Put My Hand Over My Mouth

Do you ever have days when the practice of sanctified speech would be so much more easily accomplished if you just cut your tongue out? Yeah, me, too.

I have a friend who I don’t see all that often, but we get together for lunch a couple of times a month to catch up with each other. I have found that, much as I love this friend, I do so much better when I remember to pray before I meet her that I will guard my tongue. I have this tendency to gossip or say too much that shouldn’t be said when we get going sometimes. Well, I forgot that I have that particular temptation before we went to lunch today, and I forgot to cover our lunch in prayer and prepare myself to guard my tongue, and once again as I reflect over our conversation I realize that I should have stopped up the river of my speech a little sooner. Again.

When I talked to Drew this afternoon I relayed some of my concern and asked if he thought I’d gone too far with some of the opinions I shared, and he didn’t think it was as bad as I thought. I tend to be pretty hard on myself, but, considering that the standard is holiness, I want to guard my tongue well. So, I confess that some of what I voiced over lunch was better left unsaid. Again. Sometimes I just need to be more careful about choosing my audience, too. That’s the case here. What I said wasn’t untrue or bad necessarily, just probably best not discussed with this particular person as I have learned from prior experience because we are both strongly opinionated and when we get going we sometimes go too far, and I should have just shut my mouth when given the opportunity.

Why is it that I can leave the glories of my Bible study group and within minutes be running at the mouth in a way that I should not at lunch? Grrrr.

James 3:5-12
“Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.”