This was a sermon on "taming the tongue", unfortunately, today monitoring what we speak isn't our only concern. Our comments (or likes & dislikes) online are also a major concern. We live in a very wonderful, strange, and fragile time... information travels so fast (almost as fast as a small town coffee shop) that one something takes off it's gone and the damage is done.
During this time of Advent, let us focus on our spoken and typed words... let them be ones that encourage rather than destroy or injure.
Be a blessing to someone today!
In Christ,
Roy
(I'm very behind on blogging and the busted up finger hasn't helped. Today I am finally able to use it somewhat for typing... Praise God!)
James 3:1-12 New Revised Standard Version
Taming the Tongue
3 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters,[a] for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature,[b] and is itself set on fire by hell.[c] 7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters,[d] this ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters,[e] yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.
Footnotes:
a) James 3:1 Gk brothers
b) James 3:6 Or wheel of birth
c) James 3:6 Gk Gehenna
d) James 3:10 Gk My brothers
e) James 3:12 Gk my brothers
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