Of course you know sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me; words will hurt you, and change your life. The bones will repair. The wounds that the words create, may never ever be healed, unless you actually do something to change them. I've known people who have had words of cursing spoken over their life by a father, and they believed they were a failure all their life, and their life was always below their potential. When they broke the agreements with the words spoken over them, and began to agree with what God said, it was like they came alive, and emerged out of a place where they'd been contained all their life, so there's no doubt words carry a spirit. They carry something that nurtures you, or wounds you, one way or the other. Think about that. Now we're beginning to think about words, so we found there were certain kinds of words, and words which were put down words. That means they are attempting violently, they're attempting to use words literally to beat you down, so you come back down, and let go your dream, and stop being who you are called to be. Now you find that everywhere at school, people try to put you down.
There's these put down words, put down comments, put down accusations, and all those kinds of things. Now what they carry is they carry a spirit which is - its assignment is to wound you, so that you will not pursue who you are, and what you are, in Christ. That's what they do, so put down words will do that. Oh you idiot, who do you think you are? You're nothing. Those kinds of things, sometimes teacher speak those words, sometimes those words have been spoken by a father or a mother. I've had to pray for young women whose fathers called them a slut, and spoke words over them that actually changed how they saw themselves, and wounded - their whole identity changed. They began to actually agree with the words the father had spoken, and began to live out what he'd proclaimed over their life. Oh, words have power alright. See, by the blessing of the upright, the city is established. So we can bless a city, we can speak over a city, and alter its atmosphere. We can speak over our life, and alter its atmosphere. We can speak death, and many people speak death, so put down words.
Angry words also carry a spirit of violence. They carry a spirit of violence and murder, and when they come against you, you become wounded by them. You think what it was like the last time someone nutted off against you, and began yelling at you and abusing you, what it felt like on the inside. I'm just going to give you a list of some of the things that verbal violence does to us. Believe me, it's not a neutral zone when someone is nutting off at you, and someone is yelling at you, when someone is abusing you, when someone is putting you down, when someone is actually acting with verbal violence against you, there is an impact on every part of you, body, soul and spirit.
You just begin to say to yourself no, I'm no good. I'm a failure. After a while, you'll find you don't even have to say it very much and your whole soul and body begin to lose energy, as you come into agreement with those things, so when others abuse us, it can potentially have dramatic life-changing effects on us, particularly if it's the home environment, where God has designed that we be nurtured like a little plant. Now I've got some plants. I'm hopeless with plants. I don't know what happens, the day after I buy them they die [Laughter] or it seems like the day after I buy them. I'm sure it's actually a lot longer than that. Something happens. I actually neglect them, so the fact that I didn't hurt the plant, just actually fail to nurture it, it just died, and people are like plants. If they're not nurtured, then what happens is they begin to wither.
Let me just give you some examples then of what happens when there's verbal violence, put downs, scolding, yelling, anger, accusations, all of those kinds of things. They carry with them something designed to put you down. If you don't actually take a proactive step against it, it's going to hurt you, and wound you. Let me give you a few things that it does, and I'll just quickly give them, then I'll show you - mostly I want to speak about just how to get out of this thing. The first thing is violence. Proverbs 18:21, there's been a violent attack on you, when someone has abused you, yelled at you, put you down or whatever. You have been subject to verbal violence. Someone has attacked you. You've been attacked. Now if you went down the street, and someone grabbed you and beat you up, and left you lying bleeding on the ground, you'd know you'd been attacked, but people do it with words, and we don't seem to realise what it's done. But what happens afterwards, you actually feel quite numbed and stunned, and you don't even really know what's really happened to you. You've gone into shock.