The biggest project of one's life is one's life. Many details in our lives lie outside our control. We do not pick our parents, nor do we choose the country we are born in. We choose neither our sex nor the color of our eyes. Our Creator fills in those details. But what we do with the life God has given us becomes our life's main project. That project consists of our actions, our words, and our thoughts. Each of those things our consciences keep record of for review on Judgment Day. On Judgment Day, we will finally realize how sinful we really are as our consciences testify against us. Our only hope on that day will be the blood of Christ. But as Christ's redeemed people who are called to be His ambassadors on this earth, it is expedient to think in terms of Judgment Day, and to work towards having thoughts, words, and deeds on that day which we do not need to be ashamed of. As ambassadors of Christ, words you can stand by are true words, not spoken in haste, which testify of Christ to our world.

We can stand by our words when they are true. Truth is an objective reality which does not change even when it ceases to be popular. Our words are true when they agree with the Scriptures. They are true when they correlate to the facts of history. They are true when they accurately represent the opinions of others, and they are true when they competently communicate our own views. On Judgment Day, our written words will be held up against the facts, and only our words which correlate to objective truth will be words worth standing by.

Our words can only be true if they align to Scripture. The Word of God is the gold standard of truth. "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent; has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" (Numbers 23:19). God's Word is true because God enforces it and personally guarantees it to be true. As finite creatures, our knowledge is limited. We must defer to what God — our omniscient Creator — says on issues that He speaks to in the Scriptures. As sinners, our hearts naturally call good what is evil and evil what is good. The words of Scripture then act as a litmus test which reveals any of our words which are contrary to it so that we might repent of those words and realign them to be in conformity with Scripture. Only when our words agree with God's Word do we have words that we can stand by.

True words are those which accurately represent the views of others. It is careless when we turn the opinions and doctrines of others into straw men. Straw men mark us as careless thinkers and discredit our words so that neither we nor our friends want to stand by them. When our goal in writing is to ascertain truth, we must leave no room for any words which misrepresent the opinions or teachings of others. It is not possible to conclude with true words if one does not include true words along the way.

Our words must also competently communicate our own positions. Vague words and ambiguous words make our writing muddled. Muddled writing will send people away without an accurate impression of what was meant. Although it is true in our own day that many people rush through article after article and do not take the time to read those articles carefully, it ought to be every writer's goal to be understood clearly by those who invested the time in actually reading what they wrote.

As we can stand by words we have written which agree with Scripture, do not misrepresent others, and competently communicate our positions, so too we can stand by words which are not written hastily. Words that are written hastily lack the due diligence necessary to make sure we are writing true words. When we are hasty in judgment, we might impute motives to an author which are inaccurate. When we are hasty in our comebacks, we often pack a punch which discredits us. And when we are hasty in our explanations, we might paint with broad brushstrokes a picture which is not true. If you want to be able to stand by your words, you have to take the time to form accurate opinions. If you are hasty or impatient, then your words might miss the mark. It does no good for your words to pack a punch if you hit the wrong target.

To stand by your words you need to write true words that are not written hastily and you need to write words that have a certain trajectory. That trajectory points directly to the destination where those words are going to land. If you want words you can stand by on Judgment Day, then you need words which find you guilty of being a Christian. Your words must find you completely unashamed of Christ and His words. If you are a seminary student, would a church who wants to hire someone with your beliefs be able to find you? If they looked at the words you had written, would they realize where you stand on the issues of the day? If Christianity were outlawed tomorrow, would the state prosecutor be able to incriminate you as a Christian from your own words? If not, start writing. And write with the intention that not only would they lock you up and throw away the key, but that they would ban every word you ever wrote out of fear that someone might come across your writings and have their life eternally changed by the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.