Wisdom in our words

I've recently faced some conviction in an area of my life that is very public. More often than not, I'm convicted of things on the inside: my character flaws, thoughts, actions that others don't always see. I'm convicted of things like saying something I shouldn't, showing up late to work, or pride issues that aren't easily seen from the onlookers perspective. However, this most recent conviction has to do with my public spirituality as of late. To complicate matters, Pete's (pastor at Crosspoint) message took the issue in a different direction, that almost counter-balanced my conviction on the issue. Enough jabber...I'll get to the point.

Since the emergence of Facebook status updates and those 140 character tidbits (oh yea, Tweets, as they call them), my entire spiritual répertoire can be defined in two sentence segments. I find myself spiritually satisfied with a message or book when I can wittingly repeat a sentence I find particularly enchanting. No doubt, this is not what God intended one's spirituality to look like. But before I cancel my Twitter and Facebook accounts, I need to share what Pete spoke on this Sunday.

The sermon was titled, "Pursuing Widsom in Words." (You can listen to it here within the next day or two, btw.) Words are powerful, and none of them happen in a vaccum - what is said has an affect on someome or something, if not many someones or somethings. To quote, "God has designed the human soul where your words will either destory or build up one another."

Proverbs 15:4 says, "Gentle words are a tree of life; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit."

Proverbs 18:21 also sends the same sentiment, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit."

From James, we find that even though the tongue is a small part of the body, it has a lot of power. Just as a bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole animal, our tongue can change the course of someones entire day!

So how does this relate to Twitter, or Facebook? I think you can make the connection...whereas the tongue in a setting of two or three people can affect two or three people (before it leaves the room, anyway), Twitter and Facebook can reach hundreds, thousands, possibly even millions of people all at once. So if I make the decision to use these social media, why not use them to spread truth or share some wisdom instead of gossip? My words can have an impact on people all day, and I intend to make that impact as positive as possible.

Just for fun, here's a chart of what is typically posted to Twitter, by content matter:

As you can see, only 174 of the 2000 tweets taken in this sample were worthy of the "pass along value" title. We say so much throughout the course of a day, are we building others up or are we destroying them?