into me. 

A text exchange with a friend recently brought this story back to memory. I’ll share a bit of it below.

“People so very rarely speak words of life to one another,” I wrote.

“Lee, of all people, the Christian should be a life-giver,” he responded.

“Amen to that. I think we’re all drowning though, so we forget.”

“Let’s make it our intention to change that … in our corner of the world.”

I told him that was a really good goal and ended the conversation with the words of Jesus from John 6:63 (ESV): “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

I think that dovetails nicely with what Proverbs 18:21 (AMPC) says: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they who indulge in it shall eat the fruit of it [for death or life].”

Words are that powerful. 

Annie F. Downs wrote a book titled Speak Love: Making Your Words Matter for teenage girls. The book was released in 2013 – after the “mean culture” culture and online bullying had gained traction. So she wrote the book to encourage young girls to speak life, speak love, rather than using the power of the tongue to speak death. 

In an interview about the book, she said this: “This is the loudest generation that’s ever existed. There’s never been a generation that could have this much power with their words, and if we could teach them to channel that to glorify God and build up each other, we could change culture.”

Of course, what she said doesn’t just apply to mean girl culture. People all around us are suffering in silence over mistakes they’ve made, words of death they’ve internalized or self-doubts they’ve allowed to take root. Make it a habit to speak life. Proverbs 16:24 says, “Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the mind and healing to the body.”

I love what Bible commentator Matthew Henry says about this verse: “They [pleasant words] are like the honey-comb, sweet to the soul, which tastes in them that the Lord is gracious; nothing more grateful and agreeable to the new man than the word of God, and those words which are borrowed from it, Psa_119:103.”

Knowing what Mr. Martin’s words have meant to me over the years (they are probably the reason I’m writing today), I want to make it my goal to speak life to others.