Do you remember
the beer ad when the person is asleep and his tongue climbs out of his mouth
crawls across the street in search of Toohey’s extra dry beer? The tongue grabs
a bottle and brings it back to the person who is sleeping. It sounds weird hey,
but there could be something even more unusual. That is, a Spirit empowered
tongue. Now you might be thinking, “NO WAY! I have been around long enough to
know that the tongues that I have heard flapping (even those of Christ-followers)
don’t always appear to be Spirit empowered.”
Is it possible for there to be such a thing as a
Spirit empowered tongue? Well, if we are Christ-followers then we have the Holy
Spirit living within us, as we are part of His holy temple. That means He can
even have control of our tongue. A good place to start is to realise that the
tongue speaks what is in the heart. Jesus said,
“A good person produces good things from the treasury
of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of
an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart” (Lk 6:45
NLT).
The next thing we can do is be proactive in
continually asking the Holy Spirit to be in control of our heart and tongue. On
this matter it has been suggested that there are,
“4 Ways to Keep
Your Mouth in Check
What do your
words say about your heart?
1. Don’t gossip about people. Instead, restore broken
relationships.
2. Don’t tear people down. Instead, build them up in the
Lord.
3. Don’t lie or exaggerate. Instead, be a stickler for
truth.
4. Don’t promote yourself. Instead, rest in the fact that
you’re a child of God.”[1]
James in his letter has said that
“Indeed, we all
make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be
perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way” (Jas 3:2 NLT).
But we know that this
is impossible. Therefore, the secret of a controlled tongue is not
self-control, but Holy Spirit control.
[1] “4 Ways to Keep Your Mouth in Check.” https://vitalmagazine.com/life/4-ways-to-keep-your-mouth-in-check
(5th September 2016).
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