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Sep 01, 2024 06:00am

“Oh Be Careful…”

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“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

When we hear that verse, some of us think about a children’s song we learned in Sunday School many years ago: “Oh, be careful little mouth what you say, for the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little mouth what you say.”

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That’s a lie because words do hurt! Harsh or hateful words, gossip, lying, sarcasm and other things that come out of someone’s mouth can often break our hearts into little pieces and are often more painful than any physical injury.

As Christians, it is so very important that we watch what we say because a Christian’s walk and a Christian’s talk should always match each other. I once heard someone say, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions are yelling in my ears!”

One of my mother’s favorite phrases was “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice!” It is so very important that we watch what we say, how we say it and our facial expressions and body language when we say it.

Our tongues are powerful weapons. They can be used to build people up or to tear people down. The choice is ours, and it is a choice we make every day, many times a day!

For the most part, we can’t control what other people say or do to us, so we are not responsible for those things. But we can and should control our response to their words or actions because we areresponsible to God for our response.

We have two buckets in our hands at all times — a proverbial bucket of water and a proverbial bucket of gasoline. And we are responsible to God for which bucket we toss into a possibly explosive situation

Yes, words do matter — they matter to us, they matter to other people and they matter to God! But what matters most to Him is our heart. Of course, most of us have better sense than to say everything we think, but we are saying those things whether we move our mouths or not — we’re saying them to God because He hears our hearts!

It’s sort of like the little boy who had misbehaved and was put into the corner by his mother. He sat there with a gruff look on this face, muttering, “I’m sitting on the outside, but I’m standing on the inside!” His punishment was obviously not serving its purpose — to change his heart and make him want to behave better.

Matthew 12:36 should strike fear in our hearts: “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment”

The thing I fear most is hurting God, and so many of my words (spoken and unspoken but thought) do just that — they break His heart… and that breaks my heart.

Before we say anything to anyone, we should think about the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). And remember what Jesus said, “whatever you have done to others, you have done it to me.” (Matthew 25:40).

So when we’re talking to others we need to ask ourselves, “Would I say that to God if He were standing here instead of that person?”

Remember… “O be careful little mouth…”