This week in Women's Study we are completing our reading of Respectable Sins: Confronting The Sins We Tolerate. It has proven to be another excellent book authored by Jerry Bridges. I think we have all benefited from his insights into the types of sins that we tend to tolerate in ourselves. The last two chapters were no exception to this.For instance, Chapter 19 focused on the "Sins of the Tongue." As Bridges points out, the Bible is full of references to this category of sins, with Proverbs alone containing more than sixty warnings against such behavior. So what is included in this list? It's extensive: "...profanity, gossip, lying, slander, critical speech (even when true), harsh words, insults, sarcasm, and ridicule."
What is the source of these sins? Bridges continues by writing:
"The common denominator of all these forms of negative speech is that they tend to put down, humiliate, or hurt the other person... This type of speech most often comes from an attitude of impatience or anger. Jesus said, 'Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.' (Matthew 12:34) This means that although we speak of sins of the tongue, our real problem is our heart. Behind all our gossip, slander, critical speech, insults, and sarcasm is our sinful heart. The tongue is only the instrument that reveals what's in our hearts."
This is a scary, though true, concept. What will my words say about my heart today? Will I be able to restrain my speech to exhibit only care and concern for others?
Let us try to be like David in Psalm 19: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."
AAAAAAAAAAH, I really struggled with this sin yesterday. My heart was so hard and it was leading my actions, thoughts and words! I know that people around me could sense the impure motives of my heart. Like someone who had eaten raw garlic for dinner and the odor seeps out of your pores and is expressed into the air as a foul smell. This is how I saw my sin of a bitter heart yesterday. It took much prayer and thanksgiving to finally purge me of the sin that had it's clutches on me.
ReplyDeleteMay God's grace be with us today as Steve said in his daily devoitonal from March 20th. "It is grace that is increasingly able to see a worldly passion for what it is, to see that it is not pleasing to the Lord, and to eventually, perhaps over a number of years, to renounce it."
May we as God's people renounce our desire for worldly passions today and pray that God's people would be purged of desire to exault ourselves over those around us. Thanks for the re-cap Candy. DS