"Words That Hurt, Words That Heal" Book Review

I like to change things up in my personal devotions from time to time. Some might do the same routine day in and day out, year after year, but I like to add variety and look at different scriptures from a new perspective. One way I do that is to occasionally work through a devotional book that focuses on one particular theme of scriptures.

A couple weeks ago I chose Words That Hurt, Words That Heal by Carole Mayhall off my shelf. I had read this for college years ago, but I’ll admit that was a more superficial reading. This time I wanted to dig into the truths of this book and really glean what I could about my speech.

The topic of a Christian’s speech - particularly mine - has been an ongoing study for me for years as I am visited with different passages, books or sermons on the subject. This book brought some other things out that convicted me of my speaking to others!

It is a short book, only 10 chapters, but packed with truths and practical suggestions to help us tame that fiery tongue. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of speech, such as bragging, gossip, slander, complaining, discretion, reproof, etc. It focuses not only on the negatives but also the positives, showing how we can edify others even during the mundane. The very first chapter touched on encouragement, and was so convicting and life-changing for me that I am going to address it in a whole different post later this week!

Here are a couple of quotes from the book that really stuck out to me:

“It is amazing to me how careless and unconcerned we supposedly mature Christians are about what we say. We may have known God for ten, or twenty or more years, yet still go about sinning with our tongues, completely insensitive to the fact we are grieving the Holy Spirit.” pg. 16

“The love of finding fault...is utterly unchristian. It means that we have been paying an amount of attention to the conduct of others which would have been better bestowed upon our own.” -Alfred Plummer pg. 48

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” -Martin Luther King pg. 71

I appreciate the honesty that Carole Mayhall has in this book, giving personal examples and struggles that she has had on her journey to check her tongue. So glad to know I’m not the only one! Certainly God deals with us all in different ways, but reading about one lady’s journey is certainly a help with my own.

This book does use lots of different versions of the Bible when quoting scripture, an aspect I wish was different. I believe that the King James Version is the English translation that God has preserved for us, so I just looked up the verses in my own Bible as I went along. There is certainly a benefit in digging into the Word of God for myself, anyway!

I would heartily recommend this book for personal or group study. I believe it is a topic that every Christian, and maybe us ladies in particular, need to be constantly thinking about and working on. Our speech affects so many people and so many areas of our lives that we are foolish to not spend time searching for what God has to say about it.

You can order this book here if you are in the US and here if you are in Canada.



***Note: I was not perked or paid in any way to write this review. I just feel this book is vital to our Christian life and want you to be blessed and convicted by it, too. Navpress was kind enough to agree to give a copy to one reader, but no compensation goes to me.