“Be pleased to accept the voluntary offerings of my mouth, Lord, And teach me Your judgments.”
How many times will God speak about the power of the tongue before we decide to regulate our words? Excuse the pun, but we give this dangerous sin “lip service” on Sunday morning and then unbridle our tongues for the rest of the week to spread, gossip, lies, and hurtful words toward any and everybody who is the slightest bit different than we are.
The tongue is called a fire that comes straight from Hell. We are told that it controls the whole body and can lead us into complete destruction… Yet we smirk and say things like, “I probably shouldn’t say this but…”, or “did you hear about so and so ?” And Heaven forbid if someone has a different political opinion than we do – We will rip them to pieces with a smile on our faces. We spew venom at them with the same mouth that praised their Heavenly Father on Sunday morning… The book of James says, that ain’t right.
The psalmist asks God to accept the “voluntary offerings of my mouth”. So, let me ask you point blank – Did God see the things you said yesterday afternoon as offerings? Were they fragrant and pleasing in His sight? The answer to that question is important. Yesterday, no one made me say what I chose to say, and between you and me – few of my comments reached the level of sacred offerings… This makes the end of the verse where David requests to be “taught His judgement” a bit dicey.
So let me challenge you to take gossip, slander, and using words as weapons, off the “acceptable sin list” today. If we hear ourselves misuse our tongues, let’s react to that as we would to physically attacking someone or stealing. Stop tolerating our disparaging comments as though they were junior varsity sins and start seeing them for what they are … evil.
Today let’s make our words honoring and sacrificial to His glory, less degrading to others, and less self-aggrandizing. The best way to do that is to just keep our mouths shut until we purge our hearts of the pride that pollutes our words.
Make everything that comes out of your mouth an offering today.
“Words kill, words give life; they're either poison or fruit, YOU choose.” - Solomon
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