Taming Our TongueSample

Have We Become Careless With Our Words?

We live in a world with no shortage of words. Words that build up and words that tear down. Words that make us laugh and words that make us cry. Words that have been rolling around in our minds for days and words that seem to flow uncontrollably from our mouths as if born out of thin air.

Whether we are communicating with others face-to-face or virtually, we have been given an incredible gift. A gift that comes with a responsibility to use our words for good and not for evil.

But have we become a bit too careless with our words? As an apprentice of Jesus - His mouthpieces to a lost and dying world - do our words sound any different than those around us walking in darkness? If someone overheard our conversation at a local restaurant or read the words we post on social media, would they identify us as a follower of Christ?

Proverbs 18:21 reminds us, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits." And the book of James provides us with a similar warning cry regarding the seriousness of our words describing the tongue as a fire and a restless evil full of deadly poison. With it, we praise Jesus our Lord and curse our fellow brothers and sisters created in His image. Ultimately declaring that this should not be! (See James 3:5-12)

Ruth Haley Barton provides a sobering reminder of the damage that a tongue that God's love hasn't transformed can do. "For all of our piety and activity, we Christians are not always known for our kindness. Sometimes we are downright mean and judgmental. But most, if not all, of our meanness comes out of the places within us that have been unattended and untouched by God's love. Every broken place that has not been healed and transformed in God's presence is a hard edge of our personality that slices and dices other people when they bump up against it."

On our own strength, we fail miserably to tame our tongue. But by divine grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can choose words transformed by God's love, breathe life into the world, and point others to Christ.

Over the next few days, we will attempt to answer three questions as we wrestle with the Biblical narrative around taming our tongue. What does Jesus' example teach us about the source of our words? How does the discipline of surrender guide us into learning to listen to our neighbor? And what does it look like to become a mouthpiece for Christ?