Proverbs 12:13-14 – Words have the capacity to frame our world

Someone once said this: words are free, it is how you use them that may cost you. This suggests that we must be careful with the words we speak. For unlike bad moods that can be changed, bad words spoken will never get an opportunity to be replaced. Bear in mind that words are tools we use to convey our thoughts. Hence, if we understand the power of our words and thoughts, we must guard them more closely. We need to be careful what we say. Careless people have been trapped by their own words.

Proverbs 12:13 says, “An evil man is ensnared by the transgression of his lips, but the righteous will escape from trouble.” The advice is never to engage in talks that are set to bait others into a trap. People who do that have often walk into the trap of their own making. We should also not speak unreasonably or excessively, for what we say can bring trouble for ourselves. On the other hand, when we refuse to offend with our lips we can certainly avoid the trap that a wicked man would often walk into. It is true that a righteous man will be vindicated because untruth is found far from his lips.

Verse 14 tells us that our words can bring satisfaction to life. This presupposes that as a righteous person, one will speak words rightly. Words like seeds bring forth fruits. When words are pure, wise and spoken kindly, they generate fruits of love, kindness, favour and respect. When plenty of kind words are sowed, they will yield plenty of positive outcomes. They will bring about blessings for now and for a long time to come.  

Reflect on these words that Betty Eadie said, "If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words, we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths. Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive." Bear in mind that our thoughts and our words have the capacity to change the way we choose to do life.

Hebrews 11:3 says that “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” God brought about the world by His words. Emulating God, our words can also frame the environment we live. So, we must speak wisely and carefully.