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Thursday, July 10, 2008

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Watch Your Mouth!

"For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." (Matthew 12:34)

Do you want to give yourself a surefire faith checkup?  Do we really want to know how we are doing?  Then, we simply need to listen to what it is that is coming out of our mouths.  On Sunday morning at church, everything sounds wonderful.  More telling, however, is what comes out of our mouths at those moments when "that so-and-so" does "that thing" that you hate for the umpteenth time.  And even if we only say it with our "inside voice," does that not also reveal our hearts?  It just means that we are more polite but now, dishonest.  Give yourself, as they say, "a checkup from the neck up."

Jesus said that our mouths put into words what our hearts are full of, and then went on to say that:

"The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matthew 12:35-37)

That makes me want to go and join a monastery and take a vow of silence and never be allowed to say another word.  Oh, and my last words would be, "Father forgive me for all of the nasty things that I have already spoken."  Problem is, that wouldn't change anything.  Just biting my tongue is not the answer.  That is like getting rid of the cobwebs instead of the spider.  It is my heart that is the problem.  Lord, change me.  Lord, make the tree good so that it's fruit will also be good (Matthew 12:33).

Good news is, that is exactly what God is able and desires to do for us.  I am powerless to change my own heart.  Neither can you.  We can only change our thinking a little bit and our behavior somewhat.  If it was up to you and I, the heart inside of us would remain, as Jeremiah so aptly put it, "deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)  Only the one who created the heart can truly change it.  Praise God that when we repent of wrong attitudes and sinful behavior that we have allowed to remain in our hearts, God's promise is that:

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees . . . you will be my people and I will be your God." (Ezekiel 36:26-28)

When we say yes to Jesus for the first time, we experience a heart change.  And yet somehow, not really wanting to, we find that time has a way of hardening that heart that was once soft.  If God is going to use you and me to change this world, we will need always to have hearts like Jesus, easily "moved with compassion," warm, alive, and beating in sync with the heartbeat of the Father.  Then we will be those children of God who "make the most of every opportunity" because our "conversation is always full of grace, seasoned with salt." (Colossians 4:5-6)

Proverbs 18:21 says that "the tongue has the power of life and death," however, it can only put into words the overflow of a heart that is seeking life or pursuing death.  What does my mouth tell me about the true condition of my heart?  Jesus spoke words of life (John 6:68) because he embodied life (John 14:6).  He longs to speak those words of life to a dying world through you and me.  And he will too as we allow him to have our whole heart, to breathe new life into us, and to make us those new creations in Christ that we really, deep down in our hearts, want to be.

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