Same Message, Different Singer

And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. James 3:6
My brother underwent triple bypass surgery on Monday. The surgery lasted two hours longer than they thought it would because it was not as easy as the doctor had thought it would be. My brother had a lot of inflammation in his heart and they found out he had coronary artery disease, which he probably inherited from my grandfather Gene Bembry. They also thought he would have to go back into surgery later that day, which, thank the Lord, he didn’t.
While speaking with Danny on Tuesday, he told me and my father a lot of things that had hurt him over the years. He told us about some of his classmates hurting him, he talked about things others had said to him over the years that hurt him and he told us about how we had hurt him with words that had gone straight to his heart. He had not been hurt physically. Words had hurt him.
So many times we say things that we don’t really mean to people that we really love. We shouldn’t say things like that to him. We work all day and then go home and grouch at our families. We shouldn’t be grumps at home or at work. We need to learn to control our tongues.
Ernie Dawson, lead singer for the gospel group Heirline, wrote the following words:
Words all their power is real,
They can hurt or they can heal,
Can’t be touched but you can feel,
Words,
there is strength in every one
And when all is said and done
Wars are lost and battles won
With words.
Ernie had been hurt with words as a child. The message in his song and in what Danny told me on Tuesday is the same. We should not use our words as a hammer to hurt others. We should use them to heal and to lift others up.
Job 34:3 tells us: “For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.” If the meat is no good, it makes us sick just as words, which are no good, will also make us sick.
I know that I will have a hard time not using my words as a weapon but I am going to try and bridle my tongue and use it only to uplift others, especially my family and my friends, the people who are most important to me and I am going to try and not hurt anyone else with my tongue. I encourage others to do the same.

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