I’ve decided to go in a certain direction with my entries on this site for a little while. This will be the first of around 6-8 posts, based on a series of personal blog entries I posted in the Spring of 2007 while living in Holland.  I had been putting something into practice in my personal life, and I felt like I finally “got it” and that this is not just something spooky spiritual that charismatic flakes do.  So check back every Monday for each entry in this study.

I want to spend this post doing a cursory Scripture study on the importance of the words we speak. I notice this kind of teaching is not something noncharismatic/evangelicals really teach a lot on other than token messages or devotionals on ‘the power of life and death lies in the tongue’ teaching from Proverbs and of James chapter 3.

Anyway, that being said, let’s hit the ground running…

The Bible says in Matthew 12:34b-37:
 For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

It’s worth noting the correlation that exists between what someone believes and thinks in their heart, and what they choose to speak out. What are you saying? If you read the book of Proverbs for more than 10 minutes, you will notice that many of the comparison and contrast proverbs involve speaking. “The wise man says this, but the fool says that.” Over and over again. But in my recent re-habit of Scripture memorization, I noticed when repeating the words in some of those verses I’d written down on little cards, how many times ‘mouth’ is used interchangeably with ‘heart’, and decided to put much effort into looking into the Scriptures and focus on that subject where I see it when I’m reading the Word. I’ve highlighted texts using a specific colored highlighter, all over the Psalms and wisdom books of the Bible, and New Testament where I find passages on words, speaking, and meditating (which I will get to in next week’s entry of mine). It blows my mind how much there is in the Word of God on this subject, and virtually nobody teaches it, other than messages on how we’re to edify and encourage others with our words. Which I’m not against.  I just believe it doesn’t end there.

“I will praise you, O Lord with all my heart, I will tell of all your wonders.” Psalm 9:1

“Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless, and does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman.“ Psalm 15:1-3

“Therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices.“ Psalm 16:9

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19

“The fool says in his heart there is no God…“ Psalm 53:1

We are told in Psalm 66:1-3a “Shout with joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious! Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!“

The psalmist said “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven.“ Psalm 89:1-2. The writer didn’t say I “will sing in my head”. The psalmist didn’t say “I will think your praises and hope people telepathically figure out I love you.”

No, there was speaking involved.

 “Even in your thought, do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom curse the rich,
 for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter.” (Ecclesiastes 10:20).

Again, we see the writer weaving in and out of thoughts and speaking out loud to demonstrate that it’s necessary to be careful what we are thinking, because we could accidentally say it and suffer consequences.

Not that I’ve never done this myself–of course–but a slightly funny example of seeing someone else blurt out their thoughts of hatred towards someone comes to mind. One time in a class of mine at Bible school, the teacher was praising the good work that someone on staff had done in a certain area, and told us all to say something positive to her, let her know how much we all appreciate her, and to bless her. Then, oddly, someone sitting near me, very loudly added “yeah, with a brick.”  I might add, that the saying ‘bless him/her with a brick” was jokingly understood in our circle as a way of asking the Lord to deal with someone we didn’t like much and drop a brick on their head for us.

It was obvious for a second that this brother had no idea he said that out loud, but the whole class heard it and the professor said “and we’ll just ignore that comment and some of us can check our hearts.” It was awkward as this classmate realized he blurted an inner personal thought out loud to his embarrassment. I’m sure I’ve done the same thing many times, I just thought this example was interesting as a witness to refer to for my point.

Those are just a few verses to scratch the surface for now. If you take a highlighter to the Psalms and just mark in your Bibles the times words and praises are mentioned like the above examples, you will start to have a coloring book in that part of your Bible.

Jesus, full of the Word (being the Word Himself) quoted Scripture when the devil came and tempted Him (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). He also told his disciples the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and that’s what can make a person unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:18-19). It’s for this reason alone that I have no respect for Christians using their mouth to cuss, since many words we use as swear words are based on actions of immorality–and we’re not to speak of what the ungodly do in secret (Ephesians 5:12). I don’t care if something the apostle Paul said here or there was like cussing in his language in his day–most Christians who justify cussing do it for shock value, and usually in an immature way, or are just immature in their use of vocabulary. I know I’m meddling with some people who are and will be reading this, but deal with it–we’re called to be people of excellence in deed and speech. Proverbs 4:23-24 says to “keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.“ And Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear“.

Nuff said about that.

Confession.
The Scriptures say a lot on the topic of confession, but we’re too afraid of delving into it because we’re afraid we’ll get flaky. But I hope to get into examples of how many Christians already do ‘confession’. I’m not talking about standing in your empty garage and confessing you have 5 limousines. I’m not saying I stand in front of a mirror, and put one hand on my head and say “I have a full head of hair“, all the while oblivious to reality. I’m talking about confessing the Word of God over our problems, lives, circumstances.   We’ll get into the Scriptures on that in the weeks to come, since I don’t want to leave it here and have readers go away from this entry and get flaky.

Bible Studies for a Firm Foundation, a book Bob Weiner puts out, has the following to say about confession:

“Very few Christians actually realize the place that confession holds in God’s scheme of things. Unfortunately, whenever the word ‘confession’ is used, many invariably think of confessing sins, weaknesses, and failures. That is the negative side of confession. There is, however, a positive side of confession, which the Bible has more to say about than the negative. Webster’s dictionary defines “confession” not only as a confession of sins, but as a ’statement of one’s beliefs; especially those of the Christian faith.’ That is why true Christianity throughout the centuries has been known as ‘The Great Confession.” Webster’s dictionary also defines ‘confessor’ as a “a Christian who has suffered for his faith.” The apostles and early fathers of the faith were “bold confessors” of the Word of God.” p. 93

Simply put, confession is a statement of your beliefs. So what are you saying with your mouth?

Revelation 12:11 says “And they conquered him [the devil] by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.“

When I worked at Hope Valley Day Camp years ago in the summertime, the leaders made us volunteers memorize passages of Scripture referred to as ’salvation verses’ and ‘assurance verses’, so we would know how to show kids who were wanting to give their lives to Jesus passages that showed them how. I say that as a way of indicating I know many Christians, even in evangelical circles already know what confession is in a sense:

“But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” Romans 10:8-10.

Again, merely believing only does so much. Speaking is directly tied to what you believe. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. In fact, it takes just this one verse in Romans to show the idea that “we don’t need to talk about our faith, but just live it out” is a pile of rubbish. Just looking in the Scriptures shows our faith is of necessity demonstrated by the words of our mouth, our confession.

For those who think it’s not necessary to say anything about the reason for your hope, Jesus said in Matthew 10:32-33: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” Is there any other way to acknowledge Christ before men without words? Of course not. Most communication, in person anyway–I realize I’m tryping on a computer!–but in real life interaction, you can only learn what someone thinks by what they say and talk about, and not by observing them alone.

Statistically speaking, most of you skipped the verses I copied and pasted in this entry, but I strongly encourage you not to do so. Read them carefully even if you think you know this stuff already– it’s foundational. Just because something is basic and elementary doesn’t mean we don’t need to be reminded of it now and again. So I say these things first because I’m going to bounce off of this in a the entries to come, and we will get into more of matters of having faith, confessing the Word, and meditating on the Bible (which means something different than most of us think and have been taught), and in order for the full impact, it will be necessary this stuff is understood first.

Chew on it. Literally.

If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy the episode of our podcast where we discussed these concepts in more depth:

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