SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE – IV

Learning a language takes a lot of work, doesn’t it; and it’s no different with learning to speak the language of life. It’s not easy, mostly because it flies directly in the face of the language we already know, and that’s the language of facts and figures.

The thing I’ve noticed over my years of journeying with God (and my husband Rick has helped me with this) is that ‘the facts’ and ‘the truth’ are not necessarily the same thing. In fact, sometimes they are in direct opposition to each other.

Example: the facts may be that there is not enough money to pay the bills, but the truth is that God has promised that He will provide all our needs as we are faithful to Him in our giving. He will never be in debt to us but will make sure that our needs are met as we obey Him to meet the needs of those around us.

Example: the facts may be that we are not qualified for the work we do, but the truth is that God has promised us that He will enable us to do whatever He’s requiring of us.

I’ve found this to be true in my own life so many times. Often I would look at the bills and see that the money had run out long before the month had. I would pray and worry and fret, all at the same time, yet as I was faithful to God’s Word in my tithes and offerings and continuing to speak out loud my trust in Him despite my own inward doubt, somehow we would break through. I have spent the last 33 years as a Christian and I have witnessed that even when we didn’t see what could be called miraculous intervention, we always made it through and hindsight has shown that we have been greatly blessed because we believed the truth more than the facts. As the years have gone on, I have found that I have not been able to outgive God – He has always given more to me than I have to Him, even though that was tested at times to see if the principle was strong in my heart. In the same way, He has always enabled me to BE what He called me to be, even though most of the time the things I was doing were above my own capabilities…and He is still doing that even now.

What has all that to do with language? Simply this: we all get the choice as to what we will dwell on. We can dwell on our anxiety and fear; we can dwell on our ‘rightness’ in an argument or our rejection or our hurt or how we were treated and what they said and what we said/should have said. When we go over and over the negatives in our mind or in our conversation, we reinforce them. The more we talk/think about any subject, the more it becomes our reality, the place in which we live emotionally and spiritually.

The truth of God’s opinion of our situation fades in comparison to the deep and powerful story that we are telling and retelling ourselves as we continue to take our minds and our conversation down the same track. We have little understanding of the degree to which we are disempowering our lives when those things are negative. We validate what we are doing and saying by reminding ourselves that these are the facts, but the more we say them, the stronger the hold those negative facts have over our lives.

Philippians 4:8 ‘…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.’

The apostle Paul may not have known anything about the wiring of the brain, but he did know that what we dwell on is what we become. The more we focus on how we’ve been rejected, misused, ill treated, the more we become a victim of our perception of other people’s opinions and the more subject to those opinions we become, whether they are true or not. When we dwell on the knowledge that others are speaking badly of us, we begin to believe what they are saying. When we speak badly of ourselves, we reinforce something that God is not saying to us. (Faith comes by hearing, remember, even negative faith.) The trick is to remember that regardless of what others think, and regardless of what we think of ourselves, it is God who calls us, enables us, resources us and causes us to succeed. It may be a fact that you are not what you need to be to get the job done, that you don’t have enough money, time, resources, but the truth is that the God who has called you is faithful, and He will bring it to pass! 1 Thessalonians 5:24

Next time the facts are threatening to overwhelm you, whether by your own view of yourself or the views that others have, take yourself back to what God has said about you. Shut your mouth on the repetition of the old story and begin to speak the language of life. Focus on what God is saying, speak it over your lives and into the spiritual atmosphere and trust Him to bring it to pass.

I’ve been surprised that this has been an ongoing talk about speaking life. I never expected it to become a series, but it appears that God really wants to reinforce the issue of learning to speak life. As we learn it, we will not only change our own lives and situations, but that of others as well.

Bless you…

Bev

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