HOW TO LACK NOTHING: - WATCH YOUR MOUTH

The blessings of the Lord are awesome, and, besides salvation, they have covenantal conditions that bring about the experience of them in our daily life.

In the previous devotion we learned that God promises that His children will lack no good thing (Psalm 34:9,10). This, however, is promised to those whose lives are characterized by fear of the Lord and seeking after Him. We are not left to wonder what, exactly, David means by fear and seeking God because in verses 13 and 14 he gives us the specifics. Today we will look, briefly, at the first: "Watch Your Mouth." David writes in verse 13, "Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.

WATCH YOUR MOUTH

To live a happy and holy life (this is what is practically means to lack no good thing) the mouth has to be tamed. In other words, we must learn the discipline of controlling what comes out of our mouths because, as Jesus speaks concerning what defiles a man, He says “What comes out of a person is what defiles him" (Mark 7:20, ESV).

Watching our mouths is connected with our fearing and seeking after the Lord because our words represent the nature and motions of our hearts. It is clear that what David is teaching us is that the heart of the matter is always the heart. We guard our mouths by guarding our hearts because whatever comes out of our mouths is a picture of the state of our heart, at least at that moment.

Sometimes we say things and immediately think to myself, "did I just say that?" Ever been there? The truth is that, regardless of what we tell ourselves the Bible is teaching us that what we say is the exact representation of where our heart is and what is going on inside of it at that moment. We miss many experiences of God's power and His blessings in our lives because we are no vigilant to bridle our tongues. Marriages are fractured, friendships are destroyed, jobs lost and a host of other realities all because of the tongue. This is why James says

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members,

staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell"

(James 3:6 - ESV).

If you are like me there have been times when I have justified my words because of the actions of another person. Yet, scripture, over and over again, reminds and rebukes me with the truth that people cannot pull out of me what is not there. If I said it, regardless of what prompted it, I exposed the state of my heart in that moment. This happens to all of us and, thankfully, David is not speaking of incidental lapses of speaking amiss, but the heart characterized by speaking in ways that block the Spirit's work in our lives.

The truth is that "... no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison" (James 3:8). You and I are unable to master the tongue because it is "set on fire by hell" (James 3:6). If James is right how is David right? How can we watch (guard) what we cannot control? The Spirit of the Lord within us enables us to do so. No human can tame the tongue, but a saint can! One who is filled with and walking in the empowering Spirit of the Lord is granted super-human (supernatural) power to obey the commands of the Lord.

As we grow in our trust in Christ we grow in our ability to watch our mouths and experience a life that lacks no good thing.