Daily Devotional – 4/1/14 “Control your tongue!”

I find it kind of ironic that after I did a devotional on yesterday about getting in our place, Pastor Letcher taught on controlling your tongue last night in bible study. (Humph!) Now, if you’re like me you might, no scratch that, you have a problem with this but I’m working on it, for real, I am since I am the kind of person that usually doesn’t bite my tongue because if you ask me a question then I have to be honest in my answer but sometimes the way things are said can be taken wrong. So it isn’t all in what you say but it’s also how you say it. See, when folks say sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt, they lied! Words hurt worse because as someone said in bible class, scars heal but what you say can’t be taken back. This is why you have to watch what you say and how you say it.

Now the lesson on last night was taken from James 3:1-12 and in this particular passage James is talking on how a horse can be controlled by placing a small bit in its mouth yet here we are, humans, who say we can’t be controlled by folks but let someone say something you probably didn’t say (or you probably did) and you shoot off thus allowing your whole body to be controlled by a small bit of information. Yea, you allow your emotions and the actions of others to control your tongue when you should be. I get it, I know it’s hard to contain yourself when someone is lying on you, scandalizing your name or got an attitude at you for no reason but my bible tells me in Proverbs 21:23, “Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble,” and in the end the truth always prevail so control your tongue. James 3:6 says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell,” yet you have no problem burning someone with it. Yea, you’re quick to lash out at folks and you didn’t even fully hear what they said when you should have controlled your tongue. Isn’t is a down right disgrace that even then, in the bible days, James knew that every animal, species and reptile could be tamed by man yet man can’t even tame their own tongue even now? How can you, we, us, them ever expect to be greater in whatever it is we decide to do if we never control our tongue because if the truth shall be written, our tongues have gotten a lot of our blessings blocked. It doesn’t take much to control your tongue because all you have to do is stop and think before you respond. You don’t have to fight the battles that are raging against you because God got it. Control your tongue and God will control temper!