Harnessing the Power of Words | Part 2 | Careless Words | Chris Voigt

Careless Words
Harnessing the Power of Words
August 14, 2022

I think I’m pretty good with words. I’m an avid reader, which has helped me develop a good vocabulary. But recently I ran across an article from Reader’s Digest titled 100 Funny Words You Probably Don’t Know. Ok... challenge accepted. Let’s see if you know any of these...
 
Octothorpe. You may not know what it means, but I bet you know what it is. You probably call this symbol a pound sign or a hashtag—but its “official” name is an octothorpe!
 
Collywobbles. This word is used to describe nausea and bellyaches. Next time you want to show off your repertoire of amazing words, tell your boss that you’ve got a case of the collywobbles and can’t come to work tomorrow.
 
Or how about smicker? This word is like if “ogle” had an affectionate and innocent counterpart. To smicker at something means you are admiring a person, and it’s visible from your expression.
 
Crapulence is a lack of self-restraint, especially when drinking. Next time you’re on a night out, don’t let your crapulence get the best of you.

If you actually used any of these or the other 96 weird words on the Reader’s Digest list in a conversation, you’d probably choose them very intentionally. Most of us just don’t think that much about what comes out of our mouths. We throw words around, speaking without really thinking. And sometimes it gets us in trouble.
 
I’m Chris Voigt, Lead Pastor at Dayspring Fellowship in Keizer, Oregon. We are in week 2 of our series Harnessing the Power of Words.
 
This week we’ll be considering what the Bible has to say about careless words. Sometimes, our words are careless because we let words fly out of our mouths before we really give them much thought. Other times, we let them fly when we could really care less how they impact the person we’re talking to or about.
 
God’s Word has a lot to say about how we wield our words. Just like every resource God has given us, we are responsible to use words wisely.