It has often been noted that men and women use a vastly different amount of words in any given day. However, what is less noted is that these word counts focus on only those words that are spoken. If my text messages and emails are any indication, not only do men tend to use less words in verbal communication, but I would hypothesize that they do so for total word usage as well.
However, besides the words that we use to communicate with other people, there is another collection of words that are often ignored. These are the words that make up the internal dialogue of our minds. Even as I write this and think of the words that I am going to type, I am “speaking” words to myself. While attention is often paid to what we say to others, the words we say to ourselves may be even more indicative of the state of our hearts. In many circumstances, it is, comparatively speaking, relatively easy to make sure that our spoken and written allocution is glorifying to God. This task becomes substantially more difficult when it comes to monitoring the words we say to ourselves.
While it may be difficult, there is one simple tactic we can deploy to help ensure that the words in our mental conversations increasingly give glory to God. That simple tactic is to reduce how frequently our internal dialogue relies on personal pronouns. The more the subject of our self-talk are the words “I,” “me”, “my,” and “mine” – the more likely that we are at the center of our thoughts and concerns. These words often indicate that what’s bothering or challenging us is what we consider to be of utmost importance, instead of our main concern being what glorifies God. Additionally, the more our internal conversation is peppered with personal pronouns, the less we are thinking about the cares and concerns of the people God has placed in our lives. It is hard to think of others, and have our thoughts God-ward, when we are consumed with our own desires and interests. Yet, God made it very clear, that instead of being focused on our concerns, it is the interests of others that should most often be the subject of our attention (Phil 2:4). Our internal dialogue should be focused on becoming more Christlike, and Christ wasn’t concerned about self. He trusted Himself to the will of God (John 6:38; Luke 22:42) and concentrated His attention on serving others (Phil 2:6-8) so that by doing, they may come to have a right relationship with His Father. This should be our focus as well.
If we want our self-talk to be sanctified, if we want it to be increasingly glorifying to God (and we should!), then we should try to banish our “self” from being the subject of conversation. Instead, may our focus be increasingly upward and outward – concerned with what concerns God and the interests and cares of those He has placed in our lives.
