“When words are many, sin is not absent.”
—Proverbs 10:19
You know, I haven’t always been great at this, using my words well. And there is this place deep inside that feels slimy and sick and a weird shade of green because there are people who only know the old me—the dishonest me, the word waster, the word blaster—and don’t know me now. God has forgiven me and made me new, I know that.
If anyone is in Christ, [she] is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Thanks to Scripture and who God is, I know things are cool with Him and me when it comes to my past sins. But there are others who have suffered because of my sin, particularly my sin in using words. So before we continue this conversation, I need to apologize.
I had a friend in middle school named Elizabeth. I remember lining up outside of the bathrooms after finishing lunch, and Elizabeth was in line behind me. While we were waiting she asked about my family’s trip to the beach over the past summer.
I told her about how I swam out to a sandbar and saw a whale, and that I began to swim alongside said whale.
It never happened. In fact, I hate the ocean. I’m scared of sharks. Like whoa scared.
I’m sorry I lied to you, Elizabeth.
In eighth grade, my friend Amanda and I followed Nancy into our Sunday school classroom one week between church services. We said unkind things. We bullied her. She never came back to our church.
I’m really sorry, Nancy.
At our junior prom, I jokingly called my friend Marie a slut. I never meant it, and she didn’t act like one, but it wounded her deeply.
I regret that, Marie. I am really sorry.
My two sisters? Don’t even get me started. I could just ball up under my covers and never come out, thinking of the cruel things I’ve said to them at times. I hope you know how sorry I am, Tatum and Sally. I pray that God has healed the wounds where my words cut you raw.
Shamefully, the list could just go on and on. While there are many stories where I am the victim of unkind words being spewed in my direction, it is also true that I am the criminal. Even now, as I think about it, my stomach is tied in knots and I cringe at the number of people who have been hurt by my words.
I could shrug my shoulders and say, “Eh, I’m a girl. All girls are mean with their words at times.” And that would be true. But I know in my heart, like maybe you know in your heart, that there are people on earth whom I will never see again but were deeply hurt by something I said. Something I may not even remember.
As I dreamed and prayed and thought about this book, I saw all their faces. The faces of friends and family members who I know have suffered because of the things I have said—to their faces, behind their backs, with my mouth or with my typing fingers. And I thought, “I can’t write this book.
“I can’t write it because I’m ashamed. I can’t write it because I still don’t always use my words well. I’ve never killed anyone—want me to write a book on how not to murder? I can do that and feel good about it. But writing about how not to kill people with words? That’s hard for me. Because I’ve done it.”
I’m not perfect. (Gasp. Shock. Disbelief.) And I feel it is only right to look you right in the eye and say that to you.
Proverbs 10:19 says, “When words are many, sin is not absent.” In my life, that is truth. (And that’s the memory verse for this section, by the way, so memorize that puppy. It’ll come in handy, I promise.)
I can picture people from my past whom I have hurt with words picking up this book, rolling their eyes, and saying, “Yeah right. I knew her when …” Or, “Ha, the way she talked to me? The things she said about me? Psssh.”
To them I want to say, I know. I knew her then too. And that girl? She can’t write this book.
As I was deep in the process of creating Speak Love, I listened to a session of Passion 2013 taught by a pastor named Louie Giglio. I wrestled so much with this idea—that I had used my words so poorly I couldn’t even dare attempt to write a book about using words well—that my spirit was exhausted.
Do you know that feeling? Like shame and forgiveness are playing tug-of-war with your guts? Yeah, that was me.
As I stood in my dining room, outlining the chapters you are about to read, I heard Louie say, “Our witness to the world is that our wounds are being healed by Jesus.”
I stopped. I turned around and ran to my dining room table and scribbled that sentence out.
Words have wounded me and words have been the weapon I used to wound others. But Jesus is a healer, and now He’s using those wounds to witness to others.
But God forgives, God redeems, God restores, and God makes new.
The old Annie wouldn’t have the guts or the freedom to write about the power of words. Words controlled her far more than she controlled them.
The new Annie? Me? I can write this book.
Yes, even though I’ve been a gossip. And a liar. And a cusser.
Trust me, if there is a wrong way to use your words, I’ve done and I’ve mastered it and I’ve graduated at the top of that class.
Here’s what God whispers to me all the time:
You are forgiven.
I made you new.
You are honest now.
Everyone screws up.
I wonder if you’re feeling any of this too. Maybe you are a senior in high school and you realize you’re the mean girl of your class, and as soon as you cracked open this book your skin began to crawl. You could be a thirteen-year-old girl who has picked up cussing this year at school and you feel so dirty about it. Or you sometimes exaggerate the truth to tell a better story. Or you sit back and say nothing when that girl on your volleyball team gets picked on … Day. After. Day.
Or maybe you are just a normal girl who can look back ten years or ten minutes and realize that given the choice to speak life or speak death, you spoke death.
I’m just like you.
Here’s something you have to quit before you keep reading this book, and I had to quit before I could start writing it:
GUILT.
(You thought I was going to say cussing, didn’t you? Or bullying? Ha—I’m full of surprises, y’all. Pure full of ‘em.)
You can’t bring your guilt with you for another page. And neither can I.
I say all this to say: while I have received and continue to receive God’s forgiveness for the way I use my words, I knew in my heart that I needed to confess to you, and to those who knew me back then that I am humbled by the topic of this book and my unlikely assignment to write it. I’m grateful that I, of all possible people, am the one to walk this road with you.
And this road isn’t a modern one; people have been moseying down that path forever. That’s why I want to tell you about my friend Peter. Well, he’s not really my friend, but when I read about him in the Bible, I think that we would have totally been friends.
I get him. He’s vocal, passionate, fiercely loyal, a writer, and—get this—he’s a bit of a liar. In fact, in the book of John, we read that Peter lied three times, and it was a huge mistake.
Peter was one of Jesus’s twelve disciples—like, his very best friends who traveled everywhere with Him for years. And sometimes Jesus would pull aside his three closest guys, and every time, that included Peter. So think of your very very besties, and that is who Peter was to Jesus.
And then, the day Jesus is arrested, Peter does something heartbreaking. Read it.
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. That other disciple was known to the Chief Priest, and so he went in with Jesus to the Chief Priest’s courtyard. Peter had to stay outside. Then the other disciple went out, spoke to the doorkeeper, and got Peter in.
The young woman who was the doorkeeper said to Peter, “Aren’t you one of this man’s disciples?”
He said, “No, I’m not.”
The servants and police had made a fire because of the cold and were huddled there warming themselves. Peter stood with them, trying to get warm.
Meanwhile, Simon Peter was back at the fire, still trying to get warm. The others there said to him, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”
One of the Chief Priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”
Again, Peter denied it. Just then a rooster crowed.
Three times. Just like that. Three times in a row Peter lies, and after years of being one of Jesus’s right-hand dudes and saying that he would defend Jesus even if it meant he died (John 13:37–38), he pretends like he doesn’t even know who Jesus is. (And to make it even worse, Jesus had predicted what Peter was going to do—and He looked straight into Peter’s eyes after he denied Him. See Luke 22:61. Whoa.)
Can you imagine the guilt? The pain that Peter felt between each lie? “I’ll never lie again,” he probably promised himself, just like you may have done before (“I’ll never be mean to her again” or “I’ll never cuss again” or “I’ll never gossip again”). And then suddenly, much like for Peter, it happened again, and a wave of guilt crashed into your soul and washed you out to Regret Sea.
Peter disappears from the story until days later. (There are blanks like this in the Bible that I wish were filled. I mean, for THREE DAYS the dude is off the grid after lying about Jesus, and then Jesus dies and we don’t hear from Peter at all.) And remember that the disciples didn’t realize Jesus really was going to rise from the dead. So Peter? Peter is heartbroken. He just lied about his very best friend, and then his friend died, and that’s the end of the story. Before he can apologize or take it back, Jesus is gone.
Y’all, that’s serious. I can only imagine what he was going through those three days.
John 20 is the first time we see his name again, as he is running toward Jesus’s empty tomb. You’ve got to read John 20, especially if you can relate to the pain of hurting someone you love with words and not knowing if you’ll ever be forgiven. What must have been pumping through his guts on that run? I think we can imagine.
I tear up every time I read John 21. Even now, as I’m typing, with my beat-up leather Bible in my lap, tears are just puddling in my eyes. (My blurry vision is making it a little difficult to type, I will confess.) Peter is back to his old job, fishing, and as they are out to sea, they are able to view the shore. A guy yells at them from the sand about where they should be fishing. John sees that it is the resurrected Jesus and tells Peter so. As soon as Peter realizes it is Him, Peter throws on some overclothes and jumps in the water, furiously swimming to the beach.
We don’t know all that was said between the two once Peter arrives at the shore, but I bet there were tears. And apologies. And hugs.
At the end of John 21, we do get to listen in on a conversation as Peter and Jesus go on a little walk. Three times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love Me?”
Three times, Jesus gives Peter the chance to do it over. To do it right. To use his words well. To have a Gilgal full-circle moment.
And then over the next thirty years, Peter becomes a pastor and a writer (including the letters 1 Peter and 2 Peter) and a martyr.
According to the early writers, he died around the same time as Paul (another major dude in the New Testament), which was about thirty years after Jesus was on earth. Many scholars and researchers agree that Peter was crucified. A theologian named Origen wrote that Peter felt himself unworthy to be put to death in the same manner as his Master, and was therefore, at his own request, crucified upside down.
What does that do to your insides? That Peter, this man whose words were his sin, was forgiven, restored, and went on to lead the Christian church in Rome until he was crucified upside down for his faith?
Whoa, right?
Peter was forgiven for his wrongly used words. He accepted that forgiveness and went on to change the world. We can do the same.
Do you need forgiveness? Do the words you’ve said in the past haunt you a bit? You can be forgiven and, like Peter, you can change the world with your words.
For anyone who has asked Jesus into their heart, forgiveness is freely yours!1 The first step is to pray this prayer (or use your own words; this is just a good outline):
God, forgive me for the times when I have used my words to hurt others. I am sorry for the moments when my mouth gets ahead of my heart. I want to honor You with the words that I say. Thank you that Jesus died so that I could be forgiven. Make me more like Him. Show me how to use my words to create life and speak love. Thank you for Peter and his example.
Then there are times we also have to reach out to the person we hurt and ask for forgiveness. Have you used words to hurt someone who is still in your life? Pray about it—this may be a good time to make a phone call and ask for forgiveness, or even shoot over an email or text if need be. Sure, it feels awkward and stings and is humbling, but it’s a good thing to be forgiven.
And finally there’s the hardest part: you have to choose to believe it. Believe that you are forgiven. Because you are! God says in the Bible that when you confess and ask for forgiveness, it is yours.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Yes, there will be days when you screw up again. And there will be whispers in your ear that there is no way God could ever forgive you for what you’ve said in the past. But that’s a lie. If you confess and ask for forgiveness, you get it. Plain and simple. Choose to believe that truth.
So I’ve got to tell you what I feel now.
Hope.
Lots of hope.
Hope that you will read this book and change your words and your heart before you have a chapter’s worth of apologies to make. Hope that you will release that guilt and those old ways.
Hope that you can step into the stories of other people and speak the words that will change the winds and bring peace.
I have hope that you can do it better than me. Infinitely better than me.
You have this chance. And so do I. This chance to change everything with words. I know what it is like to use my words to rip a situation to shreds—so I know I can change things. You know that too, don’t you?
Now. Let’s just do it right, all right? Let’s walk away from the guilt and the words made of venom and instead bring healing and joy and peace and love with our words.
Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
This isn’t a pep talk. This is real life. It isn’t hard; it’s a choice. In a million different places with a thousand different phrases and as many people as you meet, you can change things with your words.
And I hope you do.
I hope that you will speak love, the way God always does.
When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.
—Proverbs 10:19
• John 18
• John 13:37–38
• John 20–21
• Psalm 19:14
• Proverbs 16:24
• Matthew 5:23–24
• Use your concordance or BibleGateway.com to find out where to read more about Peter.
• Do you see yourself in Peter’s personality? What parts seem similar?
• Why is it important to ask for forgiveness from others?
• Do you feel shame when you think about how you use your words?
• Write out the prayer for forgiveness in this chapter, or write another prayer in your own words to God.
• Is there someone you should apologize to for the words you’ve used toward them? Do it: Write a note. Send an email. Make a call. Get face to face. Ask for forgiveness.
• Thank God for His forgiveness, for how He sees us as clean and holy, and thank Him for His amazing plan for your life.
1. Maybe you’ve never accepted Jesus into your heart and you don’t even really get what that’s all about. Stick with me. We’re gonna talk about that really soon.