The Word is Pro-Life

UV 1462/10,000 The Word is Pro-life
Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
Matthew 15 v 11

The reason why we should give far greater credence, attention and importance to studying the Word that comes from God rather than the words that come from mortal man’s mind and mouth is that the latter is from a limited knowledge, wisdom and understanding. It is like a manufactured product trying to describe itself and how it works. The Word that comes from the mind and mouth of the Lord is complete, infinite, perfect, practical, wise and effective in all possible and impossible situations. The words of man are superficial while the Word penetrates deep into the soul and even into the core of our bones. It is knowledge, food and medicine at the same time. It nourishes our souls and spirits and heals us of our deep insecurities and fears. This is also the reason that I spend the first few hours of every day imbibing the Word. When we imbibe the Word we are feeding on righteousness, peace and joy of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who dwells in us who believe rejoices that we have identified the Word as our eternal food and that we delight in it. The Word has a cleansing effect on our inner being. While the words of man show a person is clean and undefiled on the outside, his cup is full of greed, lust and folly. In normal circumstances, we might find ourselves polite and cultured but when we are provoked the negatives bred by greed, lust and folly come streaming or gushing out.

The word “defile” when re-arranged reads as “de-life”. There are infected files in our mindspace that affect our thoughts, our lives and our actions. Whatever we have fed our minds in the past creates these files of instructions from which we operate. But the files created by the Word of God are “pro-life”, pro-change for the better and not worse, pro-hope and progress. The Word affects positively our thought patterns, our speech patterns, our decision patterns, our relationship patterns and all our life patterns. A pattern has a mix of more than one element. Normally, our patterns are a mix of negative and positive with the former predominating on account of our fallen nature. When we believe Jesus and His eternal Word, the pattern is reversed and transformed as positive-negative negative. Our negatives are crossed out with a stroke from above. The cleansing happens from deep within us.

Our hearts and souls are purified and established by grace – a gift of God since the Word is a gift. Our hearts are sanctified by the Word and Word-immersed prayer. We need to now store or treasure more and more of His Word in the storehouse of our hearts. We need to check off and on if our lives, thoughts, words and actions are in alignment with the Word. We apply the Word to correct our world-view, to check if our enthusiasm to obey the Word matches our delight in appropriating the promised blessings. The Word removes the poison or venom from under our tongues and makes our speech gracious, truthful and gracious. Our mouths become a spring of sweet and not bitter water. Our words become a source of encouragement, joy, inspiration and love for our listeners and all who relate with us. The best index of the state of our souls, hearts and spirits is the kind of words that pour out of our mouths. We need to be guarded and keep a careful account of the words we speak.

Prateep V Philip