It has been said what you say is what you get and we have such an incredible opportunity this time of year to bring words of hope and healing or we can remain cold and shut others out.
With the spoken word, we have the power to inspire, encourage and motivate or be used by the enemy to steal, kill and destroy life! The gap is that great and it is only through listening and the power of the Holy Spirit that we have the opportunity to get this one right. It is huge and it is so crucial for experiencing the life of God in us!
PRAY this prayer in Isaiah 50:4, The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.
Life has all kinds of different season...difficulty, struggle, discouragement. I also want to say that the season you are in has less to do what has happened to you and more what has come out of you... in terms of our words
Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue...words that we say determine to us especially in our closest relationships.
Our words can bring death or life to our marriage, death or life to our children, death or life at work…
Or they can lift our marriage up, cause our children to rise and lift us up in our business,
They can make us a highly value member of employee or undercut us and cause us to miss out on what God wanted to do with our life
If you come home with a sense of entitlement and say cutting words, sarcastic words OR if you come home with a sense of gratitude and speak words of kindness, encouragement, love....YOU CAN change the entire environment of your home
Proverbs 18:21
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
You are what you say....what we say is a big determiner on how life will work out for us.
Maybe better to look at it this way…. What we say is what we eat OR You eat what you say.
The words that we speak...we are going to walk with that situation for the good or better or the bad or worse.
Its absolutely critical
When we are speaking….25 – 30 000 ... When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. Proverbs 10:19 This message is absolutely critical!
I Leaders lead by example… or not at all v1,2a practice what you preach is not just a cliché for me. I will never challenge someone to do something that I am not presently doing or willing to do.
• We are not perfect yet therefore we will make mistakes. Don’t run from leadership, but rise up to the occasion when you are called upon.
• Our tongues can condemn us, where we can incur judgment...teachers of the word. We have accountability for what we say
• God is not against people being teachers...anytime we open our mouths we are going to give an account...the weight that I have with the words that we speak...the words are a huge responsibility
• When a teacher teaches, that are to live out the truth...we can teach with our lips and undo with our lives...it is what we are
• Judgment...what might have been with our lives... it can either open us up to the blessing on our lives or miss opportunities
• Matthew 12:36
But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken….we will give an account for every careless word we speak
• Use this as a motivating force….we can bless people
II Words – our most powerful instrument or weapon v2b –11
• we all stumble in many ways...synonym....inadvertantly sin....#1 way we will sin is with our lips. The way that we commit an infraction with others.
The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked. Proverbs 10:11
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18:21
• If we can learn to control our mouths, we can learn to control every area of our lives. If we can get a hold of that, we can open ourselves to a greater blessing from God
• Control your words, control your life. Once you say something, you can never take it back, once it is out there. Yes, you can ask for forgiveness, but the damage has already been done.
WORDS ‘under control’ PICTURES! The focus begins with the positive, control of our words is like a powerful INSTRUMENT of great strength.
• Words ‘under control’ are like the bits in the mouth of horses We guide their whole bodies as well...the bit that you put in a horse’s mouth...you can direct a horse by the pressure you put on its tongue or the roof of it mouth
• You can determine the direction of your life with your word…put pressure on yourself to really think carefully through your words for the intended audience and the surrounding one as well.
You may have seen this email… God I haven’t sinned today, I haven’t lied, I haven’t been jealous, I haven’t displayed road rage, I haven’t said a mean word, but I’m getting up in 5 minutes Lord. So we can live in total isolation and try to avoid interaction or we can learn control through the everyday pressures of life.
Control your tongue
Words ‘under control’ are like rudders on ships.
The rudder... picture a ship with a large sail... think of the wind as the circumstances in our lives...We find ourselves in very difficult circumstances... it is our tongue that directed us ...the pilot of the boat and the rudder.... not the gale force winds
Proverbs 16 24 Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones OR words thoughtlessly given...when you don’t know what is going on in their lives can bring incredible pain.
Proverbs 21:23 words can protect us…He who guards his lips, guards his life
Proverbs 15:23 an apt word...your speech...you have the right word at the right time and it brings joy, brings a lift to their Spirit
You are weary, in a difficult situation...and someone gives you a word from God...and we don’t give it out enough!
Wise words nourish the soul...are the people around us nourishing people or starving them
Proverbs 18:20 when you and I talking words... we are planting seeds...you are keeping a great attitude, you are lifting up the environment...you are going to increase the morale of your team...
I didn’t realize how important my words were!
Your words control where you go!
The tongue also makes great boasts and that is when we get into trouble…the focus now changes to WEAPONS of destruction
WORDS ‘out of control’ PICTURES
• Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.
There was a story a few years ago about a female park ranger who received a letter from her boyfriend who informed her that the relationship was over. She burned the letter and tossed it in the garbage. Unfortunately it was during one of the driest spells in the mid western states that it turned into a raging forest fire.
It boasts...it is small physically but it can do serious damage...how great a forest is set like brush fires in Australia.. all from one little spark. Its all an example...
If we are not careful with our words, when we don’t think about our words...we can devastate and assault our child’s personhood...and it sets in motion an anger and insecurity. Couples, as we get in a fight, we know how to push all the right buttons, to say the things to win the argument...but we lose the relationship and sorry doesn’t make it go away.
Look at the end of v6 sets the whole course of his life on fire, and itself set on fire by hell!!! - our tongue can discredit even nullify our testimony with others.
When you and I don’t control our tongue, we can make it a living hell for others or it becomes hellish in a marriage. Kids who don’t control their mouths...parents who didn’t control their mouths. A future is diminished, a relationship is dismantled and it is Satan’s easiest way to work his mischief
• No one can tame the tongue, it is full of deadly poison
On your own, you can never control your tongue, but God can!
Yielding ourselves to the Spirit of God and God controls us in that very moment.
Believers can praise God and curse people???…apparently v9-11
You come to expect this type of treatment in the world yet James is saying that it is happening in the church and this just doesn’t add up, fresh and salty water from the same spring… WHAT IS GOING ON, this should not be true of you!
If the tongue is inconsistent, there is something radically wrong with the heart
Matthew 15:18,19 The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean’. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.
Here in Proverbs there is no mistake that these two verses are so closely connected.
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Put away perversity from your mouth, keep corrupt talk from your lips. Proverbs 4:23,24
We can so easily say unkind, stupid, cutting things and it is straight from the pit of hell
The double mindedness..inconsistency is not characteristic of a believer.. and that is not how God works. It is not the kind of life that God can bless and it is not only hurting others but it is killing the spiritual life in us. It is damaging our walk with God and putting us in a place where God can’t bless us.
Salt water and fresh water from the same place....NO...the idea is that you can’t get both from the same well.
Bad things don’t produce good things
Its the law of the harvest
The only way we can deal with this is going to the heart
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks...if you got a word problem
You got a heart problem
DO NOT LET CONFLICT GO UNDERGROUND – It will ruin the best of churches, the best of friendships and can set the whole course of a church on fire towards destruction.
The Matthew 18:15 principle – go to the source!
The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook Proverbs 18:4
Four words that can help us control our tongue
1. Look inside your heart – there is discouragement, lying...deceit
2. Learn to bite your tongue – you can’t get in trouble ...sorry is appropriate, sorry is good, but unfortunately it doesn’t erase the words that have been placed in a person’s heart
3. Listen to what others are saying...We have been given two ears and one mouth ...listen twice as much seek to understand rather than to be understood...listen to what the other person is saying and enter in...so often we are listening with the only purpose of preparing a response.
4. Let God change your heart.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight God
If you got a problem with gossip, a problem with anger, slander, discouraging words, cutting, unkind and cruel, exaggeration and lying, slander...let God enter in
What you and I say is in many respects what we are going to get.
God help us watch our words.
