Words are the expression of Mind. Words are thoughts made visible, or brought to consciousness and realization.
We are continually speaking words, but not always aloud, for there are silent or mental words as well as audible. These words are forming and reforming, unforming and deforming all the conditions and manifestations in and around us.
If our silent or audible words dwell upon evil, then evil conditions “show forth;” if upon good, then good is manifest.
“But I say unto you, that every idle word (even the lightest, vainest word) that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof … For by thy words thou shalt be justified (established in Good) and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (continue in ignorance and misery). [Matt. 12:36-37].
If one says, “I am sick,” “I can’t understand,” “I am tired,” and so forth, he will continue subject to sickness, to be in ignorance, be weary, and so forth, until Truth causes him to cease from such utterances through a true change of heart.
If one says, “I will fear no evil for thou art with me” when faced by danger ; or, “I love you” before the darts of hatred and persecution ; or, “The child of God knows no failure or discouragement,” he shall be established in fearlessness, in omnipotent love, in success, in just the measure that he realizes the truth of the words he utters.
The Word is the divine means by which God creates, and all of us, following in the footsteps of God, uses the same means, words, to bring into manifestation what God has already created. The original intention and use of language was not to convey thought, but for the purpose of creation.
One of the forms of “speaking the word” is Prayer. As all modes of conversing unite one, more or less, according to the nature of the communication, with those whom we address, so it is with prayer. It is one means of making connection with universal Mind. A law of communion is fulfilled by right prayer, as exact a law as the one governing the transmission of electric force, or the centralizing of energy through any mechanical device.
The Soul’s aspiration combined with the Mind’s knowledge that what is desired is already an accomplished fact constitutes the “prayer of the righteous man that availeth much”.
Extract from the book “Primary lessons in Christian living and healing” by Annie Rix Militz (1924)