Out of the Mouths. . .

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Judgmental, cursing, gossiping

Psalm 19:14     Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

Psalm 34:13     Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.

Psalm 141:3     Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Proverbs 15:1     A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Proverbs 16:24     Kind words are like honey–sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.

Proverbs 17:27     Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who was a cool spirit is a man of understanding.

Proverbs 18:21-23     Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

Proverbs 21:23     Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

Ephesians 4:29     Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Colossians 3:8-9     But now you must put them all away; anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices   

Colossians 4:6     Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

James 1:19-20     Know this, my beloved brothers; let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.  Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

James 1:26     If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless.

James 3:5     In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches.  But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire.

 

Did you ever taunt out “Nahnahnahnahnahnah. . . Stick and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”?  You would shout this saying, with all the bravado of your young age to sound fearless in front of your other friends.  And for a short time, you may have even believed it.  But words do stick, and they can hurt.  They can also praise, build one up, encourage, and heal.  They can be fairly innocent, but it’s the wrong tone, or just not quite the right word, and something lacking so the receiver may still not be filled with the true meaning meant.   One’s intentions may be positive, but the receiver hears something else that was not meant.

Hateful words, anger, insults, name calling tear down and demoralize and do severe, sometimes lasting, damage to a person.  They can have lasting negative effects–one may be left with low self esteem, feelings of failure and no desire to try because you believe that you can not achieve anything worthwhile.  The damage spoken from battering words can send one down into a life of regret, pain, drugs, addictive behaviors, being filled with anger and striking out at others regularly, cursing, being judgmental and negative at all times.  And oftentimes, the negative banter continues in your own mind–no one else saying the negative things you are still hearing.  Words are powerful and they come from a mouth, tongue, heart and mind, and can do such severe damage it feels as though it is irreparable.  Even if you no longer hear the angry or hateful words from others–Satan continues to whisper how unsuccessful and repugnant you are.

But once a person is directed toward the Lord, and chooses to probe further, to tentatively seek Him, His words can change one’s life.   It is not always immediate.  God likes walking with everyone who chooses to walk with Him.   And He will guide and help you each step of the way.  God can and does heal hearts damaged by angry, unkind, impatient, denigrating words. 

In anger, we can spew awful words which we feel are deserved or we have the right to vomit them on someone else.  But after the moments of anger pass, do we assume we have done no lasting damage?  Do we try to apologize and explain?  Do we try to brush it aside, not being addressed directly, and hope the other person is able to forgive and forget?   Do we TRULY believe our anger and ferocious words do not need to be acknowledged–and apologized for?  It is time to hit our knees and confess and ask Jesus and the Holy Spirit to correct the mouth BEFORE the next utterance.  But we need to apologize to the person(s) and to our Lord and Savior. 

Words can certainly hurt parents when we scream hateful, angry, spoiled words; parents can also hurt children when they declare they are not good enough, they will never amount to anything, they are not smart enough, they are trouble, they act bratty and not well behaved ever, they are always a problem in the parent’s life. . . These disgusting, hurtful words create negative feelings that can last a lifetime and can affect one’s entire outlook on their life.  The scars from words can last a lifetime–leaving one to wonder if they will ever be worth anything to anyone.   They can kill the spirit, the precious soul and person God created.  He loves each of us and He is so grieved when we are hurt and broken.

God wants only honorable, respectful and loving words to come forth.  It is disrespectful to curse and judge, scream and denigrate another.  It is dishonorable and sinful to gossip about others, to talk or wonder about what another is going through without at least praying about the situation.  We are created in God’s image and God loves all.   God created us in His image, but He also gave us the ability to make choices.  To have the gift of choice, we can choose to be loving, kind and gracious with our words, or we can make huge mistakes, to choose to be unkind, harsh, unloving, and negative toward others.

It becomes easy to gossip about another–and in my opinion, women are the WORST at gossiping.  Women, often times out of concern, but still under the umbrella of gossiping, may speak of others and wonder if something is ‘off’ and if they’re going through a difficult time.  That’s spreading supposition and is perhaps adding to a problem.  We should be seeking how we might help, even if just to listen and offer a prayer and hug.  And for sure, add the issue to our prayer list. It is gossiping to spread questions, concerns, theories, or whatever, in the guise of concern sometimes.     

But God wants to see us treat one another with kindness and love–not gossip and conjecture that may cause hurt.  Anger, hurtful words, churlishness all causes damage to others, to your relationship with God–and when they are uttered, you need to confess them.   God wants us to recognize the damage words, and the manner they are spoken in can hurt another, but because of sin, also hurts ourselves.

Impatience, anger, spoiled-behaviors, selfishness,  stress, and so many other reasons may have one striking out with words.  Sometimes, there are feelings of guilt, but oftentimes, we feel we do not have to make a bigger deal of the words our mouths have spewed.  So often the abuser never apologizes, never admits to anger that was uncontrolled and had him/her screeching things they never meant and DO NOT BELIEVE, but the wounds created can last a lifetime.  The damage can magnify.

But once we find Jesus and learn the love of God, His Son and the Holy Spirit, our words need to change.  We need to be made more aware of the damage, the hurt, the deterioration of those around us, and the deterioration of those who speak the words.  Hateful words and thoughts are destructive to ourselves, to others and they are a sin to God Himself.  A Sin.  Jesus came to free of us of sin, but if our mouth continues to speak crap–gossip, cursing, judgmental ideas,  denigrating others, finding fault. speaking in anger, saying hateful thoughts, and words, and holding onto hurtful ideas.   This is a sin that comes out of the same mouth that praises our God who created the world and had designed His Son to come and take the atonement of sin for any who believe in Him.  How can we use the same mouth to worship, and then cursing, uttering anger and hateful words?   We need to be so aware of how hurtful our words can be.  These are sins that hurt Him.

So what comes out of your mouth?  Is it always loving, kind, encouraging and praising others and especially praising God?  Always?

Lord, thank You for blatantly reminding me to not be callous with what comes out of my mouth.  Let it always be praiseworthy to You and to others.  I am so, so sorry for the number of times my mouth has, even in a jesting manner, said something crass, nasty, sinful, hateful or angry.  I am so, so sorry.  Keep the Holy Spirit correcting me if my mouth runs rampant with icky things.  Thank You, my Lord, for reminding me of the ways I sin, and the blessing I have to confess and repent for the many things and times I sin.  Thank You loving and caring for me and ‘mybellaviews.’