Normally when we think about evil things people do, we think about those who abuse alcohol, those who steal, those who are involved in some form of immorality, those who murder, those who are violent and abuse others physically. But how often do we think about all the evil that is done through the use, or misuse, of the tongue? ~Al Macias

If you grew up catholic like my husband Eric, you can probably recite the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth). If you have a baptist or evangelical background, you may not be able to name all seven without some help, but you certainly heard the list. ( By the way, in the church where i grew up, the list was even longer than seven!)

As believers, we are, in a very real sense married to God. When we come into a relationship to God, we become a part of the bride of christ. John 3:29 Rev. 18:23, 21:9. If you continually lie to your spouse, would it affect your intimacy? YES! When we lie, our relationship with God is also affected. God won’t divorce us because of our sin. Hebrew 13:5 ” He will never leave us or forsake us.” But sin certainly affects our closeness with God. If we find ourselves seperated from God, there is nothing wrong on his part. The reason we are’nt getting our prayers answered is because sins of our hands and sins of our mouth have seperated us from God. Most of us are much more likely to be guilty of sins of the mouth. When we commit sins, we are saying things that don’t line up with the words of God. We are telling God he can’t trust us. He hears our prayers, but he can’t answer them because of the way our mouths operate every day does not line up with our prayers or our words. We are all guilty of this. I want to challenge everyone to tame our tongue. I have come up with ten possible symptoms of a sick tongue. How many apply to us?

1. telling the untruth
Proverbs 6:16-19The Message (MSG)
Seven Things God Hates
16-19 Here are six things God hates,
and one more that he loathes with a passion:
eyes that are arrogant,
a tongue that lies,
hands that murder the innocent,
a heart that hatches evil plots,
feet that race down a wicked track,
a mouth that lies under oath,
a troublemaker in the family.

2.stirring up division
proverbs 6:19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

Proverbs 6:12-15
New International Version (NIV)
12 A troublemaker and a villain,
who goes about with a corrupt mouth,
13 who winks maliciously with his eye,
signals with his feet
and motions with his fingers,
14 who plots evil with deceit in his heart—
he always stirs up conflict.
15 Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant;
he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.

3. dishing the dirt
A gossip is a person who habitually spreads intimate or private rumors or facts. Notice that i included the term “facts”. Some people claim thats it’s not gossip if it’s the truth. They are deceiving themselves. True or not, it’s gossip if it’s private or intimate in nature. From Gods point of view, if your not part of the problem or essential to the solution, there is no reason to talk about a private matter.
Proverbs 20:19
The Message (MSG)
19 Gossips can’t keep secrets,
so never confide in blabbermouths. Thats pretty clear, isnt it? or
Proverbs 16:28 The Message
28 Troublemakers start fights;
gossips break up friendships.

2 Corinthians 12:20
Amplified Bible (AMP)
20 For I am fearful that somehow or other I may come and find you not as I desire to find you, and that you may find me too not as you want to find me—that perhaps there may be factions (quarreling), jealousy, temper (wrath, intrigues, rivalry, divided loyalties), selfishness, whispering, gossip, arrogance (self-assertion), and disorder among you.

Clearly gossip in the church is not a new problem. It’s as old as the church itself. Break the habit of gossip. Tear down that stronghold. It’s a deadly sin of the tongue.

4. Passing along false information

Slander is clearly something we don’t want to be involved in. We have all been guilty at some point in our lives. This doesnt mean that if we have momentarily fallen into sin we cant have a relationship with God. Repent.
Proverbs 10:18The Message (MSG)
18 Liars secretly hoard hatred;
fools openly spread slander.

1 Corinthians 5:11
The Message (MSG)
9-13I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn’t make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn’t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You’d have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn’t act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can’t just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I’m not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don’t we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.
Slander is serious. And sadly, far too common, even among God’s people.

5. Breaking confidences
Proverbs 11:13
New International Version (NIV)
13 A gossip betrays a confidence,
but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.
Don’t break a confidence.

6. Spreading curses instead of blessings

Cursing in the biblical definition refers to pronoucing a curse on someone. Please stop speaking curses. It is an abomination to God. And it is hurting you.
psalms 109:17-18 Since he loved cursing so much,
let curses rain down;
Since he had no taste for blessing,
let blessings flee far from him.
He dressed up in curses like a fine suit of clothes;
he drank curses, took his baths in curses.
So give him a gift—a costume of curses;
he can wear curses every day of the week!
That’s what they’ll get, those out to get me—
an avalanche of just deserts from God.
God’s word is declaring that those who prefer speaking curses to speaking blessings will have lots of the former and very little of the latter. You cannot handle mud and remain clean.

7. using gods word in a self serving way
Exodus 20:7
The Message (MSG)
7 No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.
They are two ways. Everyone knows the first way. Using Gods name in a curse word. But you may not be aware of the second and most commonly way people commit this sin. In vain means to do something in a self serving way. This is why this sin is so similar to blasphemy, which means to use Gods name is an unsacred or dishonest way. Has someone ever said, ” God told me to tell you…” for self serving reasons. Ive heard this alot. Thats walking on thin ice. Here’s what God actually does say: Woe to the ones who say, ” thus says the lord, ” when the lord has not spoken (Ezek. 13:7,22:28). They are using God in vain.

8. spewing sewer speech

Filthy language!
Ephesians 5:3-4
The Message (MSG)
3-4Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, those who follow Jesus have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.

Colossians 3:8

The Message (MSG)

5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That’s a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It’s because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn’t long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it’s all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

9. Habitually speaking strife
do any of these words describe you?
aggressive, bellicose, belligerent, combative, gladiatorial, militant, pugnacious, truculent, warlike; feisty, fractious, surly; balky, contrary, ornery, perverse, restive, wayward; disobedient, froward, insubordinate, intractable, recalcitrant, refractory; hardheaded, headstrong, mulish, obdurate, obstinate, pigheaded, resistant, self-opinionated, self-willed, stubborn, unbending, uncompromising, uncooperative, unreasonable, unyielding, willful (or wilful); acidic, bearish, bilious, cantankerous, captious, choleric, crabby, cranky, cross, disagreeable, dyspeptic, fretful, grouchy, grumpy, huffy, ill-humored, ill-natured, ill-tempered, irascible, irritable, peevish, pettish, petulant, querulous, rude, snappish, snappy, splenetic, testy, touchy, waspish; battling, fighting, warring

Not surprisingly, the bible records some warnings about allowing such words to characterize our communication.
Proverbs 21:9
The Message (MSG)
Do Your Best, Prepare for the Worst
9 Better to live alone in a tumbledown shack
than share a mansion with a nagging spouse.
The Message (MSG)
Proverbs 26
Fools Recycle Silliness
1 We no more give honors to fools than pray for snow in summer or rain during harvest.
Some people just fall into the habit of arguing. For them it become instinctive and they enjoy it. Purpose to develop and agreeable spirit. You dont have to agree with everything but you dont have to argue about everyting either.

10. Spreading pessimism

Hebrews 3:12-13

The Message (MSG)

12-14 So watch your step, friends. Make sure there’s no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God. For as long as it’s still God’s Today, keep each other on your toes so sin doesn’t slow down your reflexes. If we can only keep our grip on the sure thing we started out with, we’re in this with Christ for the long haul.

These words keep ringing in our ears:

Today, please listen;
don’t turn a deaf ear as in the bitter uprising.
There are 2 warnings here. First and evil heart of unbelief and second exhort one another daily! How do we exhort one another? With our mouths of course! We use our mouths to encourage others. Unbelief is contagious, it spreads the negativity. If you have a negative mouth, you have a heart of unbelief. Don’t defend your negative mouth as virtue to justify it. Negativity is simply the devils languge spoken by those who have his perspective. Gods language is FAITH!!! God never speak negative. He speaks TRUTH! Even when he speaks truth he speaks faith, because he can see what can happen. You can see past the problem to the answer!Ephesians 2:8-9
The Message (MSG)
7-10Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
Words of unbelief are dangerou;. they go against the very essence of what it means to live as a child of God.

There we have it. Going through the list was a revelation for me. Some of the verses i found were a reminder for me as well. Its good to take an inventory of our words. Lets make a CHOICE to submit our mouths to God. And in those areas of speech in which we have bad habits. Find someone to become accountable too.
Proverbs 18:21

The Message (MSG)

21 Words kill, words give life;
they’re either poison or fruit—you choose!

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