Hi! Graiss here. Today we’re taking a glimpse at potty mouth; how the words we say will dishonor God or bring Him glory. It will affect our relationship with others also. Choosing to walk with God and live out His will in our actions shows others that we respect them and ourselves.
The hallmark of success truly begins with putting God first. If I daily live to honor the Lord by my actions and keep my focus on what is pleasing to Him my motives will be pure. One way to practice this is by putting a rein on my tongue. Questions to ask myself…Does the language I use draw attention to me? Am I trying to fit in with my friends or co-workers, do I keep my words clean and respectable? When I was in middle school I had a teacher that took enough interest in me as a person to let me know that my language wasn’t very pleasing. At that time “crap” happened to be my favorite word and though it’s not a cuss word it peppered my comments and was in almost every sentence I spoke. Mr. Pinto took me aside and kindly said “Graiss, you’d be a much prettier person if you cleaned up your language, and you’d sound a lot more intelligent.” Wow! Whether cleaning up my language actually improved my looks or intelligence is debatable; but taking the challenge had a profound effect on me.
It became my goal from then on to make a real effort to keep it clean. A cool thing about laundering my language was that it started changing my thought life too. I discovered that the books I read, shows I watched and songs I listened to were influencing what came out of my mouth. This is something that continues to be a battle for me. The worldly images I allowed into my thoughts affected what I said, how I lived and how I treated other people. Luke 6:45 says: A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
How do I change? Good question. To start with, I took an inventory of what I was reading and listening to. When I started paying attention to the words of the songs I was singing along with, I was embarrassed (very few songs had a positive or good message). Then I took notice of the magazines/books I was reading. Yikes! No wonder garbage and anger dominated my speech. For me the easiest way to change these habits was to eliminate and avoid. To remind myself of my goal I keep the following children’s song in my head. “Oh be careful little eyes what you see. (Oh be careful little ears what you hear) (Oh be careful little mouth what you say) and so on. If I want to live a fuller more joy filled life I have to be careful (alert, cautious) about what goes in my mind, because the truth is, whatever I am putting into my heart and mind will eventually come out. And I want it to be good stuff! This is a life long process so hang in there. Start making efforts today that will bless others tomorrow.
-Graiss
Solid Gold. Good read!