“And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

I know these words sound so familiar to all of us. They are part of the prayer Jesus Christ taught his disciples. We call it the Lord’s Prayer, and we pray it often. In fact, it’s such a habit that most of us have been reciting it from memory since we were young children. We recite it, but do we pay attention to the words?

My favorite mentor, Saint Augustine, had much to say about our ability to decipher and define our language. We’re not the only ones who rattle off at the mouth without much thought behind our words. Saint Augustine noticed the same problem back home in Africa. He was born in 354 A.D., just 40 years after Constantine had the dream that swung the Roman Empire to Christianity. Augustine was a trained clergyman…a priest…and yet he noticed how easy it was for men in his line of work to spew out words without much thought behind them... words spoken out of habit rather than conviction.

We know that words matter. And we can only hope that the words WE SPEAK are genuine and heartfelt…most of the time. But what about the Words we HEAR? We’ve talked about the words WE SPEAK, but what impact does the language of others have on US? That’s where I want to take this sermon. There are three warnings I’d like to share.