Watch Your Mouth

I’m going to be honest with you, I am not thrilled about writing this blog post right now. This particular subject is something that I have struggled with my whole life. I can’t tell you how many times I have prayed that God would control my tongue or that He would set His Spirit on me to take control of my tongue. I have prayed for Him to use my voice as His instrument. I have prayed that He would bind my tongue over and over again. I have prayed countless times for God to cultivate that gentle and quiet spirit within me that Peter says is so precious to Him. I have prayed all of those things and more for years, but I have yet to master my tongue. 

Something tells me that I am not alone in this struggle. The Bible is full of verses about how we should speak to one another, the kinds of words we should be using (or not using), and how dangerous our tongues can be. Twelve out of the eighteen verses in the third chapter of the book of James are all about how dangerous and uncontrollable the tongue can be. Seriously, if you are looking for a little discouragement today, go read the first twelve verses of James chapter 3. By the end of those verses, you just feel hopeless. 

So what are we to do?

Proverbs 13:3 gives us a little insight as to what we can do to try and gain a little control over our tongues. 

“The one who guards his mouth [thinking before he speaks] protects his life;

The one who opens his lips wide [and chatters without thinking] comes to ruin.” (AMP)

Do you see the secret? 

King Soloman just told us the secret to beginning to control our tongues. 

Pause.

We have to pause before we open our mouths and begin to speak. Taking the time to pause and think about what you are about to say is the first step in combating the evil that your tongue is capable of with the love of God. Pausing is not the only step that we need to take, however, we have to yield as well. 

I saw an acronym the other day that I believe applies here. It was this:

P - Pause

R - Reflect

A - Ask

Y - Yield

I believe that the first and the last step apply not just when we pray, but also when we speak to others. First we must pause, then we must yield. We have to yield to the Holy Spirit’s guidance concerning what we should or shouldn’t say in any situation. Pausing to think about what to say is a great first step, but it is only the first step. Pausing is not the end, and it is really the easier of the two steps that we must take. The yielding is the hard part. 

We live in a world that gets more and more “me” focused every day. We are bombarded with messages telling us that we have to look out for ourselves, protect ourselves, speak up for ourselves, etc. It’s all about you and your needs and what makes you feel good. We are told day in and day out to speak out for ourselves and not to worry about what other people think. While I agree that none of us should be doormats, I also believe that if I can’t speak out about things in a loving way, I need to yield and keep my mouth shut…,and so do you. 

When I was running summer camp, we had a devotion that we did with our kids periodically. We gave each child a tube of travel toothpaste and a small paper plate. We told the kids to squeeze as much of the toothpaste out onto that paper plate as they could. We encouraged them to keep squeezing until they absolutely could not get anymore toothpaste to come out of the tube. When each of them had squeezed everything out that they could get, we told them to put it all back in the tube. They looked at us like we had three heads. We just looked right back at them and told them to put it all back in. Some of them tried to scrape some of the toothpaste back in the tube with no success. Then we told them to try saying, “just kidding” or “I’m sorry” to the toothpaste and see if it would go back in the tube then. Try as they might, no matter what they did or said, there was no way to get the toothpaste to go back in the tube once it had been squeezed out. The same goes for our words, friends.

Once those words leave your lips, there is no getting them back. Once those words leave your lips, there is no erasing the hurt that they caused. You can say that you are sorry all day long, and the other person may honestly forgive you. But the pain is still there. Saying that you are sorry doesn’t take the pain away, no matter how sorry you actually feel. 

The bottom line is this, our tongue has power, more power than we realize. It is one of the most powerful weapons that we have. We can hurt people with it, or we can heal people with it. The one thing we can’t do is control it on our own. We have to give control of our tongue to the Holy Spirit, and we do that by pausing to think before we speak and then yielding to the Holy Spirit’s prompting on how to proceed with our words. Yielding is hard, especially when we feel strongly that we are right, but yielding is the most important step in controlling our tongue. 

The next time you struggle to yield when it comes to your speech, remember you are not alone in this struggle. Everyone around you is fighting the same battle against their own tongue. You are not always going to get it right either. I can promise you that I am going to fail at this at least one more time before I go to bed today. The important thing is that we don’t give up and that we keep fighting this battle. Our speech is a gift from God and therefore must be strengthened and cultivated to be used for His good and glory. It takes work, but what doesn’t in this life? I promise you, practicing controlling your tongue will only make things better for you and for everyone around you.