Today, from guest teacher Kyle Eidelman. So there's
this vision that Ezekiel has that's driving home
this rhythm that God wanted for Ezekiel's ministry
in life and God wants for you, that you listen
to what God says, you speak what God says, you
watch what God does. You listen to what God says,
you speak out loud what God has said. With conviction
and authority, you speak it out loud. With faith
and confidence, you speak it out loud and then
you watch what God does. You listen, you speak,
you watch. The words you speak out loud are more
powerful than the thoughts you think. Science
is confirming what Scripture has always taught,
that spoken words literally rewire your brain.
Words of death will tear you down, but words
of truth have the power to bring life. Today
on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram welcomes guest
speaker Kyle Eidelman for a special lesson on
renewing your mind by taking control over what
you say. First, here's Chip with some background
for today's study. A number of months ago, I
was sitting on a porch with Kyle Eidelman, and
we were talking about Christians living like
Christians and why so many people struggle and
our heart's desire to really help them in the
areas where they're challenged and failing. And
he said, you know, I was assigned to write a
book by my publisher, and I'm going to talk about
the role of thoughts, taking every thought captive.
You know, Chip, out of 2 Corinthians chapter
10. I got a copy of the book. Then he taught
it live, and I said, Kyle, could we use this?
This is what people need. I've been teaching
about mind renewal, but you've brought some things
to this that I've never heard. Would you let
us use your teaching? And of course, he said,
yes, and you are now the beneficiaries of this
teaching. You're not just going to love it. It's
going to change your life. Thank you, Chip. And
now here's our guest teacher, Kyle Eidelman,
with his message titled, Say It Out Loud. I want
to start off my message by telling you something
that's going to seem simple. And some of you
are like, well, yeah, that's kind of your thing,
Kyle. That's kind of what you do. Well, I know
it's gonna sound simple. It's gonna sound simple
enough that you'll probably think to yourself
at some point in this sermon, does this really
need to be a whole sermon? They'll probably sound
simple enough that you're tempted to dismiss
it and think, ah, it's interesting, but I'll
wait to hear what's next week. I just think that
what we're gonna talk about in these next few
minutes, even though it's simple, has the potential
to profoundly impact not just your relationship
with God, but your whole life, your relationship
with other people, how you see yourself. Here's
the idea. Again, it's going to sound simple.
A word you speak is more powerful than a thought
you think. A thought that you speak out loud
with words is more powerful than thoughts that
just stay in your head. And we're gonna see in
a few minutes how science shows this is true,
that when you speak certain words, your brain
wants to believe what it hears you saying. Your
brain leans in differently when it hears a thought
spoken out of your mouth. When my kids were young,
I would challenge them to pay attention to the
words they spoke out loud about themselves and
about their circumstances. I remember taking
my middle school daughter to school one morning,
and she was telling me on the way to school about
some drama in the friend group the day before.
And I was glad she was sharing with me kind of
what's going on in her life. I want her to share
her emotions with me. But as we're driving, I
start to hear her words. turn on herself and
she starts saying things like that. I'm just
so awkward and no one really likes me and I just
don't fit in anywhere. And I said, Hey, stop,
stop it. I want you to tell me how you're feeling,
but there are certain things you can't hear yourself
say about yourself because what's happening there
is you're not just making observations. You're
programming your mind. You're creating neural
pathways. You're giving yourself a road to think
about yourself. And so I tried to tell her, Like
your brain's always listening to what you say.
And when you say those things about yourself,
you're teaching yourself to believe those things,
to think about yourself that way. Look, honey,
you're smart and you're kind and you're beautiful
and you're funny. But if you keep telling yourself
the opposite, then you're gonna start believing
the lies instead of the truth. The words you
speak out loud are more powerful than just the
thoughts that you think in your head. And we're
in this series called Every Thought Captive.
And we're being challenged to take our thoughts
captive as a way to break down strongholds, as
a way to be transformed, as Romans chapter 12
says, by the renewing of our minds. And yet,
oftentimes the words we speak kind of betray.
We have these thoughts and we say them out loud
and those thoughts end up having even more power
over us. It's not just middle school girls, right?
Like last month, I was sitting at a gate in an
airport and I overheard a woman on a phone and
she was talking about, I think a job interview
probably that she just had. And I heard her say,
I completely blew it. I always say the wrong
thing in those interviews. I'm not cut out for
jobs like that. After teaching. group of men
a couple of weeks ago on strongholds, a man came
up to me afterwards, was telling me about his
marriage. And he said, I don't know why my wife
puts up with me. He said, I don't know how to
be a good husband. I find myself just doing the
things my dad did. It didn't work for him. It's
not working for me. She deserves someone who
actually knows how to make her happy. I went
to visit a man in the hospital a number of months
ago. And he said, God's punishing me for something.
Either that, or he obviously doesn't care about
what I'm going through. Maybe he helps other
people, but God doesn't help me. And each time,
what I wanna say is, don't let yourself hear
you say that. Don't let yourself hear you say
those things. It might seem harmless, but there's
a difference between thinking a thought and speaking
a thought. And when you speak a thought out loud,
your brain pays closer attention. So to help
us kind of work through this and think through
this together, we're gonna look at an unusual
story in scripture out of the book of Ezekiel.
The prophet Ezekiel is in a valley, the Bible
says, full of dry bones. Everywhere he looks,
it's like desert, completely dried out, death
scattered everywhere. Starting in verse one of
chapter 37, the Lord took a hold of me, Ezekiel
says, and I was carried away by the spirit of
the Lord to a valley filled with bones. This
is some kind of a vision, I guess. It seems to
be, he led me all around among the bones that
covered the valley. If you can picture this,
they were scattered everywhere across the ground
and they were completely dried out. And then
he asked me, son of man, can these bones become
living people again? And as you're reading it,
what you want to say to Ezekiel is, what did
you eat last night? Like what's the Taco Bell
late at night? Like what's causing that? It just
seems a little bit strange and unusual, but pay
attention to what, he's experiencing in this
vision. He's in this place of death and everywhere
he looks is death. Everywhere he looks is the
message, it's too late. Things are too far gone.
You can't do anything about this situation. And
then the question comes, can these bones live
again? And that's the question that I want us
to think through as we talk about the power of
our words, that something may seem beyond hope.
It might seem too dry, too broken, too bitter,
too dead for too long to live again. Maybe it's
your marriage that feels lifeless, desert, or
maybe it is a relationship with one of your kids
that's on a respirator. Maybe it's grief that
has killed your joy, or maybe it's a sense of
self -worth that you used to have, like this
sense of purpose and identity, but now it's dry
and brittle. Maybe it's your faith in God that
is on life support, like it feels like it's six
feet under. Maybe it's the hope you once had
for the future that just feels like it's dried
up and blown away. And the question that Ezekiel
asks is the question, is it too late? Can these
dead bones live again? And God promises Ezekiel
that he's gonna put flesh and skin on the bones.
He's gonna breathe life into them. And then he
tells Ezekiel, okay, here's your part in it.
I'm gonna work in this powerful way and here's
what you need to do. Ezekiel, I want you, here
it is, to speak, to speak, to say some things
out loud. He doesn't tell Ezekiel to pray or
to visualize or to manifest or to touch or to
work or to glue some, bones back together or
to sew. He says, Ezekiel, speak, listen to what
I say. And then you say what I say. And I would
argue, and we'll look at this throughout scripture.
There's supernatural power when you speak God's
word out loud. Ezekiel 37 verse four and five.
Then he said to me, speak, speak a prophetic
message to these bones and say, dry bones, listen
to the word of the Lord. It doesn't say, listen
to me. Listen to these thoughts I've been having.
Listen to my positive thinking I've been practicing.
None of that. Listen while I speak out loud the
word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign
Lord says. Look, I am going to put breath into
you and make you live again. Verse seven says,
Ezekiel explained, so I did it. I spoke this
message. It didn't seem to make much sense. It
seems way too simple. but God told me what to
say and I said it. I spoke it out loud. Suddenly
as I spoke, as I was speaking this out loud,
there was a rattling noise across the valley
and the bones of each body came together and
attached themselves as complete skeletons. Then
I watched muscles and flesh form over the bones
and skin formed to cover their bodies. And so
you have this vision where God is driving home
a truth, real life truth. that his word spoken
out loud brings life to valleys of death. The
thoughts you speak out loud have the power of
life and death. We see this from the very beginning,
that God has wired our universe in such a way
that words spoken have power. And someone put
it this way, that words create worlds. Words
create worlds. And we see it right out of the
gate in the book of Genesis when God speaks the
world into creation. He does it with words. He
doesn't dream it into creation. He doesn't draw
it into creation. He speaks it. Genesis chapter
one, verse three, and God said, let there be
light. And there was light. God speaks light
into darkness, power of the spoken word over
the universe. You read through the gospels when
Jesus brought dead people to life, how did he
do it? Did he smack them on the forehead? Did
he throw a handkerchief at him and they fell
low? No, he spoke. He spoke words. Young man,
Luke chapter seven, I tell you, get up. Luke
chapter eight, my child, get up. John 11, Lazarus,
come out. He's speaking life into death. When
Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, how does
he? Does he do it by just thinking scripture?
No, he speaks it. He speaks scripture. So every
time he's tempted, he says, listen, he says something
out loud. He speaks God's word out loud. And
each time he does it, he begins with saying,
it is written. He's not saying, here's what I
think, even though he could have, because he's
Jesus and everything he says is God's word. He's
showing an example for us of this is how you
handle it. You speak God's truth out loud. You're
listening to Living on the Edge with guest teacher
Kyle Eidelman. There's more just ahead, so stay
with us. Today we continue our journey through
a fundamental series called God's Dream for Your
Life. And if you've missed any part of this study
or want to find more Bible lessons, just go online
to Living on the Edge. There, you'll discover
a wide array of teaching content, downloadable
materials, and daily discipleship with Chip Ingram.
Find it all at livingontheedge .org. Well, now
let's get back to our lesson with guest teacher
Kyle Eidelman. God's truth, spoken out loud,
has the power to break strongholds in your life
and bring dead things back to life. Proverbs
18, 21, death and life are in the power of the
tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Your tongue has the power to destroy or to build
up, to tear down, or it has power of life or
death. It has power over your circumstances,
over your future. Now, a lot of us would be quick
to recognize this when it comes to words that
we speak to others or maybe words that others
have spoken to us. Like we've experienced life
because of that. And maybe you had somebody speak
some words of life to you when you were young
and the words they spoke to you became words
that you started to speak to yourself. I had
a teacher, English teacher in the sixth grade
who had a, was cutting technology at the time,
a label maker. Raise your hand if you know what
a label maker is. All right, about half the room.
So you type a word in, it's like a little screen,
like a calculator type screen. And then it prints
out. on this little sticker, piece of plastic,
whatever word you typed in. And she loved her
label maker. She would label everything, like
her stapler. She'd put her name on the stapler
with the label and graded paper. She had a label
for graded papers and label for the snack drawer.
And everywhere you looked in her room, she loved
her label maker. She'd sit at her desk while
we were working and just make labels. But eventually
she ran out of things to label and she started
labeling us. And she would put some kind of word
into her little label maker and then she'd put
it on her shoulder. And I didn't think much about
it, didn't pay much attention to it. Until one
day as a sixth grader, she came by my desk and
she stood by me and she put some kind of word
into her little label maker and she tore it off
and she put it on my shoulder. And I acted like
I wasn't interested and I didn't care. But I
looked over and it said, creative, creative.
Nobody ever called me creative before. Never
thought of myself that way before. A couple months
later, she's walking down the aisle. She stops
at my desk again. This time she types another
word into her label maker. She tears it off and
it says leader, leader. As a sixth grader, having
somebody speak that word over me gave me a word
that I could use for myself that I really hadn't
thought of before. We wouldn't have had the courage
to speak, but somebody else spoke it. And then
that word became a word that I could speak over
my own life. Maybe some of you had that blessing
in your life. Somebody shared a word with you
and it brought you life and their word for you
became your word for you. For a lot of us, it's
easier to identify the other end of that. It's
the words of death that got spoken. Those words
became your words. Jesus warns against words
carelessly spoken in Matthew 12 as he's talking
to us about the power of spoken words. This is
out of the message paraphrase. Jesus writes or
says, let me tell you something. Let me tell
you something. Every one of these careless words
is gonna come back to haunt you. There will be
a time of reckoning. Words are powerful and you
need to take them seriously. Acting like it's
not a big deal, it's a big deal. Words can be
your salvation. They can bring life to you. Words
can be your damnation. They can bring death.
It matters. The words you speak matter. What's
fascinating is modern neuroscience has just discovered
just what the Bible seemed to acknowledge long
ago, that there's something remarkable that happens
in your brain when you speak your thoughts out
loud versus just thinking them. When you speak
words out loud, your brain processes the information
through multiple channels that more regions of
the brain, get used when you speak your thoughts
out loud. I could spend 30 minutes talking about
how some of this works, but the point is that
speaking your thoughts out loud engages more
neural networks to create stronger and more lasting
neural pathways than just the thoughts you think
quietly to yourself. Like the neurological bottom
line is that speaking truth out loud can literally
rewire your brain more effectively than just
thinking something silently. Let me give you
an example. Our culture tells us one way to deal
with your anger or frustration would be to vent
your feelings. That's healthy to vent. Some of
you are so good at it. Like you are a venter.
And you think to yourself, the more I vent, the
better I feel. I just get it all out. Or maybe
you're a complainer. You think, if I just complain,
if I just let people know all the things that
I find wrong with whatever's going on in my life,
I'll start being content. I just need to get
it out. I just need to complain about it a little
bit. But consistently, research is being done,
some research out of Ohio State University recently
by Brad Bushman was just affirming the fact that
that's not how it works. Like when you vent,
your brain hears you saying things out loud and
your brain wants to look for reasons why what
you're saying is true. It's a cognitive bias.
It wants to look for evidence that backs up what
it hears your mouth speaking. And so when you
vent, you find more things to vent about. When
you start complaining, complaining doesn't lead
to contentment. Complaining causes you to find
more things to complain about. When you start
criticizing, you'll start seeing more things
to be critical of. Like that's the way neural
pathways work. And so the term for this is embodied
reinforcement. Embodied reinforcement. When you
hear yourself speak, complaints, criticism, when
venting, it creates these pathways where your
brain wants to reinforce what it's hearing your
mouth say. So whatever words we speak, whether
words of life or death are programming in our
mind. Now, as we saw in Proverbs 18, we'll look
at it again in a minute. Words are like seed
that get planted. And we don't always recognize
the impact of the seed that gets planted because
there's a lag time between the time the seed
gets planted and the time fruit starts to show
up. And so we don't always make the connection
like, oh, these words are. building up this garden.
These words are creating this fruit in my life.
And whatever words you speak are creating fruit
that you have to eat. And so I want us to take
a few minutes. I want to show you another one
of my little parables. I know these feel like
children's stories, but my hope is that it helps
us remember, that creates pictures in our mind.
So we're not just consuming content, but that
we're processing it. Like we're thinking about
these things. So take a look at the screens.
In a distant land, there was a mysterious garden
known as the Garden of Words. It wasn't always
called that. In fact, how it received that name
is quite interesting. Every person in the nearby
village had their own plot in this garden. Some
were beautiful with flowers and vegetation. Others
were overrun with weeds. The people of the village
didn't realize that what they grew in their gardens
was determined by the words they spoke. They
didn't know that each word spoken was a seed
planted in their garden. Words that were true
and kind, excellent and praiseworthy, encouraging
and compassionate became flowers and fruit trees.
Negative, harsh, untruthful words became thorns
and weeds. At the center of each plot stood a
fountain called the RAS watering system. This
fountain had an unusual way of watering. It would
water whatever plants were most abundant in the
garden. If there were more flowers, it would
water the flowers. If there were more weeds,
it would water the weeds, causing them to grow
even more. One day, a young lady named Lily discovered
the secret of the garden. She noticed that her
plot, once filled with vibrant flowers, had become
overrun with weeds. This was often something
that people in the village noticed when their
children became teenagers. She discovered the
mystery of the garden one day when she was venting
about all the weeds that had begun to grow in
her plot. She yelled and screamed and cursed
at herself for having such a horrible garden.
And when she was especially letting herself have
it, she happened to notice a small sprout appear
from the ground. She repeated her words and another
weed sprouted up. She wondered if there was perhaps
some connection of the words she spoke to what
was growing in her garden. She knew one way to
find out for sure. Emily, she said to herself.
Emily was her classmate and she was the kindest
person Lily knew. Lily ran to Emily's plot and
sure enough, it was full of flowers and fruit
trees. She decided it was best to keep this secret
until she knew for sure. For the next month,
Lily began to be careful about the words that
she spoke. She purposely would start her day
speaking words of life and truth. She spoke kind
words to others and even kind words to herself
when no one was around. She prayed prayers of
thanksgiving and made a list of things she was
grateful for. When she would get ready in the
morning, she would sing worship songs to herself
to start the day. After the first week, she couldn't
really see much difference and almost started
to berate herself for not doing better. But instead,
she spoke words of grace and encouragement. before
long she started to see sprouts of beautiful
flowers the ras watering system in the garden
began to shift its water from the weeds over
to the flowers and as they began to grow the
weeds began to disappear the people of the village
began to call the garden the garden of woods
so no one would ever again fail to realize the
power of the words they spoke and in time that
garden became a breathtaking display of color
and fragrances a paradise that people would come
from all around to see and admire. That parable,
I guess it's really more of an allegory, but
it paints a picture of what we read in Scripture,
that the thoughts we think become words we speak
that become seeds planted in the ground that
end up having incredible power over our lives.
That's guest teacher Kyle Eidelman. Wrapping
up a remarkable week of Bible teaching here on
Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram has some thoughts
for us coming up in a moment. But remember, if
you missed any part of today's lesson or just
want to revisit what you've heard, you can always
find these lessons online at livingontheedge
.org. Words create worlds. That's what Kyle showed
us today. And so does this broadcast. Every single
day, Living on the Edge speaks the Word of God
into lives that are desperate to hear it, into
minds that have been running on lies long enough.
For 30 years, that's been this ministry's singular
calling, and it has always been made possible
by the generosity of friends who give and friends
who pray. And if you're ready to join that team
today, we'd love to have you. Your gift of any
amount keeps this teaching on the air and reaching
people who need it most. Would you also commit
to praying for this ministry? Pray that the words
spoken here would land like seed in good soil.
To give today, visit livingontheedge .org or
send your one -time gift through the mail to
You can also call us at Well, now here's Chip.
Oh, I so appreciate what Kyle said today. It
totally reinforces my biblical conviction on
this important subject. Listen carefully. A word
you speak is more powerful than a thought you
think. When you speak thoughts out loud, your
brain processes them differently. More neural
pathways get activated, creating stronger patterns
than silent thoughts alone. This is not about
positive thinking or speaking your dreams into
existence. This is about speaking God's Word
out loud with authority and conviction. This
week, identify one area where you need a breakthrough.
Find a scripture that speaks to it, speak what
God says, and then watch what God does. I'm Dave
Drewy, inviting you back next time when we continue
with our special study here on Living on the
Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored
by Living on the Edge.