January 30, 2018

Be Careful With Your Tongue

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. – Proverbs 18:21

She was in tears. My sweet friend was crushed by the words another person had flung at her. It didn’t matter that the accusations were lies. It didn’t matter that she walked away rather than escalate a ridiculous and hurtful situation. It was days past and she was hurt to the core.

Words have a way of doing that. They are flung out in anger without a thought to the damage they cause. Those words can never be retrieved. They can never be forgotten.

Oh, I know. We forgive. We do that more for ourselves than for the other person. We forgive so we can move on without the baggage of yesterday. But the scars remain. They change the very foundation of who we are. If we let them.

We reminded my dear friend that she is lovely and kind. We told her again that she is a child of the King. She is treasured and loved. We hugged her and prayed over her. We – this group of friends who cherish her – sought to replace the hurtful words with truth.

I don’t know what caused the family rift. Neither does my friend. She’s tried repeatedly to heal it but some people just need to feed their ugliness with lies. They strike out at someone else, blaming others for a mess they caused. But lies don’t ever become truth, no matter how many times they are repeated.

Our pastor talked about what a sore loser Satan is. The demon constantly seeks to attack us at our core. He wants you to believe lies, to believe that God has abandoned you, to believe that maybe it really is all your fault.

Take a deep breath. Pull out your Bible.  Get down on your knees. Surround yourself with people who love you and love Jesus too. Fill your heart with truth.

We can allow the tongue, the words, of others to destroy us. Or we can allow the tongues of others to build us up.

The reverse is true as well. How often do you measure your words before they are spoken? How often do you hold your tongue rather than lash out in anger? How often do you choose to take your complaints to God first, before you’ve hashed it all out with others?

We are just so casual with our opinions. We are so quick to judge. We expect to say whatever we want without consequences. But there are consequences. Some words forever damage or destroy relationships we may one day wish we’d kept.

I don’t know what the future holds for my friend. This spiteful person is someone she has to deal with for now. She is strong. She is amazing. I know that she will continue to hold her own tongue and trust God to sort it all.

He does that, you know. God works all situations to our good and His glory if we’ll just trust Him to handle it.