What Have You Been Saying?
By Drenda Keesee
“My toddler is such a hassle. She never listens!”
“I’m so stressed out.”
“I’ll never lose this weight.”
“We can’t afford to do that.”
What have you been saying lately?
What words have been coming out of your mouth?
We’ve all said things we shouldn’t have said at one time or another. Other than Jesus, I can’t imagine there is any person who isn’t guilty of saying things they wish they could take back—about others or about themselves.
But what happens when we regularly speak words that put ourselves, or others, down; that negatively, or pridefully, compare ourselves with others; or that doubt who God has created us to be?
Proverbs 18:20 tells us that our words have the power of life and death.
The Bible compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship. If you’ve ever seen a rudder, you know that they’re usually really small in proportion to the size of the ship. But despite their size, they’re able to turn the ship and set its course.
Your tongue is your rudder, and your words are setting the course for your life.
Maybe you’ve been trying to get somewhere, but it seems like you’re stuck; or you keep trying to get someplace in life, but you seem to always end up somewhere else.
It probably never occurred to you that your words might have something to do with it.
It’s time to take a hard look at what you’ve been saying.
I was shocked a few months ago when a friend pointed out how often I said…
“I struggle with…” I started catching myself and I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t been paying attention.
I immediately changed my words, but then I realized I had started saying, “I battle with…” as a replacement.
I can only wonder how long I had been using those words. Despite years of preaching and teaching, I realized that I wasn’t always speaking what God says about me or about my life.
The Bible says that out of the heart the mouth speaks. What we meditate on affects the words we speak. When we meditate on the Word of God and what He says about us, we’re training our hearts and our mouths. When we have a bad day or we deal with a negative situation, what we’ve been meditating on and anchoring our hearts to will come out of our mouths, whether we like it or not.
Your words are powerful. Make sure your heart and your mouth are full of the Word of God.
God is God, and He is sovereign, but He gave the earth to mankind. He can only perform what we allow Him to perform in our lives. We’re the ones that have to bind Satan in the name of Jesus.
He has given us the power to live free, but we have to use our words.
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage and family. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide, and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary, and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesees have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
Gary and Drenda pastor Faith Life Church at The Now Center in New Albany, Ohio and also are the CEOs of Forward Financial Group.
