Susan Says: Hooray for Good Words!
By Susan Shanklin
I was mopping my floor a couple of days ago in the kitchen. Swish swish in and out of the table legs, and this thought came to mind about words.
Words are so powerful! Words create mood, attitudes, pain, joy. You name it. Words are a force for good and bad.
Words come out of our mouths so fast, I don’t think we realize the impact that they have on people.
Words are seeds, and they get planted in our minds. Now, when I was mopping, it was the bad words that I was thinking about.
Not cuss words … but the words that someone says that puts you in a box, a column, or a category. Words of limitations. Words of control.
Words can be ropes that tie us up and make us feel hopeless, confined, and inadequate.
The older we get, the more words have bound us up, and we need to start cutting them off of us, or we will die from strangulation.
It’s a painful death, but I have a fighting spirit in me. I have to cut off words each day that have been spoken over me since I was a child up to adulthood.
I know I am not alone in this either. We all need to start cutting these restricting words off of us and pass the scissors!
It’s way past due that we start letting God’s words set us free and be our course-makers.
I think it makes a lot of sense to choose good words instead of bad words to shape our futures. Hooray for good words. Boo to bad words. Let me repeat myself. “Hooray for good words. Boo to bad words.”
Well, that worked for about two seconds, right? Then we think about the “bad” words and shrink back into the rubbish of the past.
Oh, I hate this round-the-mountain pilgrimage I make day after day. Are you out there?
Well, swish, swish with the mop of the washing of the WORD!
NO devil, no. Ain’t going to think this anymore! My God says the greater one lives in me. Who do you think you are, messing with God’s child? Devil, you are so defeated.
Jesus came to give me life, and I choose life now.
Oh, that’s a good thought! I choose life now. So it must be in the chooser switch, right?
I choose to reject those binding words. I choose to release myself from confining words.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20, MEV)
Stick that in your pipe, devil, and smoke it.
I was so impressed to write an article on words while I was mopping that I even stopped and made a note of it and left it on my counter. Isn’t it wonderful to be God-minded even when doing the mundane?
Oh, I felt good. No words are going to affect me anymore. I’m a conquerer. My chest swelled with pride in defeating the enemy. I am a victor! I saw myself as a Joan of Arc.
Until I opened my message board on my Etsy shop.
POP! goes my ultra ego confession balloon.
If I may back up a bit. A buyer on Etsy messaged a question about one of my listings. She was interested in this plate, but I had failed to put the dimensions of the plate, and that was a very important piece of information, she says.
I message back that I’m sorry she didn’t see the dimensions of the plate in the listing and copied and pasted the listing back.
Days later, the above person wanted to know when I had processed and shipped the plate!
:Well,” me says, “ but you didn’t purchase the plate.”
A few more days pass and the above person sends this really nasty note and ends with,
“You know what, never mind, I don’t need your plate, and you are rude.”
What!!!!!!!!!? You know. My mouth drops. My eyes blink. My eyes get big.
Then I feel the word ropes starting to wrap around me. It’s crazy because I didn’t do anything WRONG! Her words were piercing, and I didn’t even know this person.
Those words were trying to confine me. I wanted to close my shop. I wanted to run for the hills.
Oh, what’s the big deal, you say. Well, they came against my integrity, and they hurt my feelings—Wah wah.
I had a choice, fight or flight.
Was I going to let the words hurt me or let the note on the counter help me whoop the devil’s butt?
I confess it took me about three days to shove those words in the devil’s pipe and light the match. But I did it, and I’m smoking hot for God.
Onward and Upward!
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