March, 2016 – The Tongue (Ouch!)

I just finished listening to one of my pastor’s messages and while in Romania, I do this online.  I especially wanted to hear the continuation from his studies on the book of James.   In a two-part message on ‘the tongue’ ( ouch!!)  he said, “Everyone has been destroyed, hurt by someone else’s words” (tongue).

I’ve been ‘destroyed’ (we all have) more than once, but my thoughts went back to a lady who had ‘sliced and diced’ me with a tongue more acerbic than I had heard in a long time.  Though that is shockingly painful, I had learned fairly on in my Christian life that we are ‘to pray for them who despitefully use you’ – Matthew 5.44.   After I settled down, I realized that she was a long-term bitter person, and I actually felt sorry for her.  How could a person go on year after year harboring such hatefulness, and as a professing Christian, not deal with it before God?  Her life could have been – and still could be so very much different.  So, as a spiritual exercise, I prayed for her.

However, I had missed what the whole ‘exercise’ was to be with her (and others).  All of a sudden, everywhere I turned – every Scripture I was studying was bringing to me a ‘new’ concept.  Not really new, we’ve all heard it hundreds of times.  But the Lord was impacting my heart and mind that I was also to BLESS the person who had despitefully used me.  In Luke 6:27,28, Jesus says that ‘we are not only to love and pray for our enemies, but we are also to BLESS those who curse us’.  (Have you ever been cursed?  That’s a difficult one for me to engage myself – in this ‘new’ spiritual exercise!)

Paul says in Romans 12.14 that ‘we are to BLESS those who persecute us’ – and in I Corinthians 4.12, he says that ‘when we are reviled (called names) – we, BLESS’!  Oh my, Paul!  How did you learn that?  More than likely from your part in composing the inspired Word of God – and from Scriptures you had learned . . .    Bottom line, it made me stop and think of my unfaithfulness to my Lord so many times, yet what has He done?  Blessed and blessed and blessed me!  I have started practicing the ‘spiritual exercise’ of BLESS-ing.  It doesn’t always come easy; rarely ever.  But it is a command, and only one that is meant for my (our) good – to know Him more – to be like Him!