“Use your words.”
A musing and note to self on the things which are seen that are not made of things which are visible.
The first time I remember coming across the phrase, “use your words,” was in an episode of Jane The Virgin in which Jane was trying to work with her son, Mateo, to use his words to explain what he was feeling or what he needed. Also, in this episode, Jane is struggling to not burst out into sudden, rather aggressive action, but to instead use her words to express her feelings.
The second time I recall seeing this phrase was in the book, The Daniel Fast for Weight Loss by Susan Gregory. In a chapter about dealing with physical and spiritual temptation, she talks about speaking to your cravings to quite literally “Hush!” and find an alternative rather than fussing about it “which actually feeds the craving rather than starves it.” She ends this paragraph with this call to action: “do what parents tell their toddlers to do: ‘Use your words!’”
In the next paragraph, she introduces a scripture, Hebrews 11:3:
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
If you don’t already know, I am a very faith-driven individual (and always still growing in faith) and I believe that God shows me exactly what I need to see, hear, learn, etc. at the exact right moment I need it — even if I don’t realize it until later. When I first read this verse, I paused, read it again, and then pulled out my highlighter to underline these words:
…the things which are seen were not made of the things which are visible.
Wait, what? How are the things that are seen not made of visible things? Then I went back again, and re-read the first part of the scripture a few more times:
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,…
Then, a wave of thoughts flooded my head and I began to connect the dots between various things I had known, heard, or read that started to make more sense with this scripture in mind.
You may have heard someone — even myself — say to you, “Speak it into existence!” Or maybe you remember the rise of “The Secret” or have become familiar with the Law of Attraction — simply put, it is the concept that one’s thoughts can affect what one’s life attracts into it. Or you probably grew up frantically searching for wood to knock on when you’ve said something you were afraid may actually happen if you didn’t correct it with three knocks and a “God forbid.”
All of these things and much more have reaffirmed the heavily agreed upon notion that words are powerful. So powerful that there are countless testimonies from people who have credited the happenings in their lives to having spoken it into the universe prior to its manifestation. As we know either by anecdote or experience, words have the power to please, comfort, heal, harm, express, so on and so forth. Yes, actions may speak louder than words, but I don’t believe they are inherently separate. In fact, I believe words and actions are undoubtedly interdependent. Actions often give practical meaning to words and words often give an identity and abstract space for these actions to manifest. Words manifest actions.
In Hebrews 11:3, it says that worlds were framed by the word of God. If you’re familiar with even a small portion of the book of Genesis, you are probably familiar with the phrase, “Then God said,…” which is usually followed by the creation of something such as light, water, the heavens — the usual stuff. God said. Worlds were framed. God very literally “spoke into existence” what God wanted to see in the world — from the heavens to the earth. And as the scripture says, those who walk by faith understand this. We understand that God’s word manifested these actions.
Now what does it mean that “the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible?” Once again: wait, what? How can you make something clearly seen with things that you cannot see? How do I achieve my life goals when I can’t even see the next step? How do I win at Mario Kart if a ghost-looking thing keeps making black splotches on my screen? When you reflect on your life, you probably have several moments where you made it through a difficult situation or accomplished something that you may have not even thought about accomplishing. And at some point before these things happened, you didn’t even see how they were to happen. You somehow had lemonade when you didn’t even remember seeing the lemons in the first place.
That’s what I like to call the universe — or God. It’s the gap between what is seen and what isn’t visible. It’s the bridge between the how and the what. It’s the mechanics in between the cause and the effect. It’s the Bullet Bill that gets you from last place to first place when you’re struggling in Mario Kart. It’s the ear to hear your desires and the hand to craft those desires into reality. It’s the space between words and actions. It’s the manifestation.
There are things in our past and present that we have tangibly seen occur, but have come into existence by things that were not — and actually, still not — visible to us. Outside of writing it, words are not concretely visible. We cannot grab a word, hold on to it, put it in a juicer, and squeeze it into a glass of peach lemonade. We can probably use words to take action and get what we need to make some peach lemonade. Nonetheless, the words themselves are not visible. The greatness in our future that is to come is already being crafted by things currently not visible to us — such as our words.
What are the words we are speaking now which are manifesting into the things we will see in our future? In a scene of the recently released Netflix film, The Incredible Jessica James, starring Jessica R. Williams, Jessica says:
This is your one and only life. What do you want to tell people about it?
As soon as she said that line, I was snapping up and down, left to right, and even replayed it a few times. What do you want to tell people about your life? What do you want to tell the universe about your life?
We have to speak on what we want to see in our future. We have to tell the universe what it is that we desire so that it can help us. We have to share words of our sound hearts and minds so that the universe can manifest them into actions. Note, this doesn’t mean we don’t have to put in some action ourselves, that everything will be exactly as you want it to be — sometimes, it turns out even better — or that words will manifest into actions without significant challenges and tough waiting periods. Nonetheless, we still have to speak it. We have to speak our hopes, our intentions, our desires, our passions, our goals, our dreams, our joys, and everything in between into our life. Have faith that the things that will be seen will not be made of things that are visible. Understand that words can manifest actions as God’s word framed the worlds. Trust that the universe is listening.
Use your words.
I should probably share that by no means is anything that I write meant to be a definitive blueprint to anything. To put it simply, I think a lot.
For some additional thinking, check out this clip from a Super Soul Sunday episode of India.Arie talking to Oprah about what she realized about the universe.
💙
