Check Your Mouth to Reveal Your Heart

"...out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," (Mat 12:24). This chapter goes on to tell us that we will be justified and condemned by our words. Words are powerful tools, which doom a man or bring forth blessing and abundance. Our words don't originate out of the blue. They come from our thoughts. However, our thoughts don't originate from our brains, as conventional wisdom would suggest. Remember, God is not really interested in conventional wisdom. He is only interested in His wisdom and His wisdom says that our thoughts originate from our spirit or our "heart." Therefore, it goes without saying that what is in your heart directs your thought, which direct your words, which direct your actions (a good man produces good actions and an evil man evil), which in turn direct the ultimate outcome of your life. Wow! When you look at it like that it sobers you up a bit doesn't it. It places the responsibility for our lives upon our shoulders. Then we must choose to either go it alone, or give it over to God.

I get a little bent out of shape sometimes when people give God a bad rap for all the trouble that they have in their lives. The Bible is very clear in 1 John 1:5 which states, "...God is light and in Him there is no Darkness at all." In James 1:17 it says, ..."every good and perfect gift comes from above." Therefore, we can conclude that if we have trouble in this world, it has its roots in man not God. I know it is difficult to accept that man is responsible for his own destiny but it is true. God gives us a choice and that choice is to believe that he is good, full of grace and Love and that it is only though his Righteousness that we are made righteous. Or we keep doing all that we think is right and bad mouth and blame God when our efforts - resulting from our thoughts and words- cause us to fail.

I personally read Matt 12:24 and reflected on it. Afterwards, I began to pay close attention the words that I spoke; I examined my heart (my beliefs). I looked at my actions. You know what I realized? My words weren't always very good. As a matter of fact, they were down right evil. I also realized that I was constantly trying to be perfect, to earn Gods approval with my actions. I know its hard for anyone to believe that they could have evil in their heart, but I bet if you started checking your mouth and look at your actions you would begin to see yourself in a whole new light. Not only that, you would begin to see God in a whole new light. This one simple reflection lead me down an unbelievable path of self-discovery and a much needed mouth washing and heart cleansing. I began to see the fear, the unforgiveness, the criticism, the self- righteousness and negativity. Pretty huh? I didn't think so either. When I began to see what I had hidden not so deeply in my heart, I quickly realized that I needed to get my act together, get down on my knees and repent. I needed to accept the grace that God had provided and declare daily, "It is not my righteousness but Christ's alone and I am God's beloved; He loves me with a great passion and I am blessed."

Let's face it; every man or woman born on this earth has an evil heart and a serious case of halitosis. I mean, who doesn't need a good tooth brushing? If it weren't true, we would have never needed Jesus to come and die for our sins in the first place. But hold on, there is good news! God has made a way of escape. You see, when I changed my mind and surrendered to Him, He began to change my heart and my mouth just got cleaner and cleaner. I began to hear the what ifs replaced with I trust you Lords and the I'm afraids to the I believes. Instead of words of criticism I had words of forgiveness and compassion. Despair was replaced with hope. The best part of all is that all I had to do was say those few words each day. Remind myself that God is love and He loves ME - little old me. It's really not much different than when we were kids and we hated to go and brush those teeth. As an adult we wake up in the morning and can't wait to brush so that morning breath can be replaced with minty freshness. It's a matter of maturity. So it should be every morning with our hearts so that our thoughts, words and actions can begin to line up with the truth. And as the good book says my friend, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free! " (John 8:32)