Words

"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Or so goes the old proverb. But is that really true ? I don't think it's true. I think in a lot of ways, words can hurt and have a more lasting effect than sticks and stones can. I'm not sure what got me thinking about this - might have been something I heard or read about the importance of words. But doesn't it make you slightly nervous about the responsibilty we have ? That with the words we say, we can make such a lasting impression on people ? I know personally that I've been both really encouraged and a bit hurt by words that people have said in the past. And I'm someone who tends to hold onto things for a long time a lot of the time.

And looking in the Bible, words are important there too. Just putting 'words' into a concordance tells you this. For a start, Jesus is the word made flesh (John 1:14); God spoke and through His words the universe came into being (Psalm 33:9), the Bible is the word of God "living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12). Psalm 19 says "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight" and I'm sure in Proverbs it says somewhere something like 'out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.'

But what does all of this mean for someone like me who constantly struggles with not being to express anything - in normal conversation, in prayer, in anything really...? I can almost never effectively communicate what is on my heart to say, even when my heart is in a good place. I can use e-mail and blogs cause they give me time to think about what I want to say, though even then I'm not wonderful at communicating and is that any way to live ? Constantly e-mailing people with things I didn't manage to say face to face to them ?

I think this also overflows into prayer hugely and is probably why I struggle so much with praying outloud. I think I think that prayer is all about the words used. I sometimes feel like, through what I say I have to be encouraging the person I'm praying for and that if I don't pray for the right thing, God won't help the person. (And that's rubbish right ! As if prayer was meant to be primarily an undercover way of me encouraging someone ?!) But "ask and you shall receive" right ? What if you don't know how to ask ?

I know that God is so much bigger than that; that He does know what is on my heart even before I speak (Psalm 139:4) - something I have constantly taken comfort in, but do I REALLY know that ? Do I REALLY understand that prayer isn't about the words I use, but about the one I'm praying to ? Until I penetrate this confusion, how will I ever get over my fear of praying out loud, even for people I really love ?! And until I really understand this, will I ever be motivated enough to pray as much as I'd like to be praying ? Can anyone else identify with this, if they're truly honest with themselves ?

I think this is a really subconscious thing, which has only surfaced for me in the last few days. I didn't even know I thought like this ! It makes me start to wonder just how many other lies and twisted truths I've been believing. Apologies if I'm spilling too much out for a blog - had to write it somewhere but I probably should have used a journal. Well, maybe it's challenged other people too ?