God Will Give You The Words

God Will Give You The Words

Luke 21:13-15 “This will be a time for you to bear testimony.  Settle it, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.”

I like this verse because it assures us that we don’t have to have all the right answers. The verse right before this one says, “But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake.” People will persecute you. People you love will question your beliefs. Sometimes the people that give us the hardest time are those in our family. I have many friends who feel persecuted by their loved ones.

We expect our family to be loving and to treat us with respect. We expect that even if they disagree, they will still be kind and loving to us, and yet that is not what many people experience. Sometimes, our family members think they are doing us a favor. They think if they give us the cold, hard truth maybe we will forget our foolish ways and realize they were right. Sometimes they are just not kind people. We live in a broken world, and so just because someone is family doesn’t mean it is guaranteed that they will treat you well.

Right after the verse above it says, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” The Bible even tells us that some of our loved ones won’t understand. It says we will be betrayed by them. Most of the time our loved ones are not trying to hurt us. They do love us and they are doing what they think is best for us. They think they are saving us from delusional thinking, or false hope, or whatever else they are telling us. They think they know what is best.

The verse above is telling us that we don’t have to know what to say to our family members and those who persecute us. The verse tells us that the Holy Spirit will give us the words to say. The verse says, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony.  Settle it, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” Have you ever tried to defend your beliefs on your own without asking for the Lord to give you the words? How did that work out for you? I always seem to get drawn into an argument and end up getting upset. However, when I stop and ask the Lord to give me the words to say, things always go better.

God is telling us that we don’t have to spend time planning out what we will say to this person or that person. We don’t have to spend time figuring out what we will say when our brother asks about this aspect of the church or when our sister asks us why we believe Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. When our friend asks why we don’t believe we are saved or why we believe in purgatory. Or whatever it is that your family and friends always ask you about. We don’t have to plan our responses. What we need to do is to invite the Holy Spirit into our responses. When we are asked a question that we would normally get defensive about, we can ask the Holy Spirit to come and put the right words in our mouths. The words you use with your sister might not be the same words you would use with your brother or your friend.

I love where it says in the verse, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” How amazing would that be? How great would it be to talk with someone and have them not be able to contradict what you have to say? Most of the time, it is a back-and-forth, never-ending conversation where we each say the same thing over and over again, and neither one of us sees where the other person is coming from.  I have had so many conversations like that with my boys. Conversations when they contradict everything I say. It would be great to have the words that they can’t contradict.

It’s interesting that the first line in the verse says, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony.” There was a speaker at one of my Encounter Ministry classes. She said one thing people can’t contradict is your testimony. If you experienced something, they can’t tell you that you didn’t. You are not saying it is true for everyone. You are saying what is true for you. When you are talking about Jesus you can tell people what He has done in your life. What He means to you? What He has done for you? They can’t contradict these things because they are your experiences.

The other important thing the verse said that I don’t think we realize is that God can give us wisdom. God can reveal things to us that we would have no other way of knowing. I remember a speaker who came to another one of my classes at Encounter said that someone asked him once where he got his PhD because he knew so much about the topic he was talking about. Most of the knowledge he had came from the Lord. He gave us a tip that has stuck with me, and I would like to do it more often. This speaker told us to ask the Lord, before we go to bed, to give us wisdom about whatever topics we would like more wisdom. He said the Lord can use our sleep to give us that wisdom.

There have been so many Saints who have spoken so profoundly about the church and yet did not go to school to study. St. Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church, yet she received very little education. You do not have to be well-educated to learn more about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. You do need a desire to learn more, and you need to spend time with the Lord. You need to ask Him for what you want and then accept the information that He gives you. The Lord tells us in the verse above we don’t have to figure out what we will say, He will give us the words and the wisdom. We can rely on that promise. The next time you are confronted about your beliefs or about anything really, stop and invite the Holy Spirit into that conversation. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the words to say, and then speak the words you are given.

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for giving us the words to say when confronted or persecuted. We thank you for the wisdom you give us. Lord, we ask for more wisdom. We ask that you fill us with wisdom so we can go out and proclaim the good news to all we meet. We thank you that we don’t have to have the right words to say. We thank you that you are always equipping us for each and every situation that we find ourselves in. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme or topic for this month’s mentoring is “Come as you are.” Too many of us don’t know that God loves us just as we are. He is not waiting for us to become perfect before he will love us. He does not want us to get our acts together before we come to Him. He loves us completely, just as we are. He waits with open arms for us to come to him just as we are. This can be really hard for us to believe. The concept of unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness can be really hard to wrap our heads around, especially if we have never experienced it before. This is why I am taking this whole month to explore this topic. My prayer is that by the end of this month, you will know how much God loves you, and you will feel confident coming to Him just as you are. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email [email protected].  Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Decree and declare boldly now. For the heavens are open, truth is coming, and truth is coming big. Keep on decreeing. Keep on declaring. I hear your voice. I am answering your call. The Holy Seraphim are all around you. Decree and declare boldly. For truth and justice to come now.”

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