Trusting God Out Loud
“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.”
Think with me about a specific moment in your life. A time you remember saying something truly horrible to another person out of anger, jealousy, a desire for revenge, or just simple unthinking thoughtlessness. I want it to be a time when you were a little horrified at realizing your words had been really hurtful. You could tell by the look on the person’s face that you had hit a nerve. You left a mark. You hurt him or her in a startling way.
Do you remember feeling guilty, a little sick that you could say such a thing, frustrated with yourself for unleashing like that? I’m thinking of a few of those moments myself. It has happened to all of us. In the paragraph before this passage, James defined perfection as being able to control the words that come out of our mouths at all times. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a long way to go before I have to worry about perfection.
But he doesn’t let us get away with saying, “Oh, everybody does it.” Instead, he identifies the real problem behind our hurtful words: we don’t believe God enough. That’s right. James said our mean mouths have to do with a lack of faith in our good God.
With the same tongue, he said, we praise God and curse (or yell at or insult or burn) people made in God’s image. We believe in (and worship) God as God, but we’re not sure He knows what He’s talking about when He tells us to be kind, to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to turn away another person’s hot rage with soft words. We believe in God, sure, but our words prove we don’t believe in everything about Him.
There’s a psychological term called “cognitive dissonance.” It describes, in part, the uncomfortable feeling we get when we realize that the facts don’t match up with what we say we believe. James wants us to feel that kind of emotional discomfort when we use our words to hurt others. He wants a bell to go off in our heads: “Hey, that doesn’t fit with praising the God who made the person I just blasted.”
James wants us to be as bothered by that contradiction in our supposed faith in the Creator as we would be if we saw oranges on an apple tree or pepper coming out of the salt shaker. (Okay, those aren’t the illustrations he used; his are better.) It should cause us to yell in our own minds, “That ain’t right!”
Let’s ask God for help with this. Let’s ask Him to a) sound the alarm in our head every time our words contradict what we say we believe about God; b) to give us the faith in Him not to use our tongues to hurt other people; and c) to notice some progress in how we use our words.
You might not be perfect tomorrow, but you can learn to trust God more. We all can. And that WILL change how we live.
--James 3:9-12
Think with me about a specific moment in your life. A time you remember saying something truly horrible to another person out of anger, jealousy, a desire for revenge, or just simple unthinking thoughtlessness. I want it to be a time when you were a little horrified at realizing your words had been really hurtful. You could tell by the look on the person’s face that you had hit a nerve. You left a mark. You hurt him or her in a startling way.
Do you remember feeling guilty, a little sick that you could say such a thing, frustrated with yourself for unleashing like that? I’m thinking of a few of those moments myself. It has happened to all of us. In the paragraph before this passage, James defined perfection as being able to control the words that come out of our mouths at all times. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a long way to go before I have to worry about perfection.
But he doesn’t let us get away with saying, “Oh, everybody does it.” Instead, he identifies the real problem behind our hurtful words: we don’t believe God enough. That’s right. James said our mean mouths have to do with a lack of faith in our good God.
With the same tongue, he said, we praise God and curse (or yell at or insult or burn) people made in God’s image. We believe in (and worship) God as God, but we’re not sure He knows what He’s talking about when He tells us to be kind, to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to turn away another person’s hot rage with soft words. We believe in God, sure, but our words prove we don’t believe in everything about Him.
There’s a psychological term called “cognitive dissonance.” It describes, in part, the uncomfortable feeling we get when we realize that the facts don’t match up with what we say we believe. James wants us to feel that kind of emotional discomfort when we use our words to hurt others. He wants a bell to go off in our heads: “Hey, that doesn’t fit with praising the God who made the person I just blasted.”
James wants us to be as bothered by that contradiction in our supposed faith in the Creator as we would be if we saw oranges on an apple tree or pepper coming out of the salt shaker. (Okay, those aren’t the illustrations he used; his are better.) It should cause us to yell in our own minds, “That ain’t right!”
Let’s ask God for help with this. Let’s ask Him to a) sound the alarm in our head every time our words contradict what we say we believe about God; b) to give us the faith in Him not to use our tongues to hurt other people; and c) to notice some progress in how we use our words.
You might not be perfect tomorrow, but you can learn to trust God more. We all can. And that WILL change how we live.
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