Luke 6:45 “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
In Colossians 4:6 we are given the command from the mouth of God that our speech should ALWAYS be gracious. Ephesians 4:29 rephrases this by telling us that the words that come from our mouth should always “benefit those who listen.” So an obvious question that might come to us as we hear these words, is “How in the world does one do this?” It’s one of those things that, though we might want to do it, we find so hard to put into practice. James, who has a wonderful way of cutting to the chase in his letter, puts it this way: “All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:7-8). I’ve found this to be very true in my own life. Has it also proved true in yours? So, what do we do about it? How does one tame his or her own tongue?
Well, for starters, notice that James (actually, the Holy Spirit through James) has told us that “NO HUMAN BEING can tame the tongue!” In other words, if you think you can do this in your own strength, you’ll be the first human being in the history of the world to do so. No, the taming of the tongue is a God thing. It takes His supernatural strength. But that doesn’t mean we should simply sit around and wait for Him to somehow zap us. Rather, as with every other thing God has commanded us in His Word, He’s not only told us what we should do, He’s also given us the means whereby we can actually do it. He’s given us the means to have His very power to be realized in and through our lives.
One example of this is given to us in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In this powerful sermon, Jesus laid out His will for us, but in so doing He raised the bar far above anyone’s ability to carry out that will in his or her own strength. So, He calls those who really desire to live as He’s said to “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). In other words, He’s telling us to go to Him for help. If we truly “hunger and thirst for righteousness” which Jesus talked about at the very beginning of His sermon and then elaborated on what that looks like in the rest of what He said, then we must ask Him. We must pray for His power to be given to us – and, wonderfully, He has promised to answer such a prayer if we really mean what we have said.
But another critical component of the control of our untamed tongue is to address the source of our tongue’s problems. In fact, it’s the source of all our problems. Namely, it’s the sin that resides in our hearts. Jesus addressed this as He spoke to the Pharisees, who thought it was their religious rituals – like what foods they ate – that made them right with God. In the words recorded for us in Mark 7 He said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’ . . . Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled? (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’”
Do you hear that? The problems in our life, our failures to obey the commandments of God with the members of our body such as our tongue, reflect a “heart” problem, rather than a “tongue “problem.” And so God would have us to know that if we want our tongues to be fixed, we first need a fix of our hearts. In Romans 12 God puts it this way: “Do not be conformed to this world (e.g., IN THE WAY YOU SPEAK) but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” When He refers to the “mind” here, He is referring to the very same thing that He is talking about when He mentions the heart. It’s the internal part of us that motivates and controls everything else we say and do.
It’s along these same lines that David prayed the following words in Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” And it’s in the words leading up to this prayer in this same psalm that speak to how the “meditations of the heart” are made acceptable. It all speaks to how the Word of God should fill our mind and heart, for, as Jesus said, “out of the abundance of the heart (our) mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).
So, let’s listen to what the precursors to Psalm 19:14 say:
“The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true;
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.”
May God give us a longing to have our hearts transformed by Him. May it be one of the main things that we pray about, and may His Word be the focus of our hearts and minds. You see, it is this and this alone that is the remedy to our tongue problems. We need a transformed heart for it is such a heart that will transform the words that give voice to what is stored within it.
To Encourage You 
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