A Little Bit Of Everything

We’re studying James 3 in our small group this week, so I spent some time looking up verses on the topic of “taming the tongue”. It’s really great to look up verses throughout the Bible on subjects so you get various references to the same topic. I don’t do this often enough. Here are the ones I pulled out for this Chapter.

• “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” (James 1:26)

• If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. ³ Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. ⁴ Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. ⁵ Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.
  See how great a forest a little fire kindles! ⁶ And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. ⁷ For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. ⁸ But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹ With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. ¹⁰ Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. ¹¹ Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? ¹² Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.

• “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov 18:21)

• ““Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. ³⁴ You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.³⁵ A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.³⁶ But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.³⁷ For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:33)

• “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” (Eph 4:29)

• A lot of the Psalms are also written on this topic, so we know this was something David prayed for often- “Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.” (Ps 141:3)

• “Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases!For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.² They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; With flattering lips anda double heart they speak.³ May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,And the tongue that speaks proud things,⁴ Who have said,“With our tongue we will prevail;Our lips are our own;Who is lord over us?” (Ps 12)

My laptop’s been out of commission for a while, and  I totally got out of the habit of updating it. Ohh wells :/  It’s probably a good thing I haven’t been spending as much time on here lately.

corycopeland:

God didn’t put restrictions on who He loved and neither should we. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they believe; we’re all worthy of love

(via tomyfuturespouse)

Isaiah 55:8-9

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

And Romans 8:28

“And we know that all things work together for the good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

There are others… But the past few years these verses have been so important to me.

<3

Excerpt from “Essay Read at a monthly prayer meeting of an auxiliary Female Moral Reform Society,” Advocate of Moral Reform, 1 November 1839, pp. 162-63.

(Reading for my Women’s History paper….. Made me think “Before Joyce Meyer wrote Battlefield of the Mind, the moral reform women in the mid 1800’s were writing about the power of our thoughts.”)

and I chose to study the topic “the role of southern churchwomen in the struggle for civil rights.”

Quote from a document I read tonight, addressing the unwillingness, due to fear, to play a part in the battle against segregation. (1958)- I italicized my favorite parts.

“… Most of the reasons offered for segregation are, upon careful examination, flimsy; we see that the dangers against which it is supposed to protect us are for the most part unreal; we see that some of our attitudes in the matter are simply habits, and others a cloak for selfishness, and still others the result of the confusion of life, which is sacred, with segregation, which is only one of its perishing forms; we see, finally, that these old habits stand in the way of certain positive forces within us struggling for expression, chief among them the spirit of love which Jesus expressed and commanded—and yet—and yet—we are afraid it can’t be done. We think it ought to be; we really don’t want to defend it ourselves; but we’re afraid it can’t be—at least not now.

Perhaps this vague fear exists in the minds of many Christians. If so, we should name it for what it is. For its proper name may shock us into a deeper awareness of ourselves, and in the fantastic world we have created in the South, that would be all to the good.

It is lack of faith. Faithlessness. No more and no less. If we had more faith in God, we should have less fear. If we were filled with faith, we should have none. (No man attains, except at moments, this peak. Yet it is the peak toward which we climb.)

As we believe in love—which is to say, as we have love—we do not have fear. As we are afraid, then, we lack love, and lack faith in a God of love. Our fearfulness is the mark of our faithlessness, and simply means that the essential fire of Christianity burns but flickeringly upon the altar of our hearts.

How may that flame be steadied? By placing it alongside the original, the brightest of all its expressions, the life of Jesus. Contemplating that shining example, we shall find his spirit growing within us and the fears that now cling to our hearts like miasma along Southern ditches in summer dispersing before the beams of the rising sun.

As we have faith, we shall develop the institutions of a more Christian society. It is not easy to give institutional shape to love; it means transforming it into justice. Regardless of this difficulty, the source of our strength—and of our weakness—is clear: out of the heart proceed the issues of life. As our hearts are sensitive both to God’s presence and to human need, as we yield ourselves to his encompassing love, we shall act well, and shall build, in these changing times, a more Christian society.

From “The Southern Heritage,” by James Mc-Bride Dabbs