1.18.13

Matthew 12:36-37 And I tell you this, you must give an account on judgement day for every idle word you speak.  The words you say with either acquit you or condemn you."

 

My Thoughts

Whew, oh my!  I took a course in college and one of the chapters was on the importance of Water-cooler talk.  It talked about how the idle talk at the water-cooler mattered, it was the managements way of sending out information.  I imagine that it works more like that secret the teacher tells the first person on a row...and when it gets to the last person on the last row not even one of the words are the same.  Psychology has convinced us that we need to talk about our feelings no matter what they are.  In our world we take this to a new level by talking about somebody else's feelings too... to other people. What Psychology doesn't teach us that the Bible does and that we need to rebuke those thoughts that lead to bad feelings, that lead to idle talk. 

 

Here it says that we will have to give an account for every idle word we speak.  I can't even imagine how long the list is, of the idle words I have spoken. I bet that at least 80% of the words we speak are idle words.   I can imagine that maybe more than half of our idle words are negative words.  We complain if it is too hot or too cold.. if there is no rain or if there is too much rain.  We complain about sports teams and traffic.  We complain about our meals when we eat out.  We complain about how much things cost... we complain about our government.. we complain about waking up and how bad we slept.

 

If you stop and really think about it...  idle words are mostly negative words. What if we started being more thankful...filling our mouths with praise about kind people, about the fact that we have transportation... what if we were thankful for rain...then for sunshine... what if in the winter we sent up thanks for heathers and warm fires instead of complaining about the cold?  Those words would not be idle...they would be of praise and thanks.

 

What if we tried this for one day? Then for one week? I bet we would see such a difference in our lives that we would not want to go back.  I bet it would change our lives and the lives of the people around if we eliminated idle talk. And we would have so much less to account for on judgement day.

 

Will you watch your words today? I will!  I am putting this verse on my fridge. I don't want to forget!