What is the relationship between what we think and what we say? The Bible speaks of our tongue being a fire in James 3:6. It says that our tongue can be a “world of iniquity”, and it can “set on fire the course of our lives”, and finally our tongue can be “set on fire by hell” if we do not tame it somehow. Basically this is saying that our tongue can ruin our lives and the lives of others while we are here on this earth and it can cause us to be lost for eternity.

But where do our words come from? Nothing can come out of our mouths unless we first think about it, and then let it take up residency in our minds. Now this can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what we allow our minds to dwell on. Can we control what pops into our minds all the time? No, we can’t. Sometimes we think things that we should not think. Maybe someone hurt us and we get bitter towards that person. Maybe we watch something on TV or in a movie that we should not watch and it causes us to have impure thoughts. Some of these images are sometimes very hard to get out of our heads. This can even lead to an addiction. Maybe we get jealous of another person’s success and this causes us to think negatively about that person simply because they have something that we don’t. And……..by the way, these negative and destructive thoughts can be about ourselves for various reasons…… negative words people say to us, negative or even traumatic things from our past, or things we have done in our past that we can’t seem to forgive ourselves for. Personally, being negative towards myself has been a major problem for me. It became a habit for me at a young age. It was a very hard habit to break and I have to keep myself in check at all times or I’ll slip back into that negative self-talk again. It could be a number of things that cause us to get negative or destructive thoughts in our mind. We are only human. However, we can’t allow those thoughts to dwell in us and become a permanent part of our thoughts. When we allow those types of thoughts to set up camp in our minds, they turn us into someone that God does not want us to be. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”. So how does all this relate to our tongue?  Is it a safe assumption that if we let thoughts such as jealousy, hatred, envy, filth, and such like, make a home in our minds, that they are likely to eventually come out of our mouths at some point? Of course they are! The only way to control our tongues is to first take control of our thoughts. 

So James 3:6 has established that our tongue can cause us to be lost. How about our thoughts? I mean if I don’t let it come out of my mouth, I should be fine, right? Can our thoughts cause us to be lost? Absolutely! God sees our thoughts whether we speak those thoughts or not. Proverbs 21:2 says “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts”. The word heart here actually means mind. And Psalm 139:2 says that God “understands my thought afar off”. We can’t hide our thoughts from God. And one more, Psalm 94:11, “The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile”, meaning that compared to the thoughts of God, our thoughts are useless. Remember Genesis 6:5, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” We know what happened to the people during Noah’s day because of, not only their wicked ways, but their wicked thoughts as well. It was so bad that God decided to basically start over, with Noah and his family being the new beginning of mankind after the flood. Let’s also remember that Jesus spoke about people in Matthew 15:8 who “draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.” He said many times in the New Testament that he knew people’s thoughts. (Luke 9:47, Matthew 22:18) Since Jesus was God in the flesh, it makes sense that he could know people’s thoughts. We have examples from the Old and New Testaments of God the Father and God the Son knowing people’s thoughts.

So can we as humans control our thoughts and tame our tongue? James 3:8 says that no man can tame the tongue and that it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. The things we say can be poison to other people around us. Our tongue can cause others to be lost along with us. So is it hopeless? I mean, the inspired writer, James, just said that no man can tame it. The key phrase we need to focus on here is that he says “no man” can tame the tongue. If we are truly in Christ, then we have the mind of Christ, according to 1 Corinthians 2:16. Therefore Christ controls our thoughts and our tongue if we let Him. We cannot do it without Him. Will we still fail sometimes? Yes we will! Like I have said before, negative thoughts pop into our minds. Our brains work so fast that we can’t control incoming thoughts. This is just something that happens sometimes before we can stop it. The fact is, we have to live IN this world, and because of this fact, sometimes by no fault of our own, we are exposed to things that cause us to think negative, destructive, or even impure thoughts. And sadly, we sometimes make the mistake of allowing ourselves to be exposed to these things by choice. But as Christians, we are not OF the world. (John 15:19) We are OF Christ and His kingdom/His church. And because of this, Satan works very hard to make sure we struggle with our thoughts and words. He wants to put temptations in front of us so that he can take over our minds through negativity and impurity. This is an area where he knows he can get to us if we are not diligent to take care of our minds. So how do we take care of our minds? Well first we have to be in Christ to truly be able to get our minds right. If we are in Christ, we can train ourselves to immediately replace that negative thought that Satan wants us to hold on to, with a truth from God’s word. We can capture that thought before it makes a home in our mind. I present to you 1 Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” This verse gives me such hope and encouragement because it tells me that through Christ, I can capture every thought that shouldn’t be there, if I’ll just recognize those unhealthy thoughts. Notice, it doesn’t say that we shouldn’t ever have these thoughts because we will have them. It is impossible not to have them because we are human. However, it says we can capture them and replace them with God’s word. When we do this, we bring our thoughts in submission to the “obedience of Christ”. Then, those thoughts never have a chance to come out of our mouths and hurt others or bring shame on the Lord’s church.

Ok, so how do we replace these thoughts that come across our minds so that we can, in turn, control our tongues? Well first, we MUST have our daily spiritual food if we are truly going to battle against Satan and these potentially destructive thoughts. We have to get in God’s word each day. We need several “go to” verses either in our minds or on our person for when these thoughts/battles come. I actually have a spiral book of index cards in my purse with my “go to” verses in it. It helps me to have them readily available. If you would rather have them on your phone, you could make a google doc or put them in the notepad app. How do we find these “go to” verses? A very common verse that most of us raised in Sunday school memorized as children is 2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” We need to know the Bible to battle Satan for control of our thoughts and words. We have to make time to listen to God through reading and studying His word, even if we only have a few minutes some days. Some of us spend lots of time on our phones and watching Netflix. I know I do. Could we all discipline ourselves to cut back on those things for time with God? I’m not at all saying that it is wrong to enjoy these forms of entertainment as long as we are making time for God each day, and as long as our form of entertainment doesn’t allow Satan to take control of our thoughts. Because that is exactly what he wants……..control of our minds and our mouths. When Satan can get in a member of the Lord’s church’s mind and get him to influence other members in a negative way, can you imagine what a victory that is for him? Satan already has the world in the palm of his hand with no work at all. He is concentrating on getting a hold on us in subtle ways that we don’t realize, through our thoughts. Let’s never forget, one minute Satan is a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour (1 Peter 5:8) and the next minute he can make himself look like an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). 

Am I guilty of negativity? I am so guilty. It breaks my heart to think about all the ways I’ve been a negative influence in my past to friends outside of Christ and even to my family, including my husband and children. Satan had a hold of my thoughts for a time. But I’m working on keeping those thoughts out of my mind and focusing on my future in Christ. No more beating myself up. I can’t change the past but I can decide how I will behave in the future.  God has forgiven me, so it’s time to forgive myself. We will all have slip ups. I had one this past week. I let something negative come out of my mouth. I felt it immediately………the guilt and the feeling of failure. I have been in God’s word so much lately that I immediately knew I had messed up and let a negative thought come out of my mouth. You see, if we aren’t in God’s word enough, we won’t recognize our negative thoughts and words as clearly and quickly and we may not even realize that we need to make it right. I immediately went back to the two people I was with when I said it and apologized, then came home and renewed my mind with God’s word, and prayed and asked Him to forgive me and help me to do better in the future. I love Romans 12:2 because it says we can transform and renew our mind, “And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” I could not let those negative thoughts I was having continue to take up residency in my mind. I had to capture those thoughts and replace them with truth from God’s word.  Oh and I’ll mess up again. We all will. We wouldn’t need a Savior if we were perfect. Thank goodness for Jesus’ love for us. It’s how we handle our “mess ups” that matters. Do we let them build up in our minds and make us feel defeated? No! We have God’s word to renew us and Christ’s blood that cleanses us daily. We have His cleansing blood as long as we have completed God’s plan for salvation and been baptized for the remission of our sins and are living faithful to Him. (Acts 2:38, Revelation 2:10) Romans 8:37 lets us know who we are through Jesus, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” We are “MORE than conquerors” friends! We can conquer those negative thoughts and, in turn, conquer our tongue through Jesus Christ our Savior. When God’s word says we are more than conquerors if we are in Jesus Christ, then there is no reason to feel defeated when we make a mistake. We just renew our minds with God’s word, pray to Him for forgiveness and resolve to try and not make that mistake again.

In closing, our ultimate goal as Christians is to do our best to help God’s kingdom here on earth, the Church, to grow so that more and more people can feel the “peace that surpasses all understanding” that will “keep (guard) our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. (Philippians 4:6) Christ will keep/guard our minds if we allow him to. What a comforting THOUGHT!! Every sin starts with our thoughts. Everything that comes out of our mouths begins in our minds. Thoughts can lead to words and words can then lead to positive outcomes or negative outcomes. Will we allow Christ to control our thoughts or will we allow Satan to control them? Will we train our brains through studying God’s word so we can capture those negative/destructive thoughts and replace them with God’s truth, before they take up residency in our minds and then come out of our mouths? To everyone who reads this, I believe in you! You can do this! Positivity in life is so much more satisfying and joyful than negativity! And the world needs to see us, members of Christ’s church, being positive in our words and actions as much as possible. We want them to want what we have. Friends, I leave you with this verse to ponder and dwell on, Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things.” Capture the bad and throw it out! Meditate on the good! If we follow Philippians 4:8 in our thinking, then those are the types of words that will roll off of our tongue, and that will be a victory for God, Christ, His church and for us. 

Thank you for your support of my blog!! Hope everyone has a wonderful Lord’s day tomorrow and a blessed week ahead!!

Friends, here is God’s plan of salvation for anyone who needs to hear it:

• We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 
• Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 
• Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 
• Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 
• Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)
• Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)