Sips from the Fountain
Learning to drink from Jesus, the Fountain of Living Water, isn’t as hard as I thought, especially when you just start with sips, and those will change everything.
Sips from the Fountain
How to Make Your People Feel the Most Loved Ever
The episode emphasizes the transformative power of words and the importance of expressing appreciation to loved ones while they are still alive. Through personal stories and scriptural insights, we explore how verbal affirmations can enhance relationships and foster deeper connections.
• The impact of a teacher’s kind words exercise
• Redefining eulogies: honoring the living
• The significance of words in scripture
• Family traditions that promote positive affirmations
• Practical ways to incorporate kindness in various environments
• The rarity and need for spoken blessings
• Closing reminder to speak life into each other's lives
Do you ever feel like life can get too complicated and maybe even overwhelming? Yeah, me too, and it's okay. My name's Martha Gano, and in this podcast we're going to talk about life, love, faith, family relationships, all kinds of things, and we're going to drink from what God wants to pour into us, one small sip at a time, because when it's the fountain of living water, small sips make all the difference. Sometimes it'll be just you and me, sometimes we'll have a friend join us. If we could have lunch together today, this is what I'd want to talk about. Hey, hey, hey everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited to talk to you about this super fun and also impactful idea. It's pretty awesome when those two things go together, that you can actually use any time of the year, but that I think is going to be especially meaningful during this February season. So first let's give some context about how this idea formed. It came from several different pieces that composed this idea in my brain and kind of merged together. The first of those pieces was a story that has actually been circulating for many years, In fact you may have heard it. It's about a teacher who had her students participate in a unique exercise. She had each one of them write down the names of every student in the class, leaving space between each name, and then she instructed them to write down the nicest thing about each student that they could think of. At the end of the class she handed in the papers and the next day she had collated all the responses and had made each person in the class their own list of what all of their classmates had had to say that was nice about them. Years later, as the story has it, one of her students was actually killed in Vietnam and in his wallet they found that paper from that day in class that had obviously been folded, unfolded, refolded many times, as that young man read those words that his classmates had had to say about him. How powerful, right, and what a testament really to the fact that it is rare and wonderful for us to hear these amazing things about us and that when it happens, it becomes very valuable and very life-giving. Pretty powerful.
Speaker 1:Then the next thing that kind of came along in my brain was when pastor and author Peter Lord came through our area and did some teaching. Now, this is going to sound a little crazy, so hang with me. Here he talks to us about eulogizing our loved ones. He actually had a challenge for us to do something different with the tradition of eulogizing, or speaking honor, speaking, love and appreciation and value. That's what eulogizing is right. We typically do it after our loved ones have died or at their funerals or their memorial services. So when he was speaking, he actually asked for a volunteer to come up on the stage, and a young man volunteered. He came up and he had this young man lay down on the stage and said this is the crazy part Okay, this is your funeral. And there he laid on the stage.
Speaker 1:We pretended like it was his funeral and then Pastor Lord invited our community to begin sharing all of the wonderful things about this young man as if we were at his funeral. A number of people did that, including his own father. It was profoundly impactful for him to listen to all the incredible things that the people in his world thought and felt about him. It was impactful for us to watch it happen. Pastor Lord made that point really well that wouldn't our eulogies be so much more impactful if we actually told all of these awesome things about how we feel about our people to them while they were alive and they can hear it for themselves. That's pretty powerful too, right? Think of how we could honor and bless the people that we know and love. We could say these things to them and for them, while they can know it, while it can deepen our relationships with them and fill up their hearts and their spirits, instead of just honoring them to other people after they're gone. And the final factor that brought all of this idea together is just this concept of how powerful our words are according to the scriptures. I mean, it's really interesting. You know how. I'll say that if you think the Bible's boring, you should really check some things out. This is going to be one of them. You should definitely open up your Bible app on your phone and search the word tongue. Oh, my word, the Lord is very serious about how we use our tongues, because they are so powerful.
Speaker 1:We've talked a lot in this podcast about what to do with the hurtful things that have been done or said to or about us, and if you haven't caught those parts, you can go back to season one and check out episodes seven, eight and nine to hear how we've talked about forgiveness, because it's absolutely necessary. Living on this planet and considering those things. I don't think it will surprise any of us to hear that Proverbs 18, verse 21, says that the power of life and death is in the power of the tongue, or as the Passion Translation puts it which I know, it's not a translation, it's a commentary, but it's amazing. It says it like this your words are so powerful that they will kill or give life. That's pretty intense and I have to be honest, I've always kind of thought, really, don't you think that's a little bit of an exaggeration, lord?
Speaker 1:But once you put in a few years on this planet, I think that we would all agree that we know this experientially. We've all been alternately filled with hope, encouraged, inspired or crushed, discouraged with people's words, and there's a whole spectrum of experience in between those two extremes. Right, maybe a memory is even popping up for you right now, for today we're going to talk about how we have the capacity to live in that life part, to speak life over and about people, and by that I mean speaking hope into every situation, every problem, every challenge. I heard someone say once that where there is, in my estimation of a situation or a person or whatever it is, where there is no hope for me, that's because there's no Jesus in my estimation of what's going on there, because where Jesus is there's hope. So do I bring that hope and life and light of Jesus everywhere I go, everywhere my words go, or do I bring death?
Speaker 1:Scripture also paints this picture in the language of blessing and cursing James, chapter 3. He's got a lot of things to say about the tongue. Verse 9 says With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father and with it we curse human beings who've been made in God's image. Out of the same mouth come both blessing and cursing Brothers. This ought not be so. A blessing in the scripture is defined as speaking good or favorable things about someone or something, often with the implication of invoking God's favor upon them.
Speaker 1:Now, this original concept was actually modeled and authored by God himself. He blessed Adam and Eve that they would be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And guess what happened? They did. And then he blessed Abraham that he would be the father of many nations and that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And that happened in Jesus. It's the same pattern that the father has for his children and how we use our words. Think about the story of Jacob and Esau. The power of the words that their father, isaac, spoke over them was so important that those words literally determined the destinies of those boys, what would happen in their lives. That's why they fought so hard. They deceived so much, they were so desperate to get it, and when Esau realized he had lost that blessing and that birthright to his brother, he begged his father, just give me some kind of blessing. And it's a common pattern repeated throughout the scriptures.
Speaker 1:Again, this is another great one. If you've got this paradigm that the Bible is boring, go do a study on this and see where God's children have spoken blessing into the earth. It is a powerful act whereby we partner with God to pour his favor onto a person, into a situation, onto a group of people, into some circumstances, all kinds of things. It's actually pretty amazing and super cool to study. Now, I for sure do not 100% understand how all of that works, and if anyone ever tells you that they are only 100% right, step away. Step away from that right. None of us knows 100% how everything works, and I know that this principle actually can be twisted around and abused by people to try to serve their own agendas, which is not what the scripture or this principle means. But just because some people would twist a biblical principle doesn't mean that the principle isn't true. So, as my uncle Alan says, hear what I'm saying and not what I'm not saying.
Speaker 1:Our words hold the power of life and death, say the scriptures. So we should be incredibly intentional about what we do with them. And if you study that James 3 chapter a little more, you'll see that he actually calls the tongue a fire and a world of iniquity and says that no one can tame it. So we for sure are going to have to partner with the Father in getting that tongue thing to do what he wants it to do and not letting our words do what the enemy wants them to do in the earth. It's so interesting. If you study this concept in the secular, you'll discover that experts say that it takes five to seven words positive words to counteract the impact of one negative one.
Speaker 1:Now, by negative I mean as in harmful or critical or damaging. I'm most certainly not advocating never talking about hard things that need to be discussed. I'm talking about the difference between having a life-giving conversation about hard things versus damaging someone with the same kind of information. Okay, so that's enough of the context in the backstory. Let's talk about this fun idea. It actually started because I did the same thing that teacher did in the story that we started with at the beginning. Today, I did that in my own classroom when I was a teacher. It was so fun and if you're a teacher, I do recommend that you filter those before you turn them back to the children, because kids will be kids, before you turn them back to the children, because kids will be kids.
Speaker 1:When I had my own children, I actually incorporated this into our Valentine's Day tradition and hang with me until the end to hear how you could incorporate this into any environment. So back to Valentine's Day, and this isn't the cool part, but just for fun, I just want to tell you guys, we used to make heart shaped mashed potato I'm sorry-shaped hamburgers pink mashed potatoes, which I know red food coloring is terrible, but I only used it every once in a while, and then, for some reason, I just loved green peas with that color combination. That was our traditional Valentine's Day meal and, even though I was a health nut mom, there would be Valentine's candy spread all over the table. So back to the fun tradition with when each family member sat down to that Valentine's Day meal. There would also be a card on the table for each member of the family and on the front of each card was written, for example, morgan, who's my oldest, what we love most about you is dot, dot, dot. And then the inside of the card would be blank and each person had a pen. So while we had dinner at some point, each person at the table wrote in every other person's card and signed their name.
Speaker 1:Now, if you've ever been around kids, you know that they can argue and fight and be tough on each other, have sibling rivalry, all those things. So this exercise was just so life-giving, so relationship building for each of us personally and also for us as a family. And over the years. We would pull out the cards from years past and it was like reading a time capsule of each person's life, of our family's life. It was amazing. This is something you can actually do in any environment, with some modification.
Speaker 1:Again, in the classroom, I would say something along the lines of what that teacher said what's the nicest thing you can say about this person? In a small group setting, you could ask the question if it's like a church small group. How does that each person uniquely bear the image of God, or how do they best represent the love of God to other people? Or what do you appreciate most about this person? You get the idea In a corporate environment it would be less warm and fuzzy and more like yeah, what do you appreciate most about this person? What is the most valuable contribution that this person makes to our work environment, to this company, to this whatever? And then as a couple, wow, what an awesome opportunity to say the things that are so easy to take for granted on a daily basis and that we may feel, but not as often have the opportunity to communicate to each other.
Speaker 1:So, whether it's a family or a couple, or a work environment, or a friend group or a small group, whatever, what I can tell you is that this is a way to facilitate having people pour out blessing and the love of God onto other people. It's a way to encourage people to use their words to bring life instead of death. Encourage people to use their words to bring life instead of death. It's a way of eulogizing people and teaching people to eulogize people while they are still here, to appreciate and have their hearts and spirits filled up with the love of those around them before they're gone.
Speaker 1:As you listen to this idea, you may come from a very nurturing background or live in a warm, nurturing environment, and that it may sound pretty neat to you, but you may be thinking is that really going to be all that impactful? What I think that sometimes we may fail to recognize, when we do live and work in nurturing cultures and environments, is how rarely most people ever have someone tell them something good about themselves. That's why that young man would take that one piece of paper with him everywhere he went. I'll tell you this it certainly sets us apart as those who have known and live in the love of God and who live to share it with other people. So I hope that this is a fun idea that either you can use, or maybe it'll spin off another idea that you use yourself. I would love to hear about it. If you do something like this, either for Valentine's Day or in February or at another time of the year, I would love to hear about it.
Speaker 1:Thanks you guys, so much for joining us today and we'll talk to you next time. Hey you guys. Thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope you got some refreshment from this sip from the fountain. If you're curious to hear more or if you like what you've heard, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to yours, or follow our Instagram account Sips from the Fountain or our Facebook page by the same name. Special thanks for Cover Art Photography to the Sarah D Harper, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys next time. Thanks so much, love y'all, thank you.