Complete in Thee each want supplied,
And no good thing to me denied;
Since Thou my portion, Lord, wilt be,
I ask no more, complete in Thee.

(3rd verse of "Complete In Thee", by Aaron Roberts Wolfe & James Martin Gray)

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Psalm 71:8

"My mouth is filled with Your praise
And with Your glory all day long."

if my mouth is full of this all day long, then everything I say either needs to be in line with that or there is no room for it. 

James 3:8-12
"But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.
With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God;
from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing.  My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.
Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water?
Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce olives?  Nor can salt water produce fresh."

even in the same chapter, the author repeats this thought of praising God.

vs. 14 & 15
"But as for me, I will hope continually,
And will praise You yet more and more.
My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness
And of Your salvation all day long;
For I do not know the sum of them."

vs. 23 & 24
"My lips will shout for joy when i sing praises to You;
And my soul, which You have redeemed.
My tongue also will utter Your righteousness all day long;"

Even look back to some of the commandments given to the Children of Isreal.

Duet 6:6-9
"These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to you sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
You shall bind them as a sign on you hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

 not saying that we need to be like the Pharisee's who would liturally put little boxes of scripture on their foreheads to appear holy.  but do people hear you praise the Lord?  the praise of our God, the Word of the Lord, should be so much on our mind that it's always coming out of our mouth. 

Even Isaac's Bible verse for church reflects this.

 Psalm 104:33
"I will sing to the Lord all my life..."

think about what comes out of your mouth.  focus on not just cutting out the bad things, but even the neutral things that don't line up with these verses.  i was convicted today about telling Christian to "take a chill pill."  not bad, but the attitude behind it is sassy and irritated and not God honoring.  that is a personal conviction.  it is all between you and God what you do and don't say.  but maybe, we need to take it a step farther than we did in the past.  maybe, we need to demand more this day.  maybe, we need to require a higher standard, so that we might honor God more today than we did yesterday.  that is the goal... right?

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