Say it Out Loud, Part 1

I want to start off my message by telling you something that's going to seem simple. And some of you are like, Well, yeah, that's kind of your thing, Kyle. That's kind of what you do. Well, I know it's going to sound simple. It's going to sound simple enough that you'll probably think to yourself at some point in this sermon, Does this really need to be a whole sermon? It'll probably sound simple enough that you're tempted to dismiss it and think, It's interesting, but I'll wait to hear what's next week.

I just think that what we're going to talk about in these next few minutes, even though it's simple, has the potential to profoundly impact not just your relationship with God, but your whole life, your relationship with other people, how you see yourself.

Here's the idea. Again, it's going to sound simple. A word you speak is more powerful than a thought you think. A thought that you speak out loud with words is more powerful than thoughts that just stay in your head. And we're going to see in a few minutes how science shows this is true, that when you speak certain words, your brain wants to believe what it hears you saying. Your brain leans in differently when it hears a thought spoken out of your mouth.

When my kids were young, I would challenge them to pay attention to the words they spoke out loud about themselves and about their circumstances. I remember taking my middle school daughter to school one morning, and she was telling me on the way to school about some drama in the friend group the day before. And I was glad she was sharing with me kind of what's going on in her life. I want her to share her emotions with me.

But as we're driving, I start to hear her words turn on herself, and she starts saying things like, “Dad, I'm just so awkward, and no one really likes me, and I just don't fit in anywhere.” And I said, “Hey, stop. Stop it. I want you to tell me how you're feeling, but there are certain things you can't hear yourself say about yourself. Because what's happening there is you're not just making observations, you're programming your mind. You're creating neural pathways. You're giving yourself a road to think about yourself.

And so, I tried to tell her, like, your brain's always listening to what you say. And when you say those things about yourself, you're teaching yourself to believe those things, to think about yourself that way. “Look, honey, you're smart and you're kind and you're beautiful and you're funny, but if you keep telling yourself the opposite, then you're going to start believing the lies instead of the truth.” The words you speak out loud are more powerful than just the thoughts that you think in your head.

And we're in this series called ‘Every Thought Captive,’ and we're being challenged to take our thoughts captive as a way to break down strongholds, as a way to be transformed, as Romans chapter 12 says, “By the renewing of our minds,” and yet, oftentimes, the words we speak kind of betray ourselves. We have these thoughts, and we say them out loud. And those thoughts end up having even more power over us.

It's not just middle school girls, right? Like, last month, I was sitting at a gate in an airport, and I overheard a woman on a phone, and she was talking about, I think, a job interview probably that she just had. And I heard her say, “I completely blew it. I always say the wrong thing in those interviews. I'm not cut out for jobs like that.”

After teaching a group of men a couple of weeks ago on strongholds, a man came up to me afterwards, and was telling me about his marriage, and he said, “I don't know why my wife puts up with me.” He said, “I don't know how to be a good husband. I find myself just doing the things my dad did. It didn't work for him. It's not working for me. She deserves someone who actually knows how to make her happy.”

I went to visit a man in the hospital a number of months ago, and he said, “God's punishing me for something. Either that or he obviously doesn't care about what I'm going through. Maybe he helps other people, but God doesn't help me.” And each time, what I want to say is, Don't let yourself hear you say that. Don't let yourself hear you say those things. It might seem harmless, but there's a difference between thinking a thought and speaking a thought. And when you speak a thought out loud, your brain pays closer attention.

So, to help us kind of work through this and think through this together, we're going to look at an unusual story in Scripture out of the book of Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel is in a valley, the Bible says, full of dry bones. Everywhere he looks it’s like desert, completely dried out. Death scattered everywhere.

Starting in verse 1 of chapter 37, “The LORD took a hold of me,” Ezekiel says, “and I was carried away by the Spirit of the LORD to a valley filled with bones.” (NLT) This is some kind of a vision, I guess—it seems to be. “He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley. They were scattered everywhere across the ground, and they were completely dried out. And then he asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones become living people again?’”

And as you're reading it, what you want to say to Ezekiel is, What…what did you eat last night? Like, what, Taco Bell® late at night? Like, what's causing this? It just seems a little bit strange and unusual.

But pay attention to what he's experiencing in this vision. He's in this place of death, and everywhere he looks is death. Everywhere he looks is the message: It's too late. Things are too far gone. You can't do anything about this situation. And then the question comes: Can these bones live again? And that's the question that I want us to think through as we talk about the power of our words.

That something may seem beyond hope, it might seem too dry, too broken, too bitter, too dead for too long to live again. Maybe it’s your marriage that feels lifeless, desert. Maybe it is a relationship with one of your kids that's on a respirator. Maybe it's grief that has killed your joy. Or maybe it's a sense of self-worth that you used to have, like, this sense of purpose and identity, but now it just…it's dry and brittle. Maybe it's your faith in God that is on life support. Like, it feels like it's six feet under. Maybe it's the hope you once had for the future that just feels like it's dried up and blown away.

And the question that Ezekiel asks is the question: Is it too late? “Can these dead bones live again?” And God promises Ezekiel that he's going to put flesh and skin on the bones. He's going to breathe life into them. And then He tells Ezekiel, Okay, here's your part in it. I'm going to work in this powerful way, and here's what you need to do. “Ezekiel, I want you”—here it is—"to speak.”

To speak, to say some things out loud. He doesn't tell Ezekiel to pray or to visualize or to manifest or to touch or to work or to glue some bones back together or to sew. He says, “Ezekiel, speak. Listen to what I say. And then you say what I say.” And I would argue, and we'll look at this throughout Scripture, there's supernatural power when you speak God's Word out loud.

Ezekiel 37, verse 4 and 5, “Then he said to me, ‘Speak…speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord.’” It doesn't say, Listen to me. Listen to these thoughts I've been having. Listen to my positive thinking I've been practicing. None of that. Listen while I speak out loud the word of the Lord. “This is what the Sovereign Lord says, ‘Look, I am going to put breath into you and make you live again.’”

Verse 7 says Ezekiel explained, So I did it. I spoke this message just as you... It didn't seem to make much sense. It seems way too simple. But God told me what to say, and I said it. I spoke it out loud. “Suddenly as I spoke,” as I was speaking this out loud, “there was a rattling noise across the valley. And the bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons. Then I watched muscles and flesh form over the bones and skin formed to cover their bodies.”

And so, you have this vision where God is driving home a truth, real life truth, that his Word spoken out loud brings life to valleys of death. The thoughts you speak out loud have the power of life and death.

We see this from the very beginning, that God has wired our universe in such a way that words spoken have power. Someone put it this way, that words create worlds. Words create worlds. And we see it right out of the gate in the book of Genesis. When God speaks the world into creation, he does it with words. He doesn't dream it into creation. He doesn't draw it into creation. He speaks it.

Genesis, chapter 1, verse 3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” God speaks light into darkness. Power of the spoken word over the universe. You read through the Gospels when Jesus brought dead people to life, how did he do it? Did he smack them on the forehead? Did he throw a handkerchief at them and they fell…? No, he spoke. He spoke words. “Young man,” Luke, chapter 7, “I tell you, get up.” Luke, chapter 8, “My child, get up.” John 11, “Lazarus, come out.” He's speaking life into death.

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, how does he defeat temptation? Does he do it by just thinking Scripture? No. He speaks it. He speaks Scripture. So, every time he's tempted, he says, listen, he says something out loud. He speaks God's Word out loud.

And each time he does it, he begins with saying, “It is written.” He's not saying, Here's what I think—even though he could have because he's Jesus and everything he says is God's Word. He's showing an example for us of: this is how you handle it. You speak God's truth out loud. God's truth spoken out loud has the power to break strongholds in your life and bring dead things back to life.

Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Your tongue has the power to destroy or to build up, to tear down, or has power of life or death. It has power over your circumstances, over your future.

Now, a lot of us would be quick to recognize this when it comes to words that we speak to others, or maybe words that others have spoken to us. Like, we've experienced life because of that. And maybe you had somebody speak some words of life to you when you were young, and the words they spoke to you became words that you started to speak to yourself.

I had a teacher, English teacher, in the sixth grade who had a…it was cutting technology at the time, a label maker. Raise your hand if you know what a label maker is. All right? About half the room. So, you type a word in. It's like a little screen, like a calculator type screen. And then it prints out on this little sticker piece of plastic whatever word you typed in.

And she loved her label maker. She would label everything. Like, her stapler, she'd put her name on the stapler with the labeler. And graded paper, she had a label for graded papers and a label for the snack drawer. And she…everywhere you looked in her room, she loved her label maker. She'd sit at her desk while we were working and just make labels. But eventually she ran out of things to label, and she started labeling us.

And she would put some kind of word into her little label maker, and then she'd put it on her shoulder. And I didn't think much about it, didn't pay much attention to it, until one day, as a sixth grader, she came by my desk, and she stood by me, and she put some kind of word into her little label maker. And she tore it off and she put it on my shoulder. And I acted like I wasn't interested and I didn't care. But I looked over and it said ‘creative.’ Creative. Nobody ever called me creative before. Never thought of myself that way before.

A couple months later, she's walking down the aisle, she stops at my desk again. This time, she types another word into her label maker. She tears it off and it says, ‘leader.’ Leader. As a sixth grader, having somebody speak that word over me gave me a word that I could use for myself that I really hadn't thought of before, wouldn't have had the courage to speak, but somebody else spoke it. And then that word became a word that I could speak over my own life. Maybe some of you had that blessing in your life. Somebody shared a word with you, and it brought you life. And their word for you became your word for you.

For a lot of us, it's easier to identify the other end of that. It's the words of death that got spoken. Those words became your words.

Jesus warns against words carelessly spoken in Matthew 12 as he's talking to us about the power of spoken words.

This is out of The Message paraphrase Jesus writes or says, “Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you. There will be a time of reckoning. Words are powerful, and you need to take them seriously. You’re acting like it's not a big deal. It's a big deal. Words can be your salvation. They can bring life to you. Words can be your damnation. They can bring death.” It matters. The words you speak matter.

What's fascinating is modern neuroscience has just discovered just what the Bible seemed to acknowledge long ago that there's something remarkable that happens in your brain when you speak your thoughts out loud versus just thinking them. When you speak words out loud your brain processes the information through multiple channels that more regions of the brain get used when you speak your thoughts out loud.

I could spend 30 minutes talking about how some of this works, but the point is that speaking your thoughts out loud engages more neural networks. It creates stronger and more lasting neural pathways than just the thoughts you think quietly to yourself. Like, the neurological bottom line is that speaking truth out loud can literally rewire your brain more effectively than just thinking something silently.

Let me give you an example. Our culture tells us one way to deal with your anger or frustration would be to vent your feelings. That it’s healthy to vent. Some of you are so good at it. (Laughter) Like, you are a venter, and you think to yourself, The more I vent, the better I feel. I just get it all out. Or maybe you're a complainer. You think, If I just complain, if I just let people know all the things that I find wrong with whatever's going on in my life, I'll start being content. I just need to get it out. I just need to complain about it a little bit.

But consistently, research is being done, some research out of Ohio State University recently by Brad Bushman was just affirming the fact that that's not how it works. Like, when you vent, your brain hears you saying things out loud, and your brain wants to look for reasons why what you're saying is true. It's the cognitive bias. It wants to look for evidence that backs up what it hears your mouth speaking.

And so, when you vent, you find more things to vent about. When you start complaining, complaining doesn't lead to contentment. Complaining causes you to find things, more things to complain about. When you start criticizing, you'll start seeing more things to be critical of. Like, that's the way neural pathways work.

And so, the term for this is embodied reinforcement. Embodied reinforcement, when you hear yourself speak, complaints, criticism, venting, it creates these pathways where your brain wants to reinforce what it's hearing your mouth say. So, whatever words we speak, whether words of life or death, are programming our mind.

Now, as we saw in Proverbs 18, we'll look at it again in a minute, words are like seed that get planted. And we don't always recognize the impact of the seed that gets planted, because there's a lag time between the time the seed gets planted and the time fruit starts to show up. And so, we don't always make the connection, like, oh, these words are building up this garden. These words are creating this fruit in my life.

And whatever words you speak are creating fruit that you have to eat. And so, I want us to take a few minutes, I want to show you another one of my little parables. I know these feel like children's stories, but my hope is that it helps us remember, that creates pictures in our mind so we're not just consuming content, but that we're processing it like we're thinking about these things. So, take a look at the screens.

[Animated video begins illustrating the story of the Garden of Words. Kyle narrates.]

In a distant land, there was a mysterious garden known as the Garden of Words. It wasn't always called that. In fact, how it received that name is quite interesting. Every person in the nearby village had their own plot in this garden. Some were beautiful with flowers and vegetation; others were overrun with weeds.

The people of the village didn't realize that what they grew in their gardens was determined by the words they spoke. They didn't know that each word spoken was a seed planted in their garden. Words that were true and kind, excellent and praiseworthy, encouraging and compassionate became flowers and fruit trees. Negative, harsh, untruthful words became thorns and weeds.

At the center of each plot stood a fountain called the RAS watering system. This fountain had an unusual way of watering. It would water whatever plants were most abundant in the garden. If there were more flowers, it would water the flowers. If there were more weeds, it would water the weeds, causing them to grow even more.

One day, a young lady named Lily discovered the secret of the garden. She noticed that her plot, once filled with vibrant flowers, had become overrun with weeds. This was often something the people in the village noticed when their children became teenagers. She discovered the mystery of the garden one day, when she was venting about all the weeds that had begun to grow in her plot.

She yelled and screamed and cursed at herself for having such a horrible garden. And when she was especially letting herself have it, she happened to notice a small sprout appear from the ground. She repeated her words, and another weed sprouted up. She wondered if there was perhaps some connection of the words she spoke to what was growing in her garden. She knew one way to find out for sure.

“Emily,” she said to herself. Emily was her classmate, and she was the kindest person Lily knew. Lily ran to Emily's plot, and sure enough, it was full of flowers and fruit trees. She decided it was best to keep this secret until she knew for sure.

For the next month, Lily began to be careful about the words she spoke. She purposely would start her day speaking words of life and truth. She spoke kind words to others and even kind words to herself when no one was around. She prayed prayers of thanksgiving and made a list of things she was grateful for. When she would get ready in the morning, she would sing worship songs to herself to start the day.

After the first week, she couldn't really see much difference and almost started to berate herself for not doing better. But instead, she spoke words of grace and encouragement. Before long, she started to see sprouts of beautiful flowers. The RAS watering system in the garden began to shift its water from the weeds over to the flowers. And as they began to grow, the weeds began to disappear.

The people of the village began to call the garden the Garden of Words so no one would ever again fail to realize the power of the words they spoke. And in time, that garden became a breathtaking display of color and fragrances. A paradise that people would come from all around to see and admire.

[Video ends.]

That parable, I guess it's really more of an allegory, but it paints a picture of what we read in Scripture, that the thoughts we think become words we speak, that become seeds planted in the ground that end up having incredible power over our lives.