First of all, I believe that all the words we speak can be divided into five basic levels or categories. Today, we'll consider two of them. These different levels of words span the range of extremes between life and death. We can speak words of pure life, words of pure death or words somewhere between the two.
Proverbs 18:21 warns us, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof." In other words, whatever words you say with your mouth, whether they fall in the category of life or death, will determine the fruit your life produces.
This is a reality that escapes most people. Yet our words impact virtually every aspect of who we are and the quality of life we presently experience. As I have mentioned, those words range between life and death on five basic levels.
Words of Life
The first level, or the highest level, are the words of life. Obviously, these are the words we want to speak because they produce the God-kind of life.
These are the words that enable the ministering angels to bring us the blessings of God and the grace of God that will promote the experience of eternal life. These are the words to which the angels respond.
When sincerely spoken, words of life are accompanied by behavior that is consistent with them. It is behavior that could be described as acting on God's Word, or as James 1:22 says, "Be ye doers of the word."
Being a doer of the Word means that we not only speak the Word of God, but we also order our life by what it says. It means we have made a decision to base our actions on what we find in the Word of God.
When we have done that, we begin walking out the will of God for our lives. As we speak the Word, we loose the ministering spirits to do His pleasure, which is to prosper us in our way.
The Vocabulary of Silence
Now let's look at the second level of words and the accompanying behavior. These words will still produce life, but not to the same degree as the words of life. I call this level of communication the vocabulary of silence.
The Bible teaches that if you can't put voice to God's Word, the next best thing to do is to say nothing at all. There are numerous examples of this in the Bible.
We see this principle in operation in the Old Testament when the Israelites fought the battle of Jericho. Joshua, the military commander of the group, was given instructions by the Lord on how to take the city, and they were wild instructions! He was told:
And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of ram's horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat.This was the supernatural instruction for battle that Joshua received. He wasn't going to get through the fortified walls of Jericho any other way.
(Joshua 6:3-5)
But I want you to notice something Joshua did. This is very interesting to me. When Joshua relayed the battle plans to the children of Israel, he added something. He commanded the people, saying, "Ye shall not shout, nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I bid you shout; then shall ye shout (Joshua 6:10).
God didn't say anything about the people having to be quiet during the six days when they were to march around the city, but Joshua did. Joshua knew his people well enough to predict what they might say. They were whiners! So Joshua commanded them to be quiet. He didn't want them to jeopardize the battle with their complaining and doubt-filled words.
You can imagine what some of those people would have said if they hadn't been under strict orders to be quiet, especially the men of war!
The men were all dressed for battle, but there was no one to fight. "It's hot out here, and this armor is heavy! What do you think has gotten into Joshua? Has he gone crazy? When are we going to attack? Look at them up there on the walls. They're all laughing at us!"
Keeping Your Mouth Shut
Can't you just hear them talk? They would have been just like you and me. To me, however, the principle is clear: If you are at a place in your life where you might be moved by circumstances and you aren't really certain you can speak in faith, then keep your mouth shut because there is ample scriptural precedent for not saying anything at all.
It isn't the highest way, but the vocabulary of silence will get you through when you are struggling in your faith.
If you will just keep quiet as you continue to do the Word and to put it in your heart, your faith will grow. Before long, you will move up to the highest level and start speaking words of life.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Mac Hammond is the senior pastor of Living Word, a large and growing church in Brooklyn Park (a suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota. He is the host of the Winner’s Minute, which is seen locally in the Minneapolis area on KMSP Channel 9 at 6:44 a.m. and 11:11 a.m. He is also the host of the Winner's Way broadcast and author of several internationally distributed books. Mac is broadly acclaimed for his ability to apply the principles of the Bible to practical situations and the challenges of daily living.
