Good Monday morning (6-13-11),

The other day as I was walking around in my favorite store, I was standing in the same area with about five or six other men who looked to be in their early twenties. They were talking so loudly that I couldn’t help but overhear everything they were saying, where the best place to get drunk is, how good the beer is there, and just about every other boast that goes on during those kinds of conversations.

You can tell a lot about people just by standing around and listening to what they have to say.

Hearing them talk caused me to briefly reflect on my own late teenage years. Those things I once did and talked about now seem so unfamiliar to me that it was like remembering a movie I once watched, like some past fantasy. Do you know what I mean? Remember when you once said any and everything that came to your mind, no matter how outlandish it might be, no matter how boastful, immoral, and offensive?

As I walked off, I wondered, “What would some psychoanalyst conclude of me now?” Probably that I’m mentally unbalanced and suppressed. What else would they think? Our culture has designed us to express ourselves by saying whatever thought happens to be drifting around in our minds at the moment, except unless it could get our nose punched, then we just express it to someone else later!

When I was saved, my new Christian friends taught me right off that what I said mattered, and therefore I needed to think about what I say before I say it. So early on two particular scriptures became a bridle to my lips, “A fool utters all his mind, but a wise man keeps it in till afterward,” and, “The power of life and death are in the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”

The world does classify Christians who carefully measure their words as bottled-up and repressed. However, all will stand before God in that day, and sinner and Christian alike will give an account of every idle word spoken. Therefore it’s wisdom, not repression, which moves us to think before we speak.

How amazing that so many dismiss Matthew 12:36. I know that some trash-heap this scripture in favor of modern, user friendly doctrines—to their own peril—but it’s my view that Jesus intends on following through with His promise to examine His children’s words in that day. Everyone will be held accountable for every idle and unprofitable word.

Jesus was the wisest of all men, and prudently He limited words to those which edified others. Some Bible translations use this word edify, and it means to, “Enlighten or uplift so as to encourage intellectual or moral improvement.”

When Jesus talked, He used His conversations to uplift and encourage others. He sought to improve their intellect and moral behavior. So should we.

Standing around the water cooler and making fun of our politicians does nothing to improve us intellectually or morally. It does not edify. My idle talk, as funny as it is to joke about those scandalous saps in Washington, tends to eventually corrupt my own mind.

Now did I just edify or tear down with that statement?

Doesn’t it speak to how diminished we are when it seems like every conversation, and every hot topic article, day after day, is fixated on the immoralities of the likes of a certain New York, 9^th district Congressman? We chatter away about such things even as we teeter precariously close to the precipice of civil unrest, global war, and economic disaster!

I wonder what my angels think when they hear me in such idle talk. Of course they’re nearby, and they hear everything. With my chatter, I either authorize or hinder them in their assignments to protect me in all my ways. I get what I say, because when I’m talking I eventually say what I believe. Then I get what I believe. This is Biblically sound doctrine.

“Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Therefore, to stop our faith, the devil does everything he can to power-grab our attention with the world’s glitter, for the purpose of massaging our lips to repeat his idle chatter, those worthless and unprofitable words. Ungodly chatter repeated by foolish lips is a sure recipe for disaster. I’m just pointing out that darkness loves nothing more than to get God’s people to talk like devils that we might receive their reward.

Life or death is in the power of our tongue, and since we are wise, we will learn to control the fallen nature to be like little parrots which mindlessly repeat worldly phrases and sounds just for attention or its little treats of recognition.

Be wise. Number your words, for we will all need God’s wisdom and power in the very near future. You can trust me on this one!

Wayne Witcher

“But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.” James 3:8-12