Me and my big mouth

Psalm 141:3 Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth. 

I have a confession to make. I am a big talker. I wasn’t always this way. Decades went by in my life when I had no opinions, no self-worth, and no self-esteem. My life didn’t have any purpose then. Those were the times I suffered from depression without realizing it. After I hit the rock bottom of the depression, Jesus took me out of that pit. Over time, I became bolder. With that boldness came opinions and the urge to never hold back on them. Because I had dwelt on the other side for the most part of my life, I never budged when I finally got the boldness to speak my mind. When one doesn’t heed what God wants and simply speaks from a fleshly mind, the words come out brutally sharp. It is like having a sword in our mouth. 

Eventually, God took hold of my life. He took me through some refining fire and removed the sharp edges in my attitude. Though I had been a “Christian” all my life, I wasn’t exactly living my life watching my steps to please God. God started to work in my life. I fell in love with this God who did not “punish” me as I deserved, but He “disciplined” me with grace. This made me fall in love with my God because He showed me grace when I deserved punishment. From then, I started to watch my steps and wanted to do everything in a way that pleases God. Pleasing God became my top priority. For a sincere believer, pleasing God cannot be a Sunday church thing, but it should be every day, every moment thing. In everything that we do, we ought to check if we are doing as Christ would want us to. And I started to live with that constant awareness. 

But even then, I still had a major problem – my big mouth. Whenever I have things bothering my mind, I tend to speak my mind with sharp words and a rude attitude. Though I would only speak the truth, what lacks is grace-filled words. For years, I neither realized this nor did I feel sorry about that. But as I started to watch my walk with the Lord, I started to notice this trait of mine. I started to repent each time I would speak from my flesh. I noticed that when something about people bothers me, it starts brewing in my heart and comes out of my mouth lacking grace. 

Colossians 4:6 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. 

Most of the time, my talk is sweet, but like drops of dirt in a glass of milk, only when things bother me in my mind, do the words come out lacking grace. Allowing things about others to bother us is brilliantly done by the devil, like a bad neighbor who keeps throwing trash into our yard. Sometimes we fail to recognize that it is the effect of the flaming arrows of the devil that attacks our mind. It is very important that we discern it right away and pray against it. 

As God gave me the conviction of this, I would repent heartily and God graciously forgave me, every single time. And He still does. 

Sin is missing the mark from what God expects. So these days, every time I fail in this or any area in my spiritual walk, I would fret and be so desperate to repent heartily and have God somehow forgive me, yet again. I am very keen on not piling up things that do not please God in the nooks and corners and hidden closets of my heart. I would wonder how much repeated praying would it take to receive forgiveness. But God gave me this understanding that Jesus has forgiven us of our past and future sins and we just need to repent and receive it. Forgiveness is not dependent on a certain amount of praying, but it is simply admitting to God that I have failed again and asking Him to help me not to stumble again. Till our time in this world, we cannot live a perfect life, but with the help of the Holy Spirit Lord, we ought to strive towards the perfection standard of Jesus. 

So after failing many a time, I have come to the point of asking God to help me in this area. I am asking God to give me the wisdom to discern when the devil is at work in my mind and to be careful not to yield to sharp words.

Proverbs 10:19 Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.