Surrendering Our Speech Series

Five weeks ago we began speaking about Surrender. We learned what God wants from us. The first thing, and essentially if you think about it, the only thing He wants from us. Everything else about having a life of faith, leading a holy life and being a follower of Christ, comes from fully surrendering to God. So that is always the goal. Having a life of full surrender.

First, we learned we need to surrender our habits, especially the bad ones. Then we heard about surrendering our thoughts. God knows them anyway, and they can’t be hidden from Him. Then it was our Finances. No matter what type of income we have, it was His first, and we are just being allowed to hold it, so we can use it in a Godly way. And last week we heard that God does expect us to surrender our family to Him. Not because we don’t care about them, but because He has a mission for each of us, and He can take care of our families, much better than we can.

So here we are, week 5. And this week we are going to look at surrendering our speech. We only have two points this week about surrendering our speech. First, the bad stuff. And second, the good stuff.

You may be wondering what “the bad stuff” is. Well, the easy thing to remember is the bad language. A good rule to remember is, if it would be offensive to your mother, or grandmother, you should probably not be saying it. I find an easier thing to do, is just to pretend that Jesus Christ is standing next to you. At school, at work, in your kitchen, There he is, right next to you. On your couch, watching TV, sitting in your car while you drive, there He is, right next to you. Of course the easy part about pretending He is next to you, is that He is really next to you. You might not be able to see Him, but there are times you can hear Him, and feel Him.

Of course we need to realize that if we hang out with those people that continue to use that bad language, we will, because it is our nature, begin to copy them. We do this so we can fit in, so they accept us.

Let me show you how much it is noticed if we do not fit in. About 10 years ago, just after I was led to Christ, I was helping two men move a pool table out of our Youth Center. It was a typical pool table, green felt, very big and very heavy. We had to move it around and lay it on its side just to get it through the door. Well as we were going through the door, I was on the back end, and the other two guys pulled as I pushed. My fingers got pinched between the pool table and the door frame. My face got read, I jerked my hand back and dropped the pool table. After a minute went by, I picked up my end again, and we finished loading the table on the truck. The three of us each grabbed a cold soda and set down on the porch. Of the two men, one was the truck driver and the other was a volunteer. The volunteer looked over at me and asked me, why I didn’t swear, curse and scream when my hand got pinched. I told him I just didn’t talk like that any more. He couldn’t understand. He said, if it was him, he would have called me names, swore, and used all kinds of bad language. So I asked him why he would do that. He didn’t know, other than that is what he saw other people do. He realized it wouldn’t have made the pain go away, just that it was his habit, when he got hurt like that to yell bad words. By the end of our conversation, he realized that he spoke that way by choice, maybe even by habit, but not because he had to. Of course if we think about it, we never have to. If we don’t get in the habit of saying those words, we don’t feel we have to in intense situations.

Now that I have said that, I can tell you, that I still know those bad words. I have on a rare occasion spoken those bad words. It doesn’t make it right, it only means that I learned those words, and I shouldn’t have. So, if I would have known better back then, I wouldn’t have learned them, or used them. Each of those words in my head, drives a wedge between myself and God. Every time a person uses language like that it does the same thing. Let me show you. Our scripture verse today says, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’” (Matt 15:18 NIV) or what about the Old Testament verses like Proverbs 10:31, ““The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but a perverse tongue will be cut out.”