Speak Life with Your Words

Proverbs 18:21

I once counseled a man who could not receive a compliment from his wife. Every time she encouraged him, he deflected it, changed the subject, or made a joke. When I asked him about it, he was quiet for a long time. Then he told me that his father had called him worthless so many times growing up that praise felt like a foreign language. He was fifty years old and was still living in a house his father's words had built.

Solomon tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. That is not poetic exaggeration. That is a clinical reality I have watched play out in thousands of counseling hours. Words build houses that people live in for decades. The question for your marriage is simple. What kind of house are your words building for your spouse?

Researchers who study marriage have found that healthy couples maintain a strikingly lopsided ratio of positive to negative interactions — roughly five affirmations for every one criticism. Couples heading toward divorce often run close to one-to-one. Now, Solomon did not have a research lab, but he beat the researchers to the punch by about three thousand years. Life and death are in the tongue. You are either building your spouse up or tearing your spouse down, and there is no neutral gear.

Here is what makes this hard. Most of us do not think of ourselves as harsh. We think of ourselves as honest. "I'm just telling the truth," we say, as we hand our spouse one more helpful observation about their driving, their spending, their parenting, their weight. But truth without grace is a scalpel in the hands of a man with no medical training. You may technically be correct and still be doing surgery you have no business doing.

The gospel gives us a better pattern. Consider how God speaks to His people in Christ. He does not pretend we are sinless. He tells us the truth about our condition more honestly than anyone ever has. But His deepest word over us is not condemnation. It is "beloved." He speaks life first, and it is His kindness that leads us to repentance. Husbands and wives are called to speak the same way — truthful, yes, but with life as the headline and correction in its proper, occasional place.

Let me get practical. This week, try what I call the first-word principle. Make the first words your spouse hears from you in the morning, the first words when you reunite after work, and the last words before sleep be intentionally life-giving. Not flattery. Life. "I'm glad I get to do this day with you." "I was thinking about you this afternoon." "Thank you for how hard you work for us." Three moments a day, on purpose.

It sounds small. It is not. Those three moments are the framing of the house your spouse lives in. Fifty years from now, your husband or wife will still hear your voice in their head. Make sure it is saying something worth living in.