The Unruly Member

Granddaughters
 

The prayer in Psalm 19:14 is one that all of us should repeat on a regular basis: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer."

Have you ever wondered if you had "Hoof IN Mouth Disease"? That is a question that I do not wonder about. I am certain that my tongue is, as the Bible says, an unruly member.

Has someone said something to you that just keeps coming back and adding hurt time and time again? That has probably happened to everyone. What a terrible weapon the tongue is! Let's take a look at what the Bible says:

JESUS: ". . .Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person. . . . what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone."

Someone has said that Jesus was indicating that "verbal sins such as lies, gossip, or insults are condemned as severely as adultery and murder." (The Reformation Bible: pg 1381) That is a very sobering thought. Our slander, gossip, and unkind words are offensive to God and they are sin in His sight. That is one of the reasons that we should repeat Psalm 19:14 from our hearts frequently before the Lord.

James chapter 3 speaks of what a terrible weapon the tongue (our words) really is. It tells us that we use our tongues to bless the Lord, but use the same tongue to curse people who are created in the image of God. And he writes, "these things ought not to be so."

Are we really more concerned about keeping our hands washed than controlling our words, as Jesus implied in those verses? It is a vain thing to clean up the outside when God actually looks on the heart. We might please people, but GOD knows the difference.

 In Proverbs it speaks of our well-spoken words being more precious than gold or silver. Sadly, the damage we do with our words cuts deeply into the hearts of people that we abuse in that way. The advice of my third grade teacher was good. When you are angry, "count to ten". Then someone else has said, "if that doesn't work, count to ten again!" Better advice is found in Scripture where we are told to "speak the truth in love". We need the power of God to do that.