Most people treat human speech like an exhaust pipe. They view it as a passive release valve for their passing emotions, their immediate frustrations, their random observations, and their casual anxieties. They watch the world around them, register a problem, and immediately use their mouths to describe the chaos. If their bank account is low, they talk about lack. If their body feels heavy, they talk about sickness, and if their environment is unstable, they talk about fear. They believe they are simply being realistic, documenting the facts of their environment as a neutral bystander.
But your mouth was never meant to be a thermometer; it was designed to be a thermostat.
You do not speak because something is real; something becomes real because you speak it. When you handle your vocabulary with careless, idle passivity, you are unconsciously using the most powerful creative tool in existence to reinforce the very limitations you claim you want to escape. You are broadcasting data into your universe, and then wondering why your environment continuously matches your complaints.
The turning point in understanding this reality begins when you stop viewing speech as a social convenience and start viewing it as an architectural force. The first time I ever heard the phrase, “Put a premium on your words,” it was from the teaching of Rev. Dr. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome Dsc. DSc DD. That singular phrase carries an deep, heavy weight. To put a premium on something means to assign it an extraordinarily high value. It means you treat it as an elite, resource that can not be cheapened, wasted, or thrown around carelessly.
When you put a premium on your speech, you stop talking like a victim who is merely reacting to a pre-existing world. You begin to talk like a creator! You recognize that every sentence leaving your lips is an instruction sheet handed to reality, demanding execution!
The God Who Outlines Reality from Nothing
To understand how speech constructs reality, we have to look directly at the source of creation itself. Most people frequently fall into the trap of waiting for physical conditions to change before they change their language. They wait for the money to arrive before they speak of prosperity; they wait for the door to open before they declare victory.
But the spiritual order of the universe runs in the exact opposite direction. In Romans 4:17, the scriptures give us a look into the core nature of the Divine: “As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” The New Living Translation sharpens this reality beautifully, stating that Abraham believed in the God “who creates new things out of nothing.”
Notice the sequence of that creative action. God did not wait for Abraham to hold a physical child in his arms before altering his title. While Abraham was still biologically childless, living in a state of natural impossibility, God altered his name to mean “Father of a Multitude.” God did not describe Abraham’s current reality. He, God, called into being things that were not, speaking of things that did not yet exist in the material world as though they were already fully established.
This is not a psychological mind trick or a positive thinking exercise. This is the law of faith! When the universe was a formless, dark void in Genesis, God did not spend hours analyzing, discussing, or describing the darkness. He did not call a meeting to complain about the lack of visibility. He looked directly into the dark void and spoke the solution into existence: “Let there be light.” He used his words to bridge the gap between nothingness and a material universe. When you put a premium on your words, you adopt this exact creative posture. You stop using your mouth to validate the darkness around your finances, your career, or your family, and you start speaking the light of truth into what may seem like the empty spaces of your life.
The Seasoning of Your Speech
If your speech carries the weight of creation, then the daily tone and quality of your conversations can not be left to chance. You can not spend five minutes declaring your victory in private, and then spend five hours gossiping, complaining, and talking dirt with your peers at the office. This system requires total, uncompromised alignment.
The Apostle Paul addresses this tactical alignment in Colossians 4:6: “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” The New Living Translation translates this as making your speech “gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”
The metaphor of salt is highly deliberate here. In the ancient world, salt was not just a flavor enhancer; it was a primary preservative. It was the material used to prevent meat from rotting, spoiling, and becoming toxic.
When your speech is seasoned with salt, it means your vocabulary possesses an inherent immunity against decay. It means that when you enter a room where people are speaking words of failure, doubt, or character assassination, your mouth introduces an element that preserves life. You refuse to allow the conversation to rot! Your words are attractive and gracious because they are constructive; they add structural value to the people listening to you.
Putting a premium on your words means you treat your tongue like a precision instrument. You do not speak just because you have an opinion, or because your emotions are flared up. You analyze the output of your vocabulary before you let it pass your teeth. If a sentence does not carry grace, if it does not preserve life, and if it does not possess the seasoning of spiritual truth, you keep your mouth shut. Silence is infinitely more valuable than an uncalibrated statement.
Speaking the Truth in Love
Many people misunderstand what it means to speak with grace. They assume it means adopting a soft, passive, or conflict-avoidant personality where they never confront reality. They turn their language into a sweet that refuses to address real problems. But true creative speech is not soft; it is incredibly sharp and honest. It balances absolute truth with absolute love.
In Ephesians 4:15, we are handed the ultimate flow for personal and collective development: “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” The transformation of your life is directly tied to this exact balance.
When you speak the truth without love, your words become a weapon of pure destruction. You use facts to crush people, to validate your own pride, and to leave devastation around you. Also, when you attempt to show love without truth, your words collapse into compromise, enabling dysfunction and protecting illusions that need to be dismantled.
But when you fuse truth and love together, your language becomes a powerful tool for growth. You speak the truth about your current reality, but you speak it with the love that builds up. You address the cracks in your character, others character or the breakdowns in your environment, not to condemn, but to reconstruct. You use your words to call yourself and others up to a higher standard, aligning your language with the head, which is Christ. This is how you mature! You stop talking like an unstable child tossed around by every wave of emotion, and you begin to speak with the steady, creative authority of a mature son of God.
The Audit of the Idle Word
To ensure that we never treat our language with casual indifference, Jesus laid down an unyielding line regarding the ultimate accountability of human speech. And this is the reality that should make every one of us pause before we broadcast our thoughts into the world.
In Matthew 12:36, He said: “But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.” And the New Living Translation uses the phrase “every idle word you speak.”
My dearest readers, let the weight of that statement settle into your consciousness. An idle word is an unemployed word; it is a word that does no real work, carries no constructive purpose, and builds no material value. It is the language of gossip, the language of casual doubt, the language of sarcastic self-sabotage, and the empty chatter that people use just to fill the silence of their lives.
Many people believe that their casual words do not count. They say things like, “I was just joking,” or “I did not really mean it,” after declaring that they are broke, sick, or stuck. But the laws of the spirit do not recognize jokes, and they do not review your disclaimers. Your mind hears your declaration, flags it as an operational order, and begins to align your reality to match it.
The day of judgment is not just a distant historical event at the end of time; it is a continuous law of reality. Every single day, your life is running an automated accounting check on the vocabulary you deployed the week before. The environment you are walking in today is the direct accumulation of the words you allowed out of your mouth yesterday. If you are drowning in a climate of confusion, stagnation, and frustration, you must look directly at the idle, empty statements you have been financing with your attention. You are giving an account for them right now through the material state of your life.
Shifting Your Language: Directing Your Speech
If you are ready to truly start puttinng premium on your words, you must completely alter the daily flow of your speech. And this requires an immediate shift away from the default habits of the crowd.
First, you must install an absolute embargo on self-deprecating language. Delete the phrase “I am tired,” “I am broke,” “I am sick,” or “I can not do this” entirely from your system. The moment you couple the ultimate creative announcement, “I am,” with a limitation, you are signing a legal contract for that limitation to govern your body and your affairs. If your body feels heavy, declare that the life of God is vitalizing your physical frame. If your finances are tight, declare that your steps are ordered into abundance. Speak to the mountain; stop describing how big the mountain is to everyone who will listen.
Second, protect the perimeter of your ear-gate. You can not maintain a high-premium vocabulary if you are constantly consuming low-value, toxic noise from your environment. If you spend your hours listening to music that celebrates brokenness, watching media that promotes anxiety, or sitting with friends who thrive on malicious gossip, your subconscious mind will naturally default to that exact frequency when you open your mouth. You can not speak like a creator while thinking like a victim. So surround yourself with language that challenges your intellect, calibrates your spirit, and forces you to speak with accuracy and strength.
Also, treat your words as legal tender. Before you release a statement into the physical world, run it through an instant internal assessment: Is this word creating the reality I want to live in? Is this sentence seasoned with salt, or is it introducing rot into my environment? Am I calling things that are not as though they were, or am I just complaining about what is? If the word does not pass this, do NOT speak it!
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Conclusion
My dearest readers, you are not a passive observer in this universe, watching a pre-written story unfold. You are an active co-creator with the Divine, and the primary tool you have been handed to shape your destiny is sitting right behind your teeth.
Stop cheapening your voice with idle chatter, empty complaints, and defensive explanations. Stop letting the temporary, shifting circumstances of your physical environment dictate the tone of your spiritual speech.
Stand completely flat on your feet, look directly into the dark, formless spaces of your current reality, and begin to call into being things that are not as though they were. Speak with grace! Season your atmosphere with salt! Construct your world with absolute truth and absolute love! Treat your vocabulary like the elite, creative asset it was always built to be, and watch your reality slowly, surely, and permanently align with the sovereign authority of your spoken words.
