Biting and Devouring One Another

Galatians 5:15 But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.

Yes, we know that words are powerful. Don’t we? Do we really believe that they are, or do we just say whatever comes into our heads?

We should always be careful to say positive things, not negative, about ourselves and others. Because what we say is what we get.

Experience has shown us that words of faith get much better results than words of fear and doubt.

But what about words of condemnation, gossip, or making fun of someone? Are those words powerful? Do they have any effect on the people being spoken about? We believe that they do.

Lately, we have been learning about curses. We learned many things about the causes and effects of curses from Arthur Burk. We have applied what we learned, and we are finding that words that people speak about us, even if they are far away from us geographically, have an effect on us. If we sense that something is wrong in the atmosphere of our home, we pray to discern what kind of spirit is attacking us and command it to go in Jesus’ name. Many times, the Lord lets us know that the spirit was given authority and sent to us because someone was speaking negatively about us. At first, I found this kind of hard to swallow. Some of the people whose names we got were people who seem to love us. But I know that they probably speak their fears about what may happen to us or speak judgmental words about what we’re doing that they don’t agree with, and they don’t think we will be affected by it. They don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s really serious, because our peace and joy is disrupted every day by some foul spirit because of well-meaning and sometimes evil-intentioned people talking about us.

I found this verse and thought about the word picture given in these words: Biting and Devouring One Another. When we speak negatively about others, we are viciously biting them, even if they don’t hear the words being spoken. It’s like a wild animal tearing and destroying with its teeth. The cross-references to this verse speak of enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, dissensions, factions, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, gossip, envying, etc.

Words can hurt. Whether we hear them or not, words spoken against us can hurt us. One time, a friend called me after a long period of time and told me she had a dream about me. She said that in her dream people were talking about me, and somehow it was affecting me. I immediately thought of some family members who had talked about me to my husband about a year previously. I thought they must be talking about me again. As I prayed about it, the Lord revealed to me that the words that were spoken about me at that time really had affected me, and since that time, I had started thinking about myself and my family the way those people did. I felt like we were poor, pathetic people who just couldn’t do anything right. We were somehow substandard and definitely not as good as the people who spoke against me. The words were critical of me as a wife and mother and housekeeper. When the words were first spoken, the Lord said to me in my heart, “Who are they to judge another man’s servant?” I knew that God loved me and that He knew I was doing all that I could to take care of my family and my house, in that order. But somewhere along the way, those negative words took root in my heart, and I started believing them.

After my friend told me about her dream, I realized that I had let myself be affected by those words. I needed to come out of agreement with them and break their power over me. I had to repent for allowing them to affect me. I couldn’t believe I let them take over my thinking like that. I did the repenting and breaking and instantly my good, honest opinion of our worth as a family was restored. I could see ourselves the way God sees us again.

Those words spoken out of envy and jealousy almost destroyed me. I should never have let them change my thinking the way they did, but it happened so subtly that I didn’t realize it was happening. I thank the Lord for giving my friend that dream, and I’m grateful that she cared enough and was obedient to call and share it with me.

I’m also thankful that God has given us a way to deal with these kinds of curses. We can break them in the name of Jesus, and their power is broken over us. He gives us all that we need to defeat the powers of darkness that come against us. Sometimes we need to take some time and seek God to find out why bad things keep happening or what is causing a repeating sin or disease or behavior in our family. God will reveal to us the root of the curse or whatever iniquity has brought it on from our family’s history. Then all we have to do is repent, renounce and come out of agreement with the sin God reveals to us and break the power of the curse over us, whether it was spoken over us or is the result of sin or iniquity. We can break the power of words in the name of Jesus.

For our part, we all need to be careful of our words. There are many verses that tell about the creative power of words. God created the universe by speaking it into existence. So be careful what you say. You might be creating a mess for somebody if you carelessly gossip or criticize them.

Primer Lesson

Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can’t hear you calling–
Look out how you use proud words.

Carl Sandburg

I was reading a friend’s blog today, July 18, and she just did a post about the power of words. It’s very good. I recommend reading it for even more light on this subject, from a Hebrew perspective. Here’s the post.