learn to tame your tongue…

here are some statistics on the average american.  you have 30 conversations a day and you will spend 1/5 of your life talking. in one year your conversations will fill 66 books of 800 pages a book.  if you’re a man you speak an average of 20,000 words a day, if you’re a woman you speak 30,000 words a day.

now some of us are born with a silver foot in our mouth.  we have the natural ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  nothing is opened more wrongly at the wrong time than our mouths.

like the stock boy at the grocery store, lady asked him, “can i buy a half a lettuce?”  he walked back to the manager to ask, not realizing she was walking right behind him.  he said, “you’re not going to believe this, there’s an old bag out there who wants to buy half a head of lettuce.”  he turned around and saw her standing there and said, “and this fine lady would like to buy the other half.”

our mouths get us into a lot of trouble.  james talks more about the tongue than anybody else in the new testament.  every chapter in book of james says something about managing your mouth. 

verse 2 of chapter 3 (niv), we all stumble in many ways.  if anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

james says, if you can control your mouth, you’re perfect.  now he’s not talking about sinless.  the word “perfection” in greek literally means “mature, healthy.”

when you go to the doctor and say, “i’m not feeling good,” the first thing he says is, “stick out your tongue.”  your tongue reveals what’s going on inside of you, not just physically but spiritually.  james says, you’ve got to learn to mange your mouth.  you’ve got to learn to tame your tongue.  you’ve got to get your tongue under control. 

just a thought from the front porch…

master your mouth…

a mature person can master his mouth.  do you master your mouth?

james 3.2 (niv), we all stumble in many ways. (this is an understatement.  nobody’s perfect)  if anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check."

the first thing a doctor will say when you go for a check up is ”stick out your tongue.”  he uses your tongue to check your health.  GOD does that spiritually too.

in world war 11 there was a saying, “loose lips, sinks ships.”  loose lips destroy lives.  they hurt! 

definition of gossip: hearing something you like about somebody you don’t.  it is a mouth to mouth recitation.

self control comes from tongue control.  we get ourselves into so much trouble at what we say and what we think and what we speak and james 3 gives us several illustrations.  he says our tongue is like a rudder, a bit in a horse’s mouth, a spark, a snake, a spring. 

he says, you put a little bit in a horses mouth and that little bit can control the direction of the horse.  a little rudder on a boat can control the direction of the boat.  your tongue, which, by size is very insignificant, controls your life. 

what you say directs your life, what you say can destroy your life.  it can delight people’s lives; it can discourage people’s lives.  your tongue is powerful for good or for evil.

have you ever heard someone say, “i just say what’s on my mind.”  they’re proud of it.  being frank, up front, they say what’s on their mind…  maybe there’s not a whole lot on their mind.  maybe what’s on their mind shouldn’t be said.  the bible says that’s not frankness, that’s immaturity.  a lot of people just need a dose of tactfulness.

just a thought from the front porch…

the most powerful tool we have…

remember the story in the old testament of the tower of babel that building project that GOD stopped because they were so prideful.  HE stopped the project by taking away their most powerful tool.  HE didn’t take away their hammer, HE didn’t take away their chisels.  HE took away their words. 

words are the most powerful tool that we have.  you can use them to build.  you can use them to tear down.  “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can…”  words can hurt a child’s heart.  words can shatter a husband’s dreams.  they can crush a wife’s self image.  or you can use same things – words – to build another person’s life.  do you realize the power you have this week to change somebody’s life?  with what you say, a word of sympathy, just looking them in the eye and saying i understand what you’re going through.  or maybe saying, i don’t understand what you’re going through but i care about it even though i don’t understand it.  or saying to them i love you.  you have the power to change somebody’s life with a word this week.  who is it?  take a minute to write it down.  who will i bless with a word of sympathy this week?  i won’t give up on you?  who needs to hear that word from you?

you bless people when you show courtesy, mercy, sympathy and you bless others when you speak honestly.

that means you talk about a problem in the relationship that you’d rather not talk about.  if you’re serious about blessing other people you must care enough to tell the truth even when it’s painful, even when it’s inconvenient, even when you’d rather ignore the problem and sweep it under the rug.  you do it because you value the person in the relationship. 

listen, most people, even married couples, have nobody in their life who loves them enough to tell them the truth.  they don’t have them.  they don’t have anybody in their life who loves them enough to say, this is out of whack in your life and you need to work on it.  people know what needs to be said, everybody in the office knows what needs to be said to that person but nobody is willing to say it. 

millions of relationships are destroyed by dishonesty.  i couldn’t tell you the number of couples that i’ve met who have been married 20, 30, 40 years or more and are still living at superficial level in their relationship because everybody just wants to “make nice, don’t rock the boat”.  we all know that there’s an area in our life that we need to talk about but we don’t want to talk about.  it’s the elephant in the living room.  what elephant?  i don’t see it!  so we live in total denial.  and there are areas of your life that you are chicken to talk about.  you’ve decided whenever we bring this up it causes pain in our relationship so we’re just not going to talk about it.  that closes a door to a deeper level of intimacy. 

just a thought from the front porch…