Words that Wound

I have been reading Journal of the Unknown Prophet. One of its prophetic words talks about how the enemy uses us to hurt each other when we give into the urge to defend ourselves. We seek to save our life by exposing the error of others and in doing so, we lose the life that God wants us to have. This particular message deeply resonated with me.

As that word sank deep into my spirit, I had two troubling dreams that sharpened the focus. I have never considered myself to be a gossip, but I do find myself complaining about others when their expectations seem excessive. Many times, I have grumbled aloud about coworkers who needed more than what I felt that I could reasonably provide. I know that it is wrong, and my response is usually to reassure myself that it could be worse and to commit to trying harder.

A week ago, I dreamed two dreams over the course of two nights. In the first, someone held down another man. As they did, I stabbed him through the heart. I was not angry about it. In fact, it felt like an inconvenient thing that had to be taken care of. Later in that dream, I had doubts about what I had done. A brother in Christ reassured me that it was the right thing to do. He said that it was OK because it was “self-defense”.

The next night, I dreamed that there was small but annoying alligator in my neighborhood. I moved him to someone else’s neighborhood. Other time, the alligator killed everyone in the other neighborhood. It was only later that I began to realize the gravity of what I had done. I went back to check on the alligator. I was careful, but he surprised me. He had grown from a small creature into one larger than me. Now, he wanted to eat me. I left the dream knowing the enemy wants to use me to hurt other people and then to hurt me too.

I was deeply troubled by these dreams. The first dream showed me that my “little sin” of complaining about others was spiritual murder. The second demonstrated with crystal clarity the way that a small habit of sharp remarks could devour others and grow into a monster that would eat me alive. To see myself this way is less than flattering and deflates the confidence of self-improvement.

Out of these dreams, I am coming to understand that I cannot change myself but neither can I treat lightly this sin of words that wound. I am getting a glimpse of why we need Jesus. He did not come just to save us from Hell. He came to save us from sin. I cringe to think how gross my own iniquity is before God….and from this, I find hope: Jesus came to remove me from all unrighteousness. He promises that as I tell the truth about how he sees my sin, he will cleanse from all unrighteousness.