As someone who quite often only opens his mouth to change feet I have a great deal of appreciation for the power that words carry. I am a teacher by trade and words are my currency as well as my subject matter. With few words I can completely control the classroom. I can, with a word or two encourage a student to greatness, or cut them off at the knees. Words have tremendous power. Consider the power of the following words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . " Those words set the course for our nation and have been a guide to us ever since. Words have great power.
If words are so powerful, then why are we so careless with them? If you gave me twenty sticks of dynamite to carry around I would be extremely careful and intentional with the way I handled them, and yet I have done far more damage to the people around me with careless words than with explosives. I have never actually handled dynamite, but I have said the wrong thing at the wrong time and brought tears to the eyes of a good friend, on more than one occasion. It was shortly after one of those instances when I was reading through the book of Proverbs and came across this. "Like a madman throwing firebrands, arrows, and death, is the man who deceives his neighbor, and says, "I was only joking!" I was stunned. I couldn't believe that was in there. How many times have I said some horribly biting sarcastic remark followed quickly with, "I'm just kidding" and patted myself on the back for my clever wit? A disturbing number of times. Here the Bible was calling me out; telling me that my wit was caustic and hurtful and a bringer of death. I was reminded of the axiom that sarcasm is truth disguised as humor.
As my personal conviction grew, the words of James began to pound in my heart. "But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the image of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not be so." James 3: 8-10. I know that in my own life I have ripped people up with sarcasm and used humor to say hurtful and even mean things. I have said even worse things about people when they were nowhere nearby. I have been rude to people directly and said horrible things about them behind their backs. Sadly this sarcastic wit comes quite easily to me. It is a part of my fleshly personality, one that I cultivated in high school as my way of getting back at people who were more socially acceptable than I. It's there with me at all times, offering up a multiple choice list of funny, sarcastic, and mean things to say; things guaranteed to get me a laugh and impress someone with my cleverness. The problem is that those things are also guaranteed to hurt someone, and they never, ever, please God.
I am learning lately that doing things that please God is far more important in our spiritual health than we may realize. I'm not talking about obeying specific commands from God, I'm talking about doing the things that God would be pleased with, whether He has specifically asked us to or not. The Bible says that people who please God, get whatever they ask of Him in prayer. I so much want to be someone who has a purposeful and powerful prayer life, and yet how often to I slip into doing that which pleases me, rather than that which pleases God. It is so easy. We sometimes just flesh out. It doesn't mean we don't love God, or even that we don't love other people, it is simply a byproduct of the weakness of our flesh and the desire of our enemy to thwart our growth. One of the first ways in which many of us slip from a focus on pleasing God is through the things we say. How often do we participate in idle gossip, or frivolous and empty debates? How often do we use our tongue to cut down someone else; someone who is created in the image of God. I can't tell you how many times I have done this. I've hurt people I care about. It is almost never intentional, it is rather a question of not being mindful. A careless word can bring devastation, and in spite of the playground sentiment, it cannot be "taken back."
So what do I do when this happens? Well I certainly don't give up hope. I must first question the condition of my heart, because Christ said that, "out of the wellspring of the heart, the mouth speaks." If I am truly sorry that I have said something hurtful, and I confess my error, and choose to turn away from that behavior, and toward God (repentance), then the Bible says that I am forgiven of my sins and cleansed from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9). If my heart is repentant than God chooses to forgive me and wash away all of my guilt. Paul reminds us in Romans that there is "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Jesus expertly expressed this concept with the woman caught in adultery, by pointing out the myriad ways in which the crowd of angry judges was every bit as guilty and condemned before God as this woman. As they all dropped their stones and walked away, the one person on the scene who had the right to judge her said, "Neither do I condemn you, now go and do better." That is God's heart on the matter of blowing it. If we are repentant, He chooses to forgive us and wash us clean and send us back out there to be His representation before the world. This encourages me greatly because I so often mess up. It is so critical that I embrace the reality that my mistakes are covered by the blood shed at Calvary, AND that God knew I would make them before I did. This is a powerful insight into the heart of God. It is the heart of a loving and forgiving father. A father who is pacing his porch daily waiting for his one son to return home. It is a heart that cares more about having a relationship with us than about our performance. God's heart toward us is a heart of love and mercy. He looked down from heaven and saw us, in all of our lowly wretchedness, at our absolute worst, and saw us as redeemable. God sees us as the pearl of great price, and He was the one who went and sold all that He had to purchase us. What do I do when I mess up and make some careless comment that hurts and upsets someone I care about? I remember the cross. I remember the love of God that saw me as worth the ultimate sacrifice, the blood of God. That was what He paid in order to buy my redemption. He shed His own blood for me. I deserve judgment and condemnation from God. I receive mercy and grace. I need to embrace that grace and remember another key passage from James. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
in His grace...
