The Power of Words

The main reason I went to medical school to become a doctor was because I wanted to help people. When I played an online computer game before I realised how bad it was for me, I created the most useful characters I could think of, again because I wanted to help people.

Being a doctor in real life does help people’s health, although I can’t say much about the real good of helping people in an online game! One of the things that kept going through my mind even when I was doing it was that this is helping people with stuff that doesn’t even exist!!

How much better it would be to help people with their souls, which do exist and which last for eternity.

So in light of all that, this verse really stood out to me when I read it this week:

Our words, if they are pleasant, can help both the soul and the body! That’s amazing to me, after thinking I had to qualify as a doctor or a nurse in order to help people. Words are so much simpler.

Creating those words is not always so easy, but to know that words have such power is really exciting. If we work on what we say we could really help people.

The word ‘pleasant’ here means delightful, beautiful. Pleasant and delightful words will calm, soothe, encourage and help the soul, and in doing so will also help the body, since our physical health is often affected by our emotions and feelings like stress and anxiety.

Also if we compare other scriptures, both wisdom and the word of God are likened to a honeycomb, so these pleasant words probably refer to those as well. If we grow in wisdom and our knowledge of the word of God and are able to use it to talk to others then this should lead to more of the words which help the soul and body.

Matthew Henry says that these pleasant words mean: ‘Words of seasonable advice, instruction, and comfort, words taken from God’s word…the good word of God is a means of spiritual strength, curing the diseases that weaken us.’

Many of the Psalms are the words of one man written down, and are so helpful. Proverbs also are mainly the words of one man, and again are very helpful. So there are two examples of real life, very busy, men who have helped countless millions of people with their words.

And if they can do it, that inspires me to think that maybe we can too – at least in some small way anyway 🙂

I’m linking up with these lovely blogs, so if you want to read more posts you can click on the links: