Hold Your Tongue

[bluidkiti]

Hold Your Tongue

Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good; seek, inquire for, and crave peace and pursue (go after) it!
—Psalm 34:13–14

You really have the gift of gab,” one man told me many years ago, when I first started in the ministry. He had pointed out something that I already knew: God had given me “a ready tongue,” that is, I speak easily. Words are my tools. The Lord first gave me that gift, and then He called me into the ministry to use that ability to work for Him.

I have no trouble talking. That’s my gift; that’s also been my greatest problem. Because I seem to always have something to say, I have struggled many, many years over the right use of my tongue.

It has not been an easy battle.

Over the years, I heard various people saying things like, “Hold your tongue.” “Do you have to speak every word that comes to your mind?” “Do you always speak first and think later?” “Must you sound so harsh?” Had I truly listened to what people were saying, I might have realized that God was trying to tell me something. But I ignored their comments and continued in my own stubborn ways.

I know I have wounded people with my words in the past, and I am sorry for that. I’m also grateful that God has forgiven me.

Several years ago, I realized that if God was going to use my life, I had to gain control of my tongue—not to just stop talking, but to keep my tongue from evil, and my lips from speaking deceit, as the psalmist David says.

I had a choice. I could hurt people with my words—and I could do that well—or I could bring my lips into subjection to God. Obviously, I wanted to be subject to the Lord, but it was still a battle.

Our words are expressions of our hearts—of what’s going on inside us. If we want to know who a person really is, all we need to do is listen to their words. If we listen long enough, we learn a lot about them.

As I learned to listen to my own words, I also began to learn a lot about myself. Some of the things I learned did not please me, but they did help me realize that I had a character flaw that needed to be addressed. My words were not pleasing God, and I wanted them to. Once I confessed my failure to God, the victory came—not all at once and not perfectly, but God is patient with me. I’m growing, and part of my growth is keeping my lips from evil.

No matter how negative you are or have been, or how long you’ve been that way, God wants to change you. In the early days after my confession to God, I still failed more often than I succeeded, but every time I did succeed, I knew I was closer to God’s plan for my life. God can do the same for you.

It won’t be easy, but you can win. And the effort will be worth it.

Lord, help me use my mouth for right things. Put a watch over my mouth lest I sin against You with my tongue. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You. I ask it in Jesus’ wonderful name. Amen.

From the book Battlefield of the Mind Devotional by Joyce Meyer.

[BW1]

Fantastic reminder!!! Thank you

One of the most important lessons I've learned recently is I do not have to have a verbal opinion on everything & every conversation. I can allow others to share and chat.

I found listening is in fact very enjoyable and I learn a great deal about those closest & dearest to me and as it was said, even about myself, by just listening.

[MajestyJo]

That is good and I do too, that is why I don't respond to the readings and don't often respond to the spiritual meditations. I respond to what speaks to me. This is where I get the food for my recovery. You are fortunate to have a car and able to get to meetings and I am not able to.

It is my opinion that recovery is about sharing and caring, with another alcoholic and addict, and I would hate to think that someone would pick up and go back out because I didn't open my mouth. But then I wouldn't like someone to leave the site because they think I have a big mouth.

There would be no reason to come to this site if I could not share. That is why I come. I don't come here to read, I have my own recovery books, some of which I post here.

Just copying and pasting is not sharing. If I don't read and share, it makes a big difference in my life if I don't.

As a long time friend use to say, he totally annoyed me, "Take the cotton batten out of your ears and put it in your mouth." I later found out that he was going to the wash room and taking a few swigs out of a mickey during cigarette break. Ironically, it was many years later, he was clean and sober, and I was going through a rough patch, he said those words, and I need to hear them.

If I couldn't share here, I would stop coming to the site. There would be no reason to come here. Not just to share myself, but to read the sharing of others. We have a disease of perception. What we get out of a reading and what someone else gets out of it could be completely different. It doesn't mean someone is wrong, it just means that there is a wider view and perspective on the topic than we knew and we need to keep an open mind.

[bluidkiti]

I just said to my mom yesterday that you can learn alot sometimes just by listening and she said yep.

[MajestyJo]

That is true, that is how I learned. I was very introverted when I came into recovery, if I spoke, no one could hear me. When I first started to share my story, people had to come up to the front of the room to hear. Even in today, my voice is quite soft and difficult to hear and over the years, I had to learn to project it. A lot had to do was because of abuse and being slapped if I didn't shut up when I was told. I wasn't allowed to talk, I was told I had nothing to say and anything I said wasn't worth hearing.

It took a long time to get over that and believe that it was okay to be me.

[bluidkiti]

I have difficulty hearing. I can't hear if you speak soft, or talk away from me or if more than one person is talking at the time or if you talk and the TV is on etc. I have had difficulty hearing in meetings. My sister in law speaks softly. I miss what she is saying most of the time.

When I first went to meetings, I talked alot then I relapsed. When I came back I took the cotton out of my ears and stuffed it in my mouth and started listening.

[MajestyJo]

Was in that place to my friend, thanks for sharing. No sure if it was so much guilt as insecurities. I didn't relapse physically, but this is a mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as a physical disease. I found I could relapse, long before physically picked up and so grateful to my God for putting people in my path to show me the direction I was heading. It is a direction I can't afford to go. Sometimes, if I had had the money to keep me in the style that I would like to become accustomed to, I just might have picked up.

Words hurt, they can cut to the soul. They cut and bruise deeper when they are reinforced with a slap and a few slugs to go with them. The biggest I got was being pushed into a wall and the imprint of my body was left in the wall. A great reminder to not trust a drunk and to remember what they say, remember what they say, even if it is months ago, and stay out of their way, even though they have to crawl up the stairs, there is enough anger to give them them strength to push you through a wall.

Anger turned into rage for my ex-husband. Anger defused me and motivated me, and if I had been drinking, it quieted me down, and it was a fresh start, and where do we go from here.

It is good to listen, it gets you hit. It is good to listen, so you don't put yourself in a position to be hit in the first place.