The Speech Swap

Every claim carries a badge so you know how much weight it bears. The grades are identical to the rest of the GodExamined studies.

• Established — Scripture states it plainly. Read directly off the biblical text. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45) is Established because Jesus says it; no study makes it truer. Every swap’s right-hand verse is, in itself, Established — the reframe is just that verse applied to a sentence.
• Strong — robust human evidence. A well-powered randomized trial or meta-analysis. The gratitude, implementation-intention, and venting-anger results earn this; it is the ceiling the science can reach.
• Moderate — human, but limited. Real human data from smaller samples or self-report — affect labeling and distanced self-talk live here. Directionally trustworthy, not bedrock.
• Model — mechanism or map only. A pathway or a diagram (like the swap-engine figure above). It shows the shape of what may be happening, never proof that it does.
• Emerging — observational or preliminary. Suggestive, confounded, not load-bearing.

Before the dictionary, the premise has to hold: that re-wording a sentence can actually re-shape a heart. It can — and both records say so.

• Scripture treats the tongue as load-bearing, not decorative. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). James calls it a small rudder that steers the whole ship and a small flame that sets a forest ablaze (James 3:4–6), and says that anyone who can bridle the tongue is “a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body” (James 3:2) — i.e. mastery of speech is the lever on mastery of the whole self. The Bible even makes speech the hinge of judgment: “by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:37). None of this makes sense if words are mere labels. It only makes sense if words are a power — something that forms the speaker as it is spoken.
• Jesus states the direction of causation: the mouth reveals the heart. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45; cf. Matthew 12:34). This is the diagnostic half: your habitual speech is an honest readout of what fills you — if grumbling pours out, the tank is grumbling; if thanks pours out, the tank is grateful. That is why the swap tables are useful even just as a mirror: read down the left-hand column and notice which lines are your native tongue, and you have a free diagnosis of where your heart actually sits, underneath the image you present.
• But the loop runs both ways — and this is the hinge of the whole method. Scripture also commands speech in order to form the inner life: “Rejoice in the Lord always… again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4) is a command to say a thing until it becomes true in you; the Psalms are full of the writer preaching to his own soul (“Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God” — Psalm 42:5). The point is not pretending: it is that deliberately speaking truth re-feeds the heart that then overflows with it. Modern language research says the same from the other side — which is the corroboration, not the proof.
• The emotion research confirms the handle is real: putting feelings into words changes the feelings. In a landmark study, Lieberman and colleagues (2007) found that simply labeling an emotion in words (“affect labeling”) reduced activity in the amygdala, the brain’s threat center — naming the storm quiets it. Separately, Gross and John (2003) showed that people who habitually reappraise — re-word a situation’s meaning — experience more positive and less negative emotion and have better relationships than those who merely suppress. And Nolen-Hoeksema’s program of work shows the dark mirror: rumination, the looping rehearsal of “why me” self-talk, robustly predicts depression and anxiety. The common thread is exactly the biblical claim: the words you rehearse form the heart. Change the rehearsal and you change the formation.

Knowing a better sentence is useless if you only remember it that night in bed. The swap has to fire in the moment. Here is the loop, and the two tools that make it automatic.

• Run the five-step loop — it takes about three seconds once learned. (1) Notice the reflex word as it rises (“mine,” “what if,” “you always”). (2) Name what’s underneath it — usually fear, pride, or control — because naming it, the research shows, already drains some of its charge. (3) Reframe: re-say it using the domain table below. (4) Pray the true thing to God in a breath (“Yours, Lord”). (5) Repeat — you will miss it a hundred times; each catch, done without self-scolding, wears the new path a little deeper. The goal is not a perfect score but a worn groove.
• Make it fire on a cue by pre-deciding an “if–then” plan — the best-evidenced change tool there is. Don’t rely on in-the-moment willpower; write two or three tiny scripts and rehearse them: “If I catch a ‘mine,’ then I pray ‘Yours, Lord’”; “If I start to vent, then I go silent and breathe a prayer”; “If I say ‘I have to,’ then I add ‘…if the Lord wills.’” In meta-analysis across 94 studies these implementation intentions produce a medium-to-large effect (d ≈ 0.65) because they hand the response to a cue instead of to your scarce self-control. One trigger rehearsed beats ten you forget.
• Under real stress, switch to distanced self-talk — address yourself by name. When anger or panic spikes, the first person (“why am I so…”) pours fuel on it. Controlled studies (Kross 2014; Moser 2017) show that shifting to your own name or “you” — “Roy, what does love require here? You can hand this to God” — measurably improves emotion regulation with little extra effort. It is the lab echo of the psalmist counseling his own soul (Psalm 42:5; 103:1). This small grammatical move buys the half-second of distance in which a reframe becomes possible.
• And remember whose work it finally is — this starts at the altar, not at the gym. Isaiah did not clean his own mouth; a coal from God’s altar touched it (Isaiah 6:6–7), and only then could he speak rightly. James is blunt that “no human being can tame the tongue” (James 3:8) by raw effort. So the method is cooperation, not self-salvation: you do the noticing and the re-wording and the praying; God does the actual changing of the heart. Pray Psalm 141:3 over the whole project — “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth” — and Psalm 19:14, “Let the words of my mouth … be acceptable in your sight.” If it ever becomes grim self-policing, you have left the altar for the gym; go back.

The self’s first and deepest word is mine. Ownership-talk quietly makes you the origin and the owner of your life; the reframe restores the truth that you are a steward of what God owns and a receiver of what you could never earn — which, paradoxically, is the only ground on which you can ever be generous or at peace.

• “Mine” is almost never literally true, and saying so changes everything downstream. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1); “what do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Reframing possessions as entrusted rather than owned is the root reframe from which generosity, contentment, and non-anxiety all grow: you cannot lose what was never yours, and you hold loosely what you hold in trust. This is why gratitude (naming things as received) is, independently, one of the most reliable well-being interventions in the research — it re-codes the ledger from “mine” to “gift.”
• “I deserve” and “they owe me” are the entitlement engine — and the gospel runs the other way. The whole New Testament turns on grace: you received mercy you did not deserve (Romans 3:23–24), so you are a forgiven debtor, not a standing creditor. The servant forgiven a fortune who then throttles a man over pocket change (Matthew 18:23–35) is the picture of entitlement-talk unreframed. Swapping “they owe me” for “I was forgiven far more” is the exact move that makes forgiveness possible.

Boast-talk is ownership-talk pointed at achievement: it names the self as the source of what is good. The reframe does not deny the good or fake false modesty — it simply tells the truth about where the gift and the strength came from, and then, more radically, learns to let good deeds go unannounced.

• The reframe is not self-deprecation; it is accurate attribution. Paul does not say “I am nothing”; he says “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain — I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Notice he affirms the work and re-sources it in one breath. That is the model: “God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6–7), “unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). You keep the effort; you return the credit.
• The deepest form of this swap is holy silence — letting the good deed go unseen. Jesus’ startling instruction is to give so secretly that “your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing… and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:3–4). The modern reflex — “did you see what I posted / did / gave?” — spends the reward immediately in human applause (“they have received their reward” — Matthew 6:2). Swapping announcement for silence is the hardest and most freeing reframe in this domain: you stop needing to be seen.

Self-will is the heart of the whole problem, and its speech is the plain declarative “I want.” The reframe is not to stop wanting — Jesus wanted the cup removed — but to add the hinge-word that submits the want to a good Father. You keep the honesty; you lose the demand.

• Wanting is not the sin; demanding is — so the reframe keeps the desire and changes its posture. In Gethsemane Jesus names his real desire without pretense (“remove this cup”) and then submits it (“nevertheless, not my will, but yours” — Luke 22:42). That is the universal template: honesty plus surrender. So the swap is rarely “delete the sentence”; it is “finish the sentence” — “I want X … but Your will be done.” God invites the real want (Philippians 4:6); He simply wants to be trusted with the outcome.
• “I need” and “I can’t live without” usually overstate — and the reframe is contentment, not suppression. Most “needs” are strong wants; naming them accurately (“I’d like”) already loosens their grip. Paul “learned” contentment as a skill in plenty and in want (Philippians 4:11–13), anchored in “my God will supply every need” (Philippians 4:19) and “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). And the deepest swap for “I deserve to be happy” is Psalm 37:4 — delight in the Lord, and He reorders what you desire, so your wanting and His willing converge.

Worry is the rehearsal of a feared future in the first person: “what will I do, what if I can’t.” Scripture’s reframe is not “don’t feel it” but “hand it over and re-aim the rehearsal” — and the research on rumination shows precisely why the looping version is so corrosive.

• The command is transfer, not suppression: cast the care onto Someone able to carry it. “Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7); “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer… with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). The reframe has a destination — the worry goes somewhere, onto God, rather than being white-knuckled or denied. Affect labeling (§1.1) is the first move: name the fear plainly, which already drains some charge, then transfer it in prayer.
• Worry is self-talk you rehearse — and rehearsing the catastrophe is what deepens it. Nolen-Hoeksema’s research shows that rumination — the repetitive looping of negative self-focused thought — robustly predicts the onset and persistence of depression and anxiety. That is the dark side of the “speech forms the heart” coin: the what-if loop trains the fear. The reframe interrupts the loop and re-aims the mind at “whatever is true… lovely… commendable” (Philippians 4:8) — not denial of the trouble, but refusal to rehearse it to death.

Control-talk is pride’s version of worry: instead of fearing the future, it claims to own it. “My plan, I’ve got this, I’ll make it happen, it all depends on me.” Scripture does not forbid planning — it commends it — but it reframes the planner as a creature whose steps are finally directed by God, which turns out to be an enormous relief.

• The reframe is not passivity; it is open-handed planning. James mocks not the making of plans but the arrogance of the plan that forgets God: “you do not know what tomorrow will bring… Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13–15). Proverbs holds both halves calmly: “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (16:9). So you still plan, strive, and work — you just append the open hand. The sentence changes from a claim of ownership to an act of trust.
• “It all depends on me” is a lie that exhausts you — and the swap is a rest. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1); “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The compulsion to control everything — outcomes, other people, the future — is a crushing weight you were never meant to carry, and “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) is the reframe that sets it down. Even the good work of changing other people is reframed: “it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:13), “he who began a good work… will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6).

Grumbling is the native speech of the ungrateful heart, and the Bible treats it with surprising severity — Israel’s wilderness complaining is remembered as a chief sin (1 Corinthians 10:10). The reframe is thanksgiving: not pretending bad things are good, but refusing to let the bad crowd out the daily mercies, and trusting the Giver in the dark.

• There is a lawful lament — but it is addressed to God, not sprayed sideways. A third of the Psalms are laments; Job pours out raw grief for chapters. So the swap is not “never say anything is hard” — it is to turn the complaint upward (“I pour out my complaint before him” — Psalm 142:2) instead of outward as corrosive grumbling. Lament ends in trust (“yet I will rejoice in the Lord” — Habakkuk 3:18); grumbling just spreads the sourness. Job’s friends, meanwhile, are the warning about the other kind of bad speech — “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2), covered in §13.
• Thanksgiving is commanded in (not necessarily for) all things — and it independently lifts the heart. “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18); “do all things without grumbling or disputing” (Philippians 2:14). You need not thank God for the cancer, but you can give thanks in it for mercies that remain. The research backs the lever: Emmons and McCullough’s gratitude trials found that people who kept a weekly gratitude list reported higher well-being and optimism — and even exercised more — than those who logged hassles. Reframing grumble into gratitude is both commanded and, measurably, good for you.

Comparison is the self measuring itself against others to feel superior or cheated; gossip is comparison spoken aloud at someone’s expense. Both are among the most socially acceptable sins and the most corrosive. The reframe runs two ways: downward in mercy toward others, and inward in honesty about yourself.

• “At least I’m not like them” is the Pharisee’s exact prayer — and the reframe is the tax collector’s. The whole parable of Luke 18:9–14 is built to detonate comparison: the man who measured himself favorably against others went home unjustified; the man who said only “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” went home right with God. So the swap for every comparison is to drop the comparison entirely and return to your own need of mercy. And for judgment of others: “first take the log out of your own eye” (Matthew 7:3–5) — not “never assess,” but “start with yourself.”
• Gossip has no righteous version — the reframe is usually simply silence, or redirection to building up. “A gossip betrays a confidence” (Proverbs 11:13); “a whisperer separates close friends” (Proverbs 16:28); “let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up” (Ephesians 4:29). The most useful reframe here is a hard stop: when the sentence that wants to come out would lower someone in a listener’s eyes and they are not present to answer, don’t say it — “the one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). Redirect to something true and honoring, or say nothing.

Conflict speech is where the tongue does its fastest damage — the global “you always,” the blame, the retaliation, the vented rage. Scripture’s reframe is counterintuitive and the research agrees: the way to lower the heat is not to discharge it but to answer softly, speak slowly, and refuse to repay. “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back” (Proverbs 29:11).

• The reframe lowers the temperature instead of raising it — and that is a measurable, not merely pious, claim. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1); “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). The popular wisdom says “let it out” — but Bushman’s classic experiments found the opposite: venting (hitting a punching bag while thinking of the person) increased subsequent aggression rather than draining it. The catharsis theory is false; rehearsing rage trains it, exactly as §1 predicts. The soft answer is not weakness — it is the only move that actually cools the fire.
• Blame-talk (“your fault,” “you started it”) is reframed by owning your own account and refusing retaliation. “Each of us will give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12) pulls your attention back to your own ledger; “do not repay evil for evil” (Romans 12:17; 1 Peter 3:9) and “so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18) cut the retaliation loop. And the hardest, most freeing swap: “I’ll never forgive them” → “forgive, as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13) — which Jesus ties directly to being forgiven yourself (Matthew 6:14–15). Anger is allowed (“be angry and do not sin” — Ephesians 4:26); nursing it past sundown is not.

The cruelest speech most of us hear all day is our own, aimed at ourselves. This is also the domain where the reframe is most delicate: the answer to “I’m worthless” is not “I’m amazing” (a lie you won’t believe) but God’s own verdict over you, which is truer than your mood. The swap replaces a feeling-claim with a faith-claim grounded in what God has said and done.

• The reframe is God’s verdict, not positive thinking — which is why it holds when self-esteem slogans collapse. “I’m a failure” is answered by “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10) and “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “I’m worthless” is answered by “you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4) and the price God paid (Romans 5:8). These are not affirmations you generate about yourself; they are declarations God makes over you — which is exactly why they can bear weight that “believe in yourself” cannot.
• Despair-talk about the future and about forgiveness is reframed by hope anchored outside you. “It’s hopeless” → “we have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19). “I can’t forgive myself” → “there is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) — if God does not condemn you, your self-condemnation is not humility, it is overruling His verdict. “What’s the point” → “your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Say these out loud; preaching truth to your own soul (Psalm 42:5) is the biblical pattern and the affect-labeling research (§1.1) suggests speaking it does more than merely thinking it.

This domain is about the reliability of your word. The self inflates (oaths, exaggeration), shades (spin, the white lie), and hides (“I’m fine”). The reframe is a word so plain and true it needs no swearing to be believed — “let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no,’ ‘no’” (Matthew 5:37).

• Oath-inflation is a confession that your plain word isn’t trusted — the reframe is to make the plain word enough. Jesus forbids the whole apparatus of swearing (“do not take an oath at all… let your yes be yes” — Matthew 5:34–37; James 5:12) precisely because needing to swear implies you might otherwise lie. The reframe for “I swear to God,” “honestly,” “to be real with you,” and “trust me” is to drop the crutch and let a simple yes carry the weight. Likewise loose promises: “it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay” (Ecclesiastes 5:5) — so “I promise I’ll…” becomes “if the Lord wills, I will, and I mean it.”
• Exaggeration and the “harmless” lie are reframed by simple accuracy — because God loves truth down to the small print. “Literally the worst thing ever,” “everyone knows,” “I never said that” (when you did), “it’s basically true” — all are small falsehoods, and “lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22). “Having put away falsehood, let each one speak the truth with his neighbor” (Ephesians 4:25). Even “I’m fine” when you are not can be a reflexive lie — the reframe is truthful vulnerability, “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), which also lets others “bear your burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

This is the broadest domain — everything you say in another person’s hearing or at their expense — and Scripture gives it one brilliantly simple filter: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). Run every sentence through that gate.

• The filter is not “is it true?” but “does it build up and give grace?” — because true words can still tear down. Criticism, sarcasm, cutting jokes, and “just being honest” often pass the truth test and fail the grace test. The reframe is “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) and “let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6) — truth delivered so it heals rather than wounds. Even correction gets reframed: “correct opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:25), “restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1). The question before you speak is not merely “is this accurate?” but “will this leave them more loved and more able?”
• The same mouth must not both bless and curse — and the reframe covers flattery as much as attack. James marvels that “from the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so” (James 3:9–10). On one side: foul language, contempt (“whoever says ‘You fool!’…” — Matthew 5:22), interrupting (“quick to hear, slow to speak” — James 1:19), nagging, and discouragement. On the other side, the subtler sin of flattery — insincere praise to gain advantage: “we never came with words of flattery” (1 Thessalonians 2:5); “a man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet” (Proverbs 29:5). The reframe for both is honest, kind, building speech — “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

Every swap in this guide finally shows up in how you talk to God. The self prays transactionally — “give me, do this for me, why won’t you” — keeping itself on the throne even in prayer. The reframe is relational, surrendered, grateful prayer: being with God more than demanding from Him.

• The reframe is from at-God transaction to with-God relationship — and this is the kind that heals. Jesus taught us to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10) and warned against “heaping up empty phrases” as if volume moved God (Matthew 6:7). Bargaining (“if you do X, I’ll do Y”) becomes surrender (“not as I will, but as you will” — Matthew 26:39). Self-congratulating prayer (the Pharisee’s “I thank you that I…”) becomes the publican’s “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). The research in the broader literature points the same way: relational, meditative prayer tracks well-being more than bare petition — asking for things keeps the self central; being with God dethrones it.
• You may ask freely and honestly — the reframe surrenders the outcome, it does not suppress the request. “Do not be anxious… but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). So the shape is: thank, ask honestly, surrender the result — and the promised fruit is not always the thing requested but “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). And the reflexes of avoidance get reframed too: “I’m too sinful to pray” → “let us draw near to the throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:16); “I don’t know how” → “the Spirit helps us … intercedes” (Romans 8:26).

Most speech is small — greetings, filler, reflexes. But “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17) and “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31) mean even the throwaway line can be quietly sanctified. These are gentle, not legalistic — the point is a heart that leans God-ward even in its smallest speech.

• Reflex phrases carry little theologies — the reframe simply swaps in a truer one. “Good luck” assumes chance; “God bless you” or “the Lord be with you” (the ancient blessing of Numbers 6:24–26) assumes providence. “Knock on wood / fingers crossed” → “my times are in your hand” (Psalm 31:15). “OMG” used carelessly → reverence for the Name (Exodus 20:7). None of this needs to be preachy out loud — much of it is interior — but even thinking the truer line re-aims the heart.
• “I’m so busy” and identity-in-work talk are reframed by stewardship and calling. “I don’t have time” → “teach us to number our days” (Psalm 90:12), “making the best use of the time” (Ephesians 5:16) — the time is a stewardship, not a scarcity to complain about. “What do you do?” (as identity) → “whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). Even meals: grabbing food → receiving it “with thanksgiving,” for “everything created by God is good… made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4–5). The toast “to me / to us” → “to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

A guide that graded everyone else honestly has to grade itself.

• This is training wheels for the heart, not a magic-words engine — keep the direction of power straight. Reframing speech does not command outcomes, obligate God, or manifest reality; it bends your will toward His. The danger of any “speak it” system is that it quietly re-enthrones the self — now using holy vocabulary — as the one whose words move heaven. Everything here runs the opposite way: the swaps are how you get off the throne, not how you rule from it. If the words are not making you humbler, calmer, kinder, and more grateful, they are theater, and the tell that it works is a softer heart, not a cleaner script.
• The supporting science is real but modest — corroboration, never proof. The I-talk correlation is small (r ≈ .10); affect labeling and distanced self-talk are Moderate; the gratitude, implementation-intention, and venting results are Strong but bounded in scope. None of them proves a word of the theology; what they do is show, soberly, that the direction Scripture points — name it, reframe it, hand it to God, refuse to rehearse the poison — is also the direction the best human data points. That convergence is a genuine second witness. It is not the foundation; the foundation is the text and the Christ it reveals.
• Words are not a substitute for the Spirit, or for care — two honest guardrails. James says plainly that “no human being can tame the tongue” (James 3:8) by effort; the real taming is the Spirit’s work (Galatians 5:22–23 lists the fruit, not the technique). And for anyone carrying real depression, anxiety, trauma, or grief: “just reframe it” can wound, and must never replace a pastor and a qualified clinician. Speak the true word and get the help. Grace, not performance, is the engine — Isaiah’s lips were cleansed by a coal from the altar before he ever spoke rightly (Isaiah 6:6–7).
• And here is the master swap under all 130 — the one sentence that all the tables are teaching. Every reframe in this guide is a small instance of a single move: taking the self off the throne of the sentence and putting God there. “Mine” → “His.” “I did” → “grace did.” “I want” → “Your will.” “I’m afraid” → “He holds me.” “You always” → “a soft answer.” Learn to hear that one move and you will not need to memorize a dictionary — you will be able to reframe any sentence on the fly, because you will know the direction: off the self, onto God. That is the whole thing.