Looking at his gentle face I see such fullness of emotion.
    Like a lovely garden where fragrant spices grow—
    what a man!
    No one speaks words so anointed as this one—
    words that both pierce and heal,
    words like lilies dripping with myrrh.

Song of Songs 5:13 (TPT)

Introduction:

Communication is the lifeblood of every relationship and is a hugely significant topic. Couples have to get this right for their own growth and for the development and well-being of their children and family as a whole. They have to get it right with each other and with God who is the anchor of the marriage covenant and its greatest advocate. God is constantly announcing its importance. In the Bible of 66 books, ‘words’ appears over 500 times in some of the major versions like the original King James and the New American Standard. In The Passion Translation, ‘words’ appears an astonishing 145 times in the Psalms and Proverbs alone.

We thought it would be helpful to start by writing something about communication in general in this first blog of our series. The blogs that follow will focus more on practical help for married couples in building postive communication and avoiding communication barriers.

The spiritual and the natural:

From a Christian perspective, we need to consider communication from both a spiritual and natural perspective. God communicates to us in several ways. In the life of Jesus who is the full and living expression of God’s love and creative power.* In the day to day life of the Christian the Holy Spirit is our teacher and helper. We also receive communication from the written Word (Bible) as the Holy Spirit gives us wisdom and revelation. Also, and undeniable, is the splendour of creation itself. The natural realm screams out in announcement of Him. God is the author of it all. At His Word, all that is was created and exists.

If you have joined together in the covenant of marriage, God wants to be a part of your relationship, but whether you allow Him to teach you how to communicate effectively or not is your choice. Its always His desire to help you, but its always your choice. For ourselves, we want to encourage couples to work with the master of communication. Our hope is that this series of teachings will persuade you.

We have to learn the art of positive communication with each other. We must guard ourselves from negative comment, from malicious opinion and judgemental conversation. Even the casual references that we use to ‘put ourselves down’. All of these negatives do us great damage. If you want to increase the bond of love between you, practice great communication that builds the character and spiritual well-being of your spouse, yourself and your family.

We all carry the image and characteristics of our creator - it should not surprise us that just as God spoke words that created things into existence, so we also have a measure of that power. This is why there are warnings in God’s Word concerning our use of the spoken word:

Your words are so powerful
    that they will kill or give life,
    and the talkative person will reap the consequences.

Proverbs 18:21 (TPT)

So much can be achieved when our words are positive, when we speak life into each other. See how The King affirms the Bride in Song of Songs:

Your loving words are like the honeycomb to me;
    your tongue releases milk and honey,

Song of Songs 4:11a (TPT)

How do we respond?

In a world that highlights the negative before the positive, loving conversation that builds and speaks life, even in our correction of each other is a characteristic within us needing restoration. We encourage you to come together as a couple to ask God to help you build this as a primary communication skill. Ask also that all the other ways in which you communicate will align themselves to the positive - that is your attitude, tone and body language. Words have great power, but these other methods of communication act as visual confirmations of your intent.

It is interesting that even the worldly view that discounts God and spiritual authority agrees that words have power to build or destroy. In the world of psychology it is called a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. That is essentially a situation where a declaration (a prophecy) creates an expectation that itself causes the declaration to come true. A practical example would be the long term effects of speaking declarations of excellence over a child in their education or behaviour and witnessing the transformation in line with the prophecy. There is evidence that this does happen - that declared expectation manifests itself. In the world this is psychology, in the church it is the power of the spoken word. So the message for all of us is simple - speak life!

References *

John 1: 1-3 (NASB); John 1: 14 (NASB)

The next teaching blog in this series - Communication for Life is coming soon.

Steve and Khanya