Today, verse 26 stood out to me "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless." I don't want to jump ahead too much, because Chapter 3 will dig deeper into this. But I wanted to write about it because far too often we can listen to God's Word but fail to do what it says. Do we let what we learn truly change our thoughts and most importantly our actions? Do we seek God's wisdom when we face trials?
I looked up the word "tongue" in my concordance. It's defined as "part of the mouth enabling speech; language; special language given to Christians by the Holy Spirit". There are 27 verses in the Bible that reference this word. Seems interesting that it's given so much attention there, but how often do we think about our own tongue (unless you get a pizza burn, then you think about it all the time for like three whole days)? Here are a couple bits of wisdom about tongues....
"When words are many, sin is not absent,
but he who holds his tongue is wise."
(Proverbs 10:19)
but he who holds his tongue is wise."
(Proverbs 10:19)
"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and truth."
(1 John 3:18)
(1 John 3:18)
God's commandment is that we love each other just as He loved us. (John 13:34) We all need to check our actions...because love is an action, not a warm fuzzy feeling. If the Holy Spirit has given a special language to Christians, then that language is based fully on Love. A Love we can only know if we really KNOW God. So we must check our tongue, because what we say is also an action that will result in a reaction...and as we're told in Romans 3:23 "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,". When reading James 1:26, it is a good kick in the butt that no matter how awesome we think we are...it's all worthless if we fail to control the special language given to us by the Holy Spirit.
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