Your Words Are Powerful: Do You Use Them as an Ice Pick or a Paintbrush?

Has someone ever said something to you that you’ve never forgotten?

Were they encouraging words, or were they critical comments or accusations that left a wound or scar?

I have no idea my motivations, but as a junior in high school I signed up for Mrs. Whittington’s typing class. I passed her class with a C average: I earned an A for speed with 80 words per minute, but I made so many errors I got an F for accuracy!

Mrs. Whittington didn’t appreciate my mathematical averaging approach to her class. I’m sure I irritated her with how I squandered her efforts to teach me.

One day her dislike of my behavior boiled over as she pointed her finger at me, announcing as the whole class watched, “Dennis Rainey, you will never amount to anything!”

Her pronouncement mortified me in front of my peers, but there’s no question that I earned most of her prophetic and disparaging unbelief.

Fast forward a decade and I’m in another class … at Dallas Theological Seminary. Obviously by this time I was a bit more motivated by Almighty God and eager to learn. I took five classes in 12 months taught by a man who etched his belief in my life, Dr. Howard Hendricks. We called him “Prof.” If there was a hall of fame for teachers, Prof would be an iconic member. He was the finest teacher I’ve ever sat under.

Every day I left his classes ready to charge hell with a squirt gun. He lit a fire of love for Christ, for God’s Word, and for sharing the gospel that still burns brightly in my soul.

So when Barbara and I wrote our first book a decade later, Prof wrote the foreword. (I’m sure Mrs. Whittington did a 360 in her grave knowing I co-authored a book!). I just now read Prof’s words in the foreword again:

“Dennis Rainey has been used by God as a powerful tool to impact homes and marriages as few men have …”

He believed in me!

Every human being needs a “Prof”— a friend, husband, wife, dad, mom, grandparent, mentor, or coach who is a cheerleader, a person who knows us well and has a tenacious belief in us. Barbara, my bride of over 50 years, has made the most significant investments in my life by far, but my parents, a few select friends, mentors and Prof all made significant deposits of their own.

As I reflect on these two instructors—Mrs. Whittington and Prof—and their impact on me, a pair of Proverbs echo in my mind:

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).

“A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (Proverbs 15:4).

Your words, my words, have the power to poison and bring death or to heal and nurture life and produce fruit.

Or stated another way, your tongue can be used as an ice pick or as a paintbrush in other people’s lives.

Ice picks are useful for chipping away at a block of ice. But when the tongue becomes an ice pick that verbally assaults and “chips away” at another person’s value and confidence, its use brings pain. Words can create invisible wounds which result in scars that last a lifetime.

Destructive words can come in the form of poking fun at another person, criticisms, sarcasm, judgments, jabs, put downs and jokes. Some words come with the white-hot emotion of anger that scorch and burn deeply. These wounds may take years to heal and fully trust the person who said them again.

The Scriptures admonish us, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

On the other hand, words can be a paintbrush that brings a canvas to life, stroking and splashing vivid colors that become a beautiful and meaningful painting that honors its creator, the artist.

Do you see people as canvasses, needing a bit of color in their lives? A brushstrokes of encouraging words? A reminder that God has a plan for them?

Next week look for second part of this blog series on the power of words: “3 Ways to Use Your Words to Encourage Others.” And for more on this topic, be sure to watch the new two-part series on my YouTube channel on “Words Are Seeds.”