Growing up, I remember my Dad trying to comfort me with a rhyme after my heart was broken by a mean, spiteful word someone had spoken to me. He said, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Unfortunately, despite his good intentions, this couldn't be further from the truth.You see, all words, good or bad, are like seeds. They have the ability and potential to lodge themselves into our minds as thoughts. They root and anchor themselves down and produce after their own kind.
Recent scientific studies have proven that our thought life directly influences our physical bodies. If we reject a thought, before we spend time meditating on it, it will have no effect on us (which is really what my Dad was implying). However, if we meditate on that thought, we cause it to build up a memory in our brains that becomes a mental stronghold. It has also been proven, that every thought releases a chemical response, and has an emotion attached to it as a response to that thought. As you think on it, it carries that emotion and chemical response along a network of nerves that are directly linked to the rest of your physical body.
Every word released from our (or others mouths), is received by our physical senses as a thought. If we pay attention to that thought, it will produce an emotional and chemical response. That response will be carried throughout our physical bodies and depending on whether it is good and healthy, or wicked and fearful, it will produce its very nature and intent in our lives. It doesn't matter if the person who spoke the words meant it or not. The hearer gets to either receive it and make it a living memory or reject it and never have it penetrate his mind or life.
Doesn't that make you want to think twice before you say any word?! In a nutshell, so to speak, good, healthy thoughts produce good, healthy people; and wicked, fearful thoughts, produce wicked, unhealthy people. For this reason the Bible teaches us to guard our hearts with great vigilance (the state of keeping careful watch of possible danger), because out of them flow the issues of life. Whatever we allow to attach itself to our hearts (mind), will produce in us, the same nature that flows from it.
Proverbs 3:26, "For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Proverbs 17:22, "A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones."
Now, the Bible declares God's Word as an incorruptible seed (I Peter 1:23,25). When it is received into our thoughts and meditated on, it produces after its nature (God's own nature), bringing peace and life and healing with it! As we meditate on it, it carries it's never-failing and everlasting power into every area of our lives - chemically and emotionally affecting everything in our physical bodies!
Proverbs 4:20 "...For they (God's Words) are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh."
Philippians 4:8, "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy - MEDITATE ON THESE THINGS."
As we make an asserted effort and a conscious decision to take God's Word of truth, and meditate on it, we cause it to become a rooted memory in our minds that has the supernatural peace and life of God attached to it. Every time we think on it, it produces and transmits that peace and life attached to it, to every part of our physical bodies - bringing healing and peace and well-being.
