James 3:9-12 Sometimes it (our mouth) praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right! Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? Does a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty spring.
My Thoughts
This was not in my daily Bible reading today... I was researching a few verses to go along with what I was going to write about and ran across this. It was just so clear in my head. We can't praise God and curse people... Jesus says it right here that a fruit tree can not produce two kinds of fruit. Yet we go about doing this all the time like our praises of God are what is important... it is all important... if we want all of God's goodness we have to go around all the time being good. We can't be both. It is like we speak good words about God and get a +2 then we speak bad words about a friend and get a -2...that equals 0. So what if we talk good about God... +2 and praise God +2 more.. then we talk about our spouse -2 and our kids -2 and then our co-worker -2 ... well that is a total of -2. You just can't get it to add up to a positive. This verse made me so aware of how I go about adding negatives to my life... while I have tried to do positive things... to move forward I need to treat people the way I would treat Jesus if he was here in the flesh walking beside me and I knew it was Him. I need to search out the good in people. I need to only speak the good about people. I need to make sure not to dwell on the bad thoughts the devil plants in my head and make sure that what comes from my mouth is what I want to been seen in my heart. Psalms 19:14 says May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. The devil can get in our mind...he loves to plant himself there. But what comes from our mouth.. the thoughts we choose to dwell on those are the things that matter. Since God made us in his image and he wants us to sing praises of Him... wouldn't he want us to sing praises of the people around us!! Just think how we could chase the devil away if every time he planted a negative thought about someone in our head we blessed them out loud. If we had that thought that our boss was unfair and so instead of spreading that thought around the office we said out loud "God please bless my boss!" What if our friend hurt our feelings by saying we didn't look good in our new dress and when the devil put the thought in our head "You don't look so hot yourself today." you showered your friend with compliments. Not only would we end up with plusses in our lives the devil would quit trying to get in our head. Imagine how the devil would leave our thoughts alone if everytime he planted a bad thought in our head it made the good from our heart shine. I want positive numbers in my life, don't you?
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