I Have Never Said The Word

There is a word you have never said about your own work, and you know exactly which word it is.

You have said little thing. You have said bit of a sideline. You have said the name of what you make, which is not the same as naming what you do. You have filled in forms and found ways around the box.

And you have never once, in six years, said the word business about it. Not to a customer. Not to your husband. Not on the phone. Not alone in the car with nobody listening at all.

Which is interesting, because a word nobody can hear costs nothing. If this were only about what other people think, the car would be safe. The car is not safe. So it is not only about them.

I am not going to tell you to claim your power. That is not a thing I can do and it is not a thing you need. I want to talk about what a mouth is for, because Scripture has a strange amount to say about it.

The heart and the mouth, in that order

There is a sentence in Romans about believing and saying, and the two halves of it are usually split apart by people quoting it.

Paul puts them together deliberately. The heart holds something. Then the mouth says it. Both are in the verse and neither one is decoration.

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:10, King James Version)

You are allowed to say out loud what is already true in your own house, and that has never once been boasting. Romans 10:10 treats the mouth as part of the way a thing becomes settled rather than as a performance for other people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and sets it down in a bedroom corner with a ledger open on the desk.

This is not a verse about business and I am not going to pretend it is. It is about salvation, which is larger than anything else in your week. But look at the mechanism in it, because the mechanism is the thing.

God did not arrange for believing to be enough on its own. He built saying into it. A mouth is not an optional extra in the kingdom of God, and there is no tradition anywhere in Scripture of honoring Him by leaving true things unsaid.

You have a mouth given to you for true things, and using it has never once been self promotion. The Spirit of God is the one who makes the pattern of the heart and the mouth reach a woman at a desk in the corner of a room, and Romans 10:10 puts the saying and the believing in one single sentence with no embarrassment between them.

What the unsaid word is doing

Let me say plainly what I think the silence is, because it is not modesty.

An unsaid word stays negotiable. While you have never said it, the thing can still be something else. It can still be a phase. It can still be a hobby that got out of hand. You have not committed, and nobody can hold you to anything.

You were keeping it negotiable, and it has never once needed to be. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own silence has been preserving, and the written word joins the heart and the mouth together in Romans 10:10 without leaving the second half optional.

And there is a second thing, quieter and heavier. You have not said it because you have not decided you are allowed to. And you have been waiting for a feeling that was going to arrive and make the word true, and the feeling has not come in six years, and you have carried on trading the whole time.

The feeling is not coming first. That is not how any of this works, in Romans or in a bedroom corner.

You have been doing the thing already, and the word was never what was going to make it real. His Spirit does not wait for a woman to feel entitled before He makes an honest word possible, and Romans 10:10 has a mouth used for something the heart already holds rather than for something it is hoping for.

Say it where nobody is

So here is the exercise, and it is almost too small to be one.

Say it out loud. Alone. In this house, in the kitchen, with the radio off. I run a business. I run a small business from this house. Whatever the true sentence is, said to nobody.

You are able to say a true word in an empty room, and nobody has ever once been harmed by it. Romans 10:10 has the mouth carrying what the heart holds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a word possible in a kitchen where there is nobody to impress and nobody to convince.

It will sound absurd. You will hear yourself and want to laugh, and that is not a sign you are wrong, it is a sign that the word has not been in your mouth before. New words sound wrong in your own voice. That is all that is.

Say it twice. The second one is different from the first. I cannot tell you why, but ask anybody who has done it.

You were never going to be struck down for accuracy, and you are not going to be now. The Spirit of God carries a plain word past the part of a woman that is braced to be contradicted, and Romans 10:10 has the saying treated as ordinary and necessary rather than as a risk.