Speaking Life | Dr. Jerry Mason

Let's praise him. Could you?

Could you clap a little longer and give him glory?

We give you honor, we give you Thanksgiving.

Thank you Jesus, somebody say Amen.

You may be seated. Imagine this.

Every word you speak is like a seed planted in the hearts of

everybody around you. Some grow into beautiful life

and others into destruction. What if I told you but the power

of your words is not random, that God has handed you and IA

key? It's an ancient wisdom to unlock

life giving potential. In your speech tonight, we're

not just talking about communication, we're diving into

a supernatural tool that can connect broken hearts, ignite

hope into despair, and transform lives.

So here's a question that every one of us need to wrestle with

tonight. What kind of life are you

speaking into the world around you?

That's good. That's good.

So I'm going to be speaking tonight, this Wednesday night

Bible study. This is the longest message

title I have ever used in almost 34 years of doing this.

So you can take that for whatever it's worth, whatever

it's worth to you. Speaking life, unlocking God's

wisdom to connect, encourage and transform through the words you

speak. I'm taking my scripture text

this evening from Hebrews chapter 13 and you can just

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

remain seated tonight. Hebrews 13 and 16 the Bible

says, but to do good and to communicate, forget not, for

with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 1821 that death and life are in

the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the

fruit thereof. Whatever whichever side of that

you are on, you eat the fruit of that if you're on the life side

or if you're on the death side. The power of the tongue yields

fruit in everybody's life, and that fruit is by virtue of

consequences. Have you ever said something and

the moment you said it, you knew?

Yikes, I shouldn't have said that.

You didn't need someone else's countenance to change.

You didn't need someone else to cry.

You didn't need someone else to yell back.

You knew soon as you said it. That is the fruit thereof.

If words carry the power of life and death, and they do, then we

must learn not just how to talk, but how to speak with purpose.

Because the truth is, wherever God has placed you in your home,

in your job, in your church, in your community, in your family,

you're already leading someone. What we need to be doing is

understanding the impact of that while we learn to lead our self.

So let's start where influence begin.

We're going to start with the words of a leader.

And I want to stress just here two things real quick.

One, every topic that I'm going to cover tonight is going to be

somewhat shallow because we don't have the luxury of time to

dive real deep. And secondly, I'm starting with

the words of a leader intentionally because leadership

is not about a title. And this is not just about my

personal passion for leadership. Leadership value cannot be

overestimated. And every single one of us is a

leader. And if you're not leading

someone else, and you likely are and just don't recognize it, but

if you're not, you still need to be leading yourself and it

really needs to start with you. So the words of a leader

speaking life as a leader, your word set the tone.

Ephesians 429 says let no corrupt communication proceed

out of your mouth. But that which is good to the

use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Leaders define culture. That's not just on the job.

That's not just in corporate America, that's in the church,

that's in your home. If you're a if you're a parent

and you never talk to your kids, that's leading.

May not be the right way, but that's leading you.

You are. You are defining the culture of

your home through silence. Your words either clarify or

confuse. They either heal or they harm.

Things that we should do. We should speak the truth in

love, Hebrews 4, not Hebrews, Ephesians 415 says.

But speaking the truth in love may grow up into Him in all

things, which is the head. Even Christ, giving feedback to

those that edify, leading with humility and clarity.

Speaking the truth and love, ladies and gentlemen, is not

always easy. It means sometime you're going

to have to tell your best friend that they're wrong if you do it.

Now, what happens? A lot of times we take the

passive least of resistance and say, well, I don't want to.

I don't want to cause any problems and I don't want to

make anybody mad. Then, at the risk of sounding, I

don't know, overly aggressive, allow me to clarify that when

you do that, you are sacrificing your friendship because words

are supposed to clarify. And the Bible tells us to speak

the truth in love. That's our mandate.

Barriers to good communication, pride, assumptions we've all

made them. Misunderstandings, likely, I

haven't done a study on this, but likely I feel confident we

could say Bishop misunderstandings happened more

today than they did 30 years ago because we've got more text that

we're reading. And I'm not anti cell phone or

anti text message, do it all, all the time.

But we have to understand the medium that we're using.

If you don't know how to take something, make a phone call.

Amen. Misunderstandings.

It's a barrier to good communication.

Lack of emotional awareness, busyness or even apathy is a

barrier to good communication. Moving on to our next area of

communication. Speaking life.

Speaking Life in marriage and relationships.

Connection. Connection in your marriage

depends on communication. If you never talk to your

spouse, if you never talk to the person that you are you that you

vowed to love the rest of your days, or if the only time you

talk to them is when the conversation is leaning your

direction, there is a breakdown in your connection.

You might be, you might talk, but you're not communicating.

The top communication issues listed in marriage today.

The top three unspoken expectations, emotional

withdrawal and poor listening. There's been a time or two in

the last 30 something years that my wife has said, did you hear

me? And it wasn't because I have a

hearing deficiency. That's right.

He can tell the difference. I promise you.

Maybe a time or two that she has said, were you listening?

You weren't even listening to me.

Yeah, it was. What did I say?

That's that's, that's that's the conversation.

Every time I get caught, I try to get my way out of it.

Yeah, I was listening. What did I say?

I don't know. I wasn't listening.

Poor listening. Misinterpreted tone or body

language. I said it's the top three.

It's actually top five. An avoidance of hard

conversations. Because some of the hardest

conversations we'll ever have in life is with the people we care

the most about. And if we avoid those

conversations, we're not doing them any favors or ourself.

Sometimes those hard conversations have to be done.

What we should be doing is speak with patients, listen to

understand what do we do? It's called active listening.

That's what we should be doing. But what happens a lot of times

is we, we if, if you, if you will just pay attention to it,

you'll find it, I promise you. But we listen to respond.

I'm listening to the queue. I'm listening for that, that,

that right word, brother Reese, that you're about to trigger and

I'm about to pounce. I'm listening to respond because

I've already geared up. I think I know what you're about

to say. And then what follows, it's red

faces, it's veins on the neck, it's silence, it's broke down

communication. It's I'm mad at you, so I'm

leaving. We should be listening to

understand. We need to watch our body

language. I'm talking inside marriage

right now, but this is this applies outside of marriage, but

we need to watch our body language.

Your body language reveals your attitude and your intent even

when you don't say a word. Your body knows because it's

connected to your brain and it's listening.

It doesn't have a listening problem.

It has an interpreting problem sometimes, but it doesn't have a

listening problem. Posture, crossed arms,

fidgeting, leaning in or leaning away all speak when words are

not being spoken. Add to this word spoken in the

wrong attitude and you have a solid recipe for relationship

problems. And if we don't get this right

out of the church, it will infect your relationship with

God every time you come to church because you'll try to

worship and all you feel is the the disdain and the bitterness

toward the person you just argued with before church.

Facial expression and eye contact.

Communication is communication is more than solving problems.

It's about understanding hearts. And it, it humors me or it

tickles me whenever I hear people.

There was a there was, there was an elderly gentleman in my dad's

church when I was growing up. I won't call his name because

some people would know him. He was a sweet, sweet man.

But he would get up and he would testify Brother Fred, and he

would talk about how him and his wife never had an argument,

never had one false word toward each other whatsoever.

And he thanked God for that. Almost every service, when they

would be exiting the sanctuary to go to their car after after

after service was over, you'd hear them arguing and bickering

and throwing words at each other.

She'd be cutting her eyes at him.

Every surface and the entire congregation knew.

And we were just behind them smiling and laughing.

But there's a whole lot of things that we can understand

through that. If you're going to say you never

argue, make sure you never argue.

And and for sure don't do it in public.

So we need to understand this. Your body language speaks before

you do. Here's here's a here's maybe one

of my most important points of the night.

Maybe it was for me. Silence isn't neutral.

We use silence sometimes as an excuse and say, well, I better

not say anything right now. I know there's a time and a

place for that, but we can grandstand that on so much that

we just stopped talking to each other and we think because we

didn't say the wrong thing that everything's OK.

Your silence still speaks too. If you never turn back around

full circle to have that conversation or to apologize,

your silence is speaking. Silence is a form of

communication. I use it every time I have this

microphone. Some of you getting

uncomfortable right now because we don't like silence, but the

pause has meaning. So silence can yell loudly.

More importantly, silence creates an environment where

there's not only a lack of communication, but it fosters

division. And your enemy wants nothing

more than to divide you, because if he can divide the home, he'll

separate you at the church. Your worship, your connectedness

to God, even your obedience to God has roots connected to your

communication. Ladies, if you want to see the

king in him, start speaking like a queen, standing next to him.

And we can, we can roll reverse that.

You don't get what you want by acting the way that you

shouldn't act. All right, Amen.

We'll move on speaking life across personality differences.

We won't stay here long, but it is important.

And I've touched on this before. I'm going to dabble in it just a

little bit tonight. Introverts and extroverts

communicate differently and the reason why this is important is

because it is a mistake for us to expect the people around us

and the people that are closest to us to communicate the way

that we want them to. We have to allow people to be

who they are. Introverts process inside, hence

the word introvert. It's it's introspective.

It's inside. They may pause, they reflect.

Sometimes they'll write it out before they talk it out.

They want to figure it all out a lot of times before they say it

out loud. This leads an introvert for you.

Introverts tonight, and we've got several in this church.

This leads an introvert to think that they've communicated far

more than they actually have because they've been playing

that reel inside their head. And then sometimes we're

surprised because somebody thinks somebody's upset because

we didn't say something and we think we said it.

So it's just a matter of understanding.

Extroverts process externally. They often think out loud and

they respond quickly because they, we extroverts, do not

attach our emotions to what we're saying.

I suppose that's a good thing or a bad thing.

So think of it this way. Extroverts are like jazz

musicians. They improvise and they they

respond in real time. Introverts are like classical

composers, carefully crafting what it is that they're sharing.

As a musician, I can tell you there's a very strong contrast

between the two in that, especially since most Apostolic

musicians lean more toward jazz. I have an appreciation for that

statement, James 119 says. Wherefore, my beloved brethren,

let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath

to wrath. Swift to hear, slow to speak,

slow wrath. Bringing the two paradigms

together, extroverts and introverts, requires work,

Especially if if it's if it's in your marriage or if it's in your

home. I just get a laughing kick out

of two introverts having an extrovert as a child.

I think it's the most hilarious thing that there is.

I would just love to be a family on the wall inside that home

occasionally just to see what's, what's the communication like?

It just sounds so funny to me. I'm sorry.

The challenge for us is understanding other styles

before judging their silence or judging their speed of response.

You cannot speak life into someone until you first learn to

listen to them. And listening to them means.

So here's where we go wrong. I think we are convinced that if

we listen to someone, that means we agree with them.

Come on. And I'm afraid that that is part

of the poison of today's society and why we don't listen to

people that we we fundamentally disagree with their policies and

their practices, maybe their politics.

We don't listen because we're afraid that that will imply

agreement. Listening doesn't mean I agree.

Listening means I care enough about you to allow you to

express yourself and what you have to say.

So much so to the point that even when people disrespect you,

if you show respect to the person disrespecting you, that

is more about your character than it is theirs.

People don't always respond the way that we think they should.

It does not mean that they're wrong.

That's right, that's right. Sometimes they might just need

some space to think it out, and if you've been mulling it over

and then you just let the bullet out of the chamber and haven't

given them time to do the same, it's hard to expect that

communication to go well. Kindness and understanding go a

long way when we're talking with each other, especially with

people who are different than you speaking life across racial

and social divides. Our communication has the

ability to heal wounds if we would learn to see people

without color. Matter of fact, let me say it

this way. If you're covered by the blood

of Jesus, you shouldn't see people in color.

It should be black and white. The greatest example of reaching

across racial divides come from Jesus.

In John chapter 4, he broke racial, gender, and religious

John 4 · chapter mention

barriers through having a conversation with a woman from

Samaria. Samaritans were dogs in the eyes

of the Jews. That don't sound very good.

It's not. It's because they were half

breeds. They had relationships that were

half Jew, half Gentile. And if that a that era in

history, the divide between Jews and Gentiles might have been

more contrasting than it is today.

Jesus should not have spoke to the woman because she was a

Samaritan, because she was a woman, and because the religious

differences. But He had a conversation with

her, and that conversation changed a whole lot of things.

John chapter 4 and verse 9. Then saith the woman of Samaria

John 4 · chapter mention

unto him. How is it that thou being a Jew

ask us drink of me which am a woman of Samaria, for the Jews

have no dealings with the Samaritans.

Racial healing begins with honest, humble, spirit LED

communication. If we can, if we refuse to talk

to people who are physically, ethnically, gender wise

different than us, then we are behaving in the opposite

standard that Jesus set for us in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

He said a testimony before us, how we should behave with people

who are different from us. And it's not to make fun of them

because they're different. It's not to avoid them because

they're different. And the definition of different

is 1 sided because they can say the same thing about you.

You're different. You've got a different color,

different skin tone, different speech, different accent, a

different cultural understanding.

You're different. And as Pentecostals, we like to

grandstand on being different because the Bible tells us to

come out from among the world and be separate, saith the Lord.

And we we like to shout to that. But then we don't want to talk

to people at the grocery store that are different than us.

How in the world do we think we're ever going to lead them to

Jesus if we can't have a basic conversation with them?

We shouldn't have to describe people based on their skin tone.

Humanity is humanity. People are people.

That's all we need to know. One conversation with Jesus led

to revival. The question is, what are your

conversations doing? Are your words drawing people

closer to God or pushing them farther away?

Are you building bridges or creating barriers and your

marriage, your team, your community, your job, your

friends? First Corinthians 15 and 33

reads this way. Be not deceived.

Evil communications corrupt good manners.

I once read a quote that said there are two ways to build the

biggest building in town. The first way is to build the

biggest building in town. The second way is to tear all

the other buildings down around you.

So if I can be blunt for here just a moment tonight, it's,

it's it's dangerous when we spend more time tearing people

down because they're different or tearing people down because

we disagree with them or gossiping about somebody because

we don't understand them. Rather than us bringing

ourselves up to a new level, we want to bring other people down

to the level we're at so we don't have to change.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's not where we need to be living our

life. God didn't call us to tear

others down. He called us to build them up.

And if you've got to elevate yourself first, then I believe

that's the calling of God for your life.

So again, First Corinthians 1533 says be not deceived, make sure

we understand evil communications, corrupt good

manners. Our main text one more time,

Hebrews 1316 says, but to do good and to communicate, forget

not. What's the wording of that

verse? It's so.

It's so plain and so powerful to do good and to communicate.

Forget not for with such sacrifices, sacrifices,

sacrifices. The reason why he said for with

such sacrifices God is well pleased is because communication

requires sacrifice. Well, I don't know if I agree

with that. Well, let's go back and talk

about how easy communication is then.

And why don't you do it? Because if it wasn't difficult,

if it wasn't challenging, and if it wasn't inconvenient, we would

never have a misunderstanding. I want to point out the

placement of this particular verse in the Word of the Lord

because it's between two very specific points of reference in

the Word of God that I find very powerful.

Backing up a verse to Hebrews 13 and 15.

It says by him. Therefore, let us offer the

sacrifice of praise. Everybody say praise to God

continually. That is the fruit of our lips.

This wasn't this isn't my point, but when we read this, we

understand that if it's the fruit of our lips that we are

communicating to God. So not all of our worship can be

in our mind. We have to vocalize your volume

level is not my volume level. I I gave a speech to our plant

this morning. First thing I found out later,

microphone was cutting in and out.

I didn't know it. I couldn't hear the difference.

And the person in charge of the sound system said, that's all

right, you've got a loud mouth. Not the first time I've been

told that. It was said in fun.

And I agreed with her, and we laughed and we moved on.

Not everybody's volume level is mine.

So my thank you Jesus may be a bit louder than yours.

That's OK. But that doesn't stop you from

saying thank you, Jesus, even if it's at the softness of a

whisper. If that's your volume 10, then

you need to give your volume 10 every time you're in the House

of God. Because God will hear it.

He'll hear it. He'll know fruit of the lips.

That wasn't my point. Let's move on thanks to his

name. Verse 16 again, but to do good

and communicate, forget not communicate, communicate,

communicate. That's the keyword here.

Forget not for with such sacrifices God as well.

Please verse #17 watch this very swift 90° turn.

Obey them that have the rule over you.

My neck hurts like whoa, another direction real fast.

We went from praising God. We went to communicating and now

all of a sudden he's talking about obey them to have the rule

over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls as

they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not

with grief for that is unprofitable for you.

Now there's a whole lot in that verse we can unpack.

I don't have time. We're going to stick with just

some of the keywording. So if we don't think

communication is important, I want you to just look at the

placement of Hebrews 13 and 16 because communication is

sandwiched between praise and obedience.

So praise puts you in a position for God's goodness.

Goodness will help you improve your communication because we're

we're talking about more than just community.

It's got to be good communication.

The devil can communicate. Matter of fact he does.

Now, I think we probably give him credit for saying things

that he doesn't articulate, but that's a different problem.

But there are times in our life he does, he does communicate.

He does tempt, He does make suggestions that we should not

listen to. So we've got to have good

communication. But then communication leads to

obedience. If you think communication's not

directly correlated to obedience, then I want you to.

I want you to, I want you to practice that.

I want you to try that. Try communicating something that

is the opposite of what you're obeying.

It's not easy. Try try saying yes to God and

then live a different lifestyle somewhere the 2 are going to get

mixed up. It is a sacrifice to do good.

I'm pausing for effect there, just in case anybody got

uncomfortable. Being bad is easy.

Isn't that right, Sister Malen? You don't have to answer that,

sorry. Saying the wrong thing is easy

because it's often out of an aggravated emotion.

You sit down at a restaurant to get a meal that you're about to

pay good money for and the meal comes out and it's not what you

expected or not what you ordered or not the way you ordered it.

We about lose our Holy Ghost fast.

How we behave and what we communicate at that moment

becomes a decision. I'm telling you, saying the

wrong thing is easy. Speaking your mind and saying

what you want to say when you want to say it, it's easy.

To the world, that's a badge of honor.

Well, they speak their mind, That's easy.

It takes 0 discipline to be rude, 0 discipline to be rude.

It takes 0 maturity to be rude. Anybody can act like a 5 year

old. You don't believe me?

What's their steak? Not come cook the right way.

So I'm not saying we have to be doormats and allow everything to

happen, but there's a right way to communicate.

And by the way, I worked in a restaurant, first job I ever

had. They going to spit on your food?

I'm sorry to tell you I don't care if they're a Michelin star

restaurant, if you rude they going to be rude too.

You're just not going to know it.

Lord, I've seen some stuff. One of the reasons why I like

going to certain kitchens where I can see the cook.

What's he doing back there? Takes 0 discipline to be rude.

To communicate effectively requires a sacrifice.

It takes time, means you have to stop, you have to pause what

you're doing, and you have to talk to somebody who's wearing

AT shirt that says, in my defense, I was left unsupervised

and you got to talk to that. That's a sacrifice.

It requires us to be vulnerable, and we don't like being

vulnerable. We don't like being exposed.

We don't like looking like we don't know what we're doing.

So how do we cover that up? Silence.

It takes effort. The Bible tells us evil

communication will corrupt good manners.

The 2GO hand in hand, watch it. The people who have the worst

manners watch their speech. Their speech is directly

connected to their behavior. What you communicate makes a

declaration of your thoughts and your beliefs.

In closing, I want to take one more look at First Corinthians

1533 in Hebrews 1316, First Corinthians 1533, the word

communicate in this verse in the Greek.

I am not studying Greek except for a particular lesson.

I am not practicing Greek, and I am not pursuing the Greek

language. I refuse, however, that's a

personal thing. I've got too many other

languages in my head I've got to worry about.

But I am going to try my best to stress the two differences in

Greek just so that you understand that they are

different. The word communicate in this

verse comes from the Greek word homelia.

I want to define that here in just a moment.

Hebrews 13 and 16. The word communication in the

Greek is the word Koinonia. Now to express the importance of

this information, I want to share the meaning Koinonia in

Hebrews 13 and 16 means fellowship.

The word communicate in the Greek Fellowship, sharing,

partnership, contribution more than talking actively,

participating in the lives of others, community, joint

participation. If we go back to First

Corinthians 15 and 33, the word homelia means companionship,

association, company, close relationships or social

interactions. Not a lot of differences.

Yet there's one more definition that the word homelia means in

the Greek and it correlates to the verse that says evil

communication corrupts good manners.

And that definition is intercourse.

So it's it's a next level social interaction.

If we go back to the other definition, it's fellowship,

joint partnership, friendship, closeness more than talking,

actively participating in the lives of others.

But when we start talking about evil communication, evil in this

verse means morally bad, wrong influence, corrupt thinking and

moral attitude and toxic behavior.

So outside of the confines of marriage as defined by the Word

of God, intercourse that is found, that is morally corrupt,

wrong influence, immoral, toxic, corrupts, good manners.

You want a good example of that? There's plenty.

My wife and I were youth pastors in this church.

It's been a day or two ago, but a particular season.

In that 22 year span, we had a lot of kids.

We had a lot of girls and boys. You want to know what tripped

them up? What tripped them up was

disobedience. But at the core of what tripped

them up, what we like to call missionary dating, they found a

love interest or a lust interest that was not in the House of

God. Can you put that verse back up

real quick? First, First Corinthians, when

we start talking about the depths of the meaning of evil

communications corrupting good manners, you'll find no quicker

reflection than that in the lives of teenagers that want to

do what they want to do. But we're no different.

I'm picking on teenagers for just a moment, but we're really

not that much different. We just aren't that loud about

it. They were very open.

They were very open to the point of telling me directly in the

middle of a Friday night service.

You can tell us what to do all you want to, but that doesn't

mean we're going to listen. Person that made that statements

backslid tonight, not because they made that statement to me,

not just because of the sheer disrespect, but because of the

meaning and the definition behind this.

The heart behind making that statement was I'm not going to

obey God's word. I'm going to do what I want to

do. It corrupts good manners.

It modifies behavior. Most people, I don't know if

I've ever seen a example, but most people do not backslide and

not change their behaviour. Evil communication corrupts good

manners. How we talk, how we live, how we

express ourselves has to do with how we behave.

And we cannot behave well and not be talking well.

And if we're not talking well, it is going to affect how we

behave. And if we take this a step

deeper, it's going to affect how we behave in everyday life.

It's also going to affect how you behave in the presence of

God and could be one of the barriers to our relationship

with Him because of how I behave before I get to Him.

So the words we speak are never neutral.

They're either planting life or they're sowing destruction.

And that's important for us to understand.

Whether you're leading A-Team, loving a spouse, wrestling with

silence, reaching across cultural lines or racial

divides, God has called each and every one of us to speak life.

And when we speak life, we echo the voice of the One who spoke

the world into existence. Would you stand with me tonight?

I'm done. Speak life.

That's our challenge. May our words bring calm and

healing and unity to those that we communicate with.

Let's lift our hands and just love the Lord together.

Mighty God, we're thankful for you tonight.

I ask you, God, to help us. Help us.

Let let our conversations reflect your wisdom.

Let our conversations reflect your grace.

Let our speech reflect your power to transform lives and

change people's hearts through the Word of God and the power of

your Spirit. Lord, we understand today that

that you can bring calm and healing in just a moment with

the words that we speak by your anointing and by your grace.

Help us to extend grace to those Lord that is, that is equal to

that of the grace that we've received and will not fail to

praise you and give you glory for it.

Today, help us to speak life in Jesus name.

Let the church said in Jesus name.

Hey man, speak life. That's our challenge.

I challenge you if you, if you're, if you're having

difficulties with speaking life, try a little harder.

It can be inconvenient, but it is a very, very worth it because

somebody's soul just might be hinging on the words that you

say. They just might be waiting for

you to say, hey would you come to church rather than my steaks?

Not right. Can you get it right for once?

A whole lot for us to consider. Speak life.

God bless you. Thank you for being in the House

of the Lord tonight. Don't forget Sunday morning,

Sunday night church service back on normal schedule this weekend.

God bless you. Have a great week in Jesus name.