Eating Crow is never fun! If we never opened our mouth or spoke, we would not have to eat our words. Words have the power of life or death. Pro. 18: 21 They can bless or curse. They can encourage or bring despair.
William Boetcker was a Presbyterian minister in the early 20th century. He once spoke on the seven “Mischievous Misses” of the tongue. They were misinformation, misquotation, misrepresentation, misinterpretation, misconstruction, misconception and misunderstanding. I think he pretty well covered for all of us the areas responsible for our tongue troubles!
James, the half-brother of Jesus in the New Testament called the tongue a “fire, a world of iniquity”. He compares it to the bit of a horse and a rudder of a ship. Both of these control and influence direction. We are to keep a tight rein on our tongue. Bridled speech manifests maturity. Impulsive speech manifests the opposite. We all stumble in our speech at times. We may say something unintended or maybe we meant to say it, but it created trouble and we want to take it back.
Just like the bit and rudder control the horse and ship, our speech needs to be under control. “How can you, being evil, speak good things. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man (woman) out of the good treasure of his(her) heart brings forth good things, and an evil man(woman) out of the evil treasures brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every IDLE word we speak, we will give account of it in the day of judgement. For by our words we will be justified and by our words we will be condemned.” Jas. 3:34-37
The point is we cannot “just share what is on our heart, as long as, what we say is what we really believe.” “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”. Jer. 17: 9 Our intent should be to speak as we are led by a gracious God who has our best interest at heart and has the success of the person we are attempting to help in focus. Advice is cheap, but if not regulated and controlled by His Spirit, we can be assured of having to “eat crow”. We are admonished to ‘let no corrupt word proceed out of our mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it might impart grace to the hearer. Eph. 4: 29
We can control Shamu, the whale at Sea World, but fail to take control of our own tongue!
We can either nurture blessing with our tongue
or cause damage that cannot be undone.
Which will it be this week?
~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America. Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California. My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights.
