words on Control

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Almighty God, harsh words and personal attacks can bring out the worst in us. We find ourselves spending energy on thoughts of retaliation and plans to protect ourselves. Father forgive us. We long to...

We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Sile...

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), the archbishop of Canterbury from 1532 to 1556, played a pivotal role in the English Reformation. A key figure in Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church, Cranmer...

Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...

The Dangers of Our Words No matter how much we might wish it weren’t the case, the perception others have of us is directly connected to the words (and actions) we use throughout our lives. Most of u...

Preaching Commentary The Dangers of Our Words No matter how much we might wish it weren’t the case, the perception others have of us is directly connected to the words (and actions) we use througho...

Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

Within the Christian community this leads to a prominence of teaching on the will of God and how to know it. Russ Johnston draws upon his own wide experience to remark how this continues to be one of ...

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves ...

To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by.

Imagine, if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad. So he says to you and the other trusted e...

WORDS. We think words, hear words, speak words, sing words, write words, and read words—all the time. Every day. What do words have to do with Christianity? Almost everything. At every stage in redemp...

As a language-user, I’m bound to all the audacious capacities and frustrating limits of words. We label, we name, we frame all of our experiences, past, present, and future. We give words to our inner...

What you do speaks so loud, that I cannot hear what you say.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword.

A theology of response does not need to be Pelagian; it need only be a theology in which the reality of the human is taken seriously.

Conflict is a painful fact of life. Many of us have not experienced the trauma of war or the violence of racism, but we have all been wounded by words.

The book of Proverbs is, in ways, a treatise on talk. I would summarize it this way: words give life; words bring death—you choose . What does this mean? It means you have never spoken a neutral ...

We humans may say, “Let there be light in this room,” but then we have to flick a switch or light a candle. Our words need deeds to back them up and can fail to achieve their purposes. God’s words, ho...

Leader: Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. People: Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart ...

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Affirming words from moms and dads are like light switches. Speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child's life and it's like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities.

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or b...

Mahatma Gandhi speaking to Christians, “You Christians have in your keeping a document with enough dynamite in it to blow the whole of civilization to bits; to turn society upside down; to bring peace...

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Many churches today remind me of a laboring crew trying to gather in a harvest while they sit in the tool shed. They go to the tool shed every Sunday and they study bigger and better methods of agricu...

Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.... When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making ...

Well done is better than well said.