Speaking Life

The Power of Faith-Filled Words in Your Christian Walk

As an author I’ve always been a big believer in the power of words. My relationship with writing and reading has allowed me to see and study the power of words for a long time. If you don’t find yourself cuddled up with a good book on the weekends and writing sounds like a chore, as a believer you still have an opportunity to harness the power of words.

It’s clear throughout scripture that what we say matters to God and what He says should matter to us. In the beginning, God created life through His word. Then He said some important words to describe all that He had made, “it was good.”

Throughout scripture we see the importance of names and identity statements. God Himself has many names that describe His identity and essentially put Him into words for us to comprehend. We learn God’s names like “Elohim” meaning “mighty” and “El Roi” meaning “the God who sees” and we learn about who He is.

God also chose words as His primary form of communication with us in the form of the Bible. Throughout scripture we are told words are powerful like in Proverbs 18:21 where we read, “Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.”

Using our words wisely to speak over our own identities and to speak about God is critical. Our words are also a tool that we can use to speak directly to our circumstances.

In Mark 4:35-41 it says, “Late that day he said to them, ‘Let’s go across to the other side.’ They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along. A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, ‘Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?’

Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Settle down!’ The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass. Jesus reprimanded the disciples: ‘Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith at all?’

They were in absolute awe, staggered. ‘Who is this, anyway?’ they asked. ‘Wind and sea at his beck and call!’”

To many of us this is a familiar passage where Jesus demonstrates His power over creation, allowing the disciples to ask “who is this?” because they only person who could do such a thing would be God Himself. While this passage is establishing Jesus’ divinity and it’s a favorite for sermons about overcoming figurative storms in our lives it’s also the perfect example of the impact of faith-filled words.

Jesus famously slept through the storm while His disciples who were very familiar with boats and storms at sea began to panic. When they wake Him up worried about their situation, He speaks to the storm and it becomes still.

The words that follow in this translation seem a bit harsh. Jesus calls them cowards and questions their faith. Why? I think it’s because of the lack of faith in what they were saying.

I imagine there were dark clouds, big waves, and enough of a severe storm to make a fisherman panic happening in this moment. The disciples are all asking a well rested Jesus the same question: do you care?

They declare they’re going to drown in some translations because when looking at the situation that seems like a fair assessment. Jesus addresses the storm first.

There is a dramatic shift in the situation as soon as Jesus speaks. Then He addresses the disciples and challenges their faith.

It doesn’t take a lot of faith to look at a storm and say “this is really bad!” It doesn’t take faith to look at a hard situation and declare it to be so. But it takes faith to look at something as it is and see beyond it to something better.

Every time we look at a situation, circumstance or person we have the opportunity to speak over it like the rest of the world does. We might call a sickness impossible to overcome, we might call a person past the point of saving, we might look at a situation and declare it impossible.

Maybe, we even look at God in those moments and ask, “don’t you care?”

Really, this isn’t the right question. He does care and He isn’t asleep and unaware of our situation. He sees it with eyes of faith. Speaking with faith over our world and our people means looking past what is immediately in front of us and looking toward what it could look like with the power of God.

With the power of God, is anything hopeless? With the power of God is anyone lost?

From this perspective, with faith-filled words, we speak what isn’t yet but what we know it can become.