The Power of Words: How What You Say Can Change Everything
“The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” — Proverbs 18:21 (NIV)
Think about the words you’ve heard in your lifetime. The ones that lifted you. The ones that crushed you. The ones that still echo in your memory years later.
Words are not small things. They carry weight. They shape who we become. A kind word can change someone’s entire day. A careless word can follow a person for years.
But here’s what I really want you to see — words don’t just affect the present. Words can change the future.
Let me show you what I mean.
There was a young man in Paris whose father had big plans for him. Dad was a lawyer, so naturally, the son was shipped off to study law. A Juris Doctor was in his future. His star was burning bright.
But something happened along the way. The son fell in love — not with a girl, but with literature. He loved books, not for memorization, but for inspiration. He fell in love with words.
And those words changed the world.
In 1863, while the United States was consumed by Civil War, this young author published his first best-selling novel — Five Weeks in a Balloon. It sparked the imagination of readers worldwide and launched an entirely new genre: science fiction.
But that book wasn’t even close to his best work.
His words opened up the idea of traveling to places no one had ever imagined. He wrote Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.
Think about that for a moment. In 1865, a novelist wrote about traveling from the earth to the moon — more than a hundred years before Neil Armstrong actually did it. In 1870, he imagined an advanced submarine called the Nautilus — and in 1954, the United States Navy launched the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine and named it after that very fictional vessel.
Would we have walked on the moon without that spark of imagination? Would we have explored the ocean depths without a dreamer who dared to put words on a page?
This young man said it himself: “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.”
His name was Jules Verne. And it all started with words.
Friend, if the words of a novelist can inspire humanity to reach the moon and explore the deepest seas, how much more can your words — filled with the Spirit of the living God — bring life to the people around you?
Solomon understood this. That’s why he wrote, “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21). Your words are not neutral. Every time you open your mouth, you are planting something — either life or death, hope or despair, courage or fear.
Paul put it this way: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29, NIV).
Words breed dreams. And a life without dreams is no life at all. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
Dreams build hope. Hope that tomorrow can be better. Hope that God is working all things together for our good. In spite of all the harmful words swirling around us.
So let me ask you today: How are your words? Do they inspire? Do they bring life? Are you building people up or tearing them down?
You may not write a novel that changes the course of history. But you might speak a word today that changes the course of someone’s life.
Choose life. Speak life.
Keep Looking Up!
Heaven is closer than you think.
May God bless your day.
Related devotionals: How to tame the tongue · James 3:1 teachers · Mary McLeod Bethune story
Want more from Pastor Rodney?
If today’s devotional spoke to your heart, my books carry these same themes deeper. Stories of God moving in ordinary lives, scripture for tired pastors and weary parents, and steady reminders that heaven is closer than you think.