What pollutes your life?

What pollutes your life may be the very reason you find life so complicated and filled with many struggles!

But, what many of us would like to know is “why must life be so difficult?” Even after praying, crying, seeking counsel, and having thrown many temper tantrums to God, nothing changes. Among many other things, could one of the reasons for lack of change be that the words coming out of our mouth are polluting the atmosphere around us?

Many of us are familiar with the passage that says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits (Proverbs 18:21).”

What are we speaking into the atmosphere, over our own lives, our children, our spouses, our jobs, our churches, our finances, and our communities?

According to Matthew 15: 8-9 (MSG), “These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they’re worshiping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy.” He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.” I look at this passage as saying, once it comes out of your mouth, it’s already spoken into the atmosphere and cannot be taken back.

The word “pollution” meaning in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary shows,

1: to make physically impure or unclean

2: to contaminate (an environment) especially with man-made waste

Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?!

We all have encounters, heated moments where we’ve blurted something out before even thinking. I have had several of those moments when I was either upset about something or when things weren’t working in my favor.

For me, as a child, I can remember this seemingly basic saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I would always say that to other children who either teased me or said something that was mean and hurtful towards me. This was the start of the enemy planting fruitless seeds in my life. I may have pretended that those words didn’t affect me, but they really did.

When I became a teenager, I started to believe the negative self-talk and lies about myself. Then, anger built up and took root in me, to the point where I felt as if I had no value, self-worth or self-esteem. But, now I realize the importance of keeping the weeds out that don’t produce fruitfulness.

But there were stages in my life when I didn’t know how to deal with things that affected me. I isolated myself; building relationships with others wasn’t an option. I didn’t want to be bothered with creating relationships with anyone, especially women.

After working on my introvert self for a while, God began to deal with me about that very issue. He reminded me that not being in relationship or caring for other women had become an issue with who He created me to be. More than anything, God has consistently dealt with me about negative emotions and how I saw myself.

When developing relationships, I no longer feel as if I need to keep my guard up. However, I will not deceive myself by letting just anyone in my inner circle. I have learned that, “bad company corrupts good character.” Let me explain, not everyone is for you, and there are times when people will try to bleed you dry or not have your best interest in mind.

I must say, I understand why people drink, abuse substances, go into states of depression, and feel as if there’s no hope for them. Let me clarify myself, I said that I understand…. I didn’t say it was the right thing to do. We need to show sympathy toward others because it was the trauma and the negative words that made them want to be out of their state of being, made them want to escape reality. It’s in our best interest to try to use words to inspire, encourage, motivate and build relationships with others.

Have you renounced those words spoken over your life?

Many times, people are not aware that their own negative self-talk or negative words spoken over their lives has caused many dispositions. Many words can reflect your disposition like anger, frustration, grumpiness, and moodiness which create a lifetime of unhappiness. But, I have learned that “60 seconds of anger robs us of one minute of happiness.” Speaking negativity towards people can cause damage, tearing them down, hurting them, and creating trauma and scars for yourself and others creating a life that wreaks havoc not only for them but the ones who are speaking the words as well.

With that being said, we want to live in harmony, balance, and happiness having a rich life filled with success, prosperity, and abundance. We need to speak life over ourselves, our children and family creating a transparent and positive environment. When children are raised in a positive home, they are equipped with the tools to develop into balanced, loving, joyous and confident people.

In this blog, I tried to emphasize how much power words can have so let’s speak life, blessings, encouragement, and motivation over ourselves and others. Let us not only be the hands and feet of Christ but the mouthpieces that speak life over one another!

#We’re forgiven!

“In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7)