james says my tongue directs
where i go, so i've got to learn to control it.
and he says my tongue can
destroy what i have.
james 3.5 & 6a gives us
another illustration (niv), consider what a great forest is set on fire by a
small spark. the tongue also is a fire.
imagine a beautiful forest –
tall beautiful trees everywhere. now
imagine it in one minute up in smoke, completely destroyed by a little tiny
match. it only takes a spark to get a
fire going.
in 1983 in australia, one fire
overnight destroyed 600 miles of land, villages, livestock, all from a single
match. james says, your tongue can
destroy like that. you can lose it all. a careless camper can destroy a life
overnight, thousands of lives. gossip is
like fire. it spreads quickly and it
wrecks havoc.
i wonder how many people
because of a careless word have destroyed their marriage, or their career, or
their reputation, or the reputation of another, or their church, or a
friendship. the tongue not only has the
power to direct where you go but also to destroy what you have if you don’t
learn to control it. it’s like a fire.
proverbs 18.20 (tev), you
will have to live with the consequences of everything you say.
continuing on in james 3.6b
(niv), …it sets the whole course
of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. notice it says, whole course.
he’s saying here that words
can create a chain reaction. you can say
something that you didn’t mean to have any harm, but it can have devastating effects
that are beyond your control. just a few
inflammatory statements set off a chain of events that we now look back on and
call world war ii.
just a thought from the front
porch..
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