Words are Powerful, Choose them well!

The title of this blog is a slogan that I seem to see regularly in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Words are powerful, Choose them well’. In the following examples, selected from today’s news, you will see the powerful and sometimes devastating effect that words can have.

Comments on Social Media can affect the outcome of court cases

The Attorney General has recently commented that the justice system needs to catch up with the modern world. In the past, only the Media had the power outside of the courts to influence jurors and if they did not have access to newsprint this could generally be avoided.

Now with the advent of social media, the possibilities are endless. Members of the public don’t understand the implications of the Contempt of Court Act and may comment on cases without realising the damage that this can do to the outcome of a case.

The power of words!

Threats and accusations can wreck lives and careers!

A recent court case in the U.K., between two former lovers, brought out into the open accusations that resulted in Matthew Baron, a palaeontologist being banned from his college and ending with his reputation in tatters. He said his life in Cambridge became almost “untenable” after Miss Cooke (his ex-fiancée) accused him of beating her when he ended their year-long engagement in February last year. Miss Cooke had an affair during a trip to the Pacific islands. The defendant, Baron, who lectures at Cambridge said that Cooke had made threats to ruin him when he broke the engagement and asked her to move out of the apartment they shared.

The devastating effect of words!

A certain type of accent, voice and words can win hearts and minds. 

Jacob Rees-Mogg – Tory MP for NE Somerset, and, assumed to be, future Conservative Leader uses words and phrases that have not been heard for a generation on the BBC. On a recently hosted radio phone-in people heard phrases such as “Not a brass farthing,” in relation to the UK’s debt to the European Union. His voice sounds like it has travelled in a time machine and takes us back to the Edwardian era with quaint expressions and an accent to match. 

The persuasive effect of words?

Scrabble – words you never thought existed now are acceptable. 

I am told that a new edition of the word game ‘Scrabble‘ has been launched in Australia. The glossary of the new version allows slang words such as “cozzie”, “flanno” and “schnitty” to be used.

‘Scrabble’ purists will no doubt feel aggrieved that this has happened but they can rest easy as the change only applies to ‘Scrabble‘ sets sold in Australia. ‘Scrabble’ was the brain child of an out-of-work New York architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, in 1948.     

The distressing effect of words!

Words are powerful; especially the Word of God 

Christians have believed for a long time that the Bible is the word of God, we believe that men wrote it but that they were somehow communicating the very words that God intended us to read. I am going to finish this post by quoting a number of passages from the Bible. I believe that whether you believe the Bible is the word of God or not that God can speak to you through it. In other words, the powerful words of scripture are not effective because any individual believes them to be God given but because they actually are. My prayer is that God will bless you, today, through His word.

Hebrews 4:12-13

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

1 Peter 1:22-25

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.

Romans 10:5-18

For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, “The man who does those things shall live by them.” But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: “Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”

The life changing effect of words!