my big mouth and yours

It’s easy to read through the Bible and keep it at arms length. Preparing lessons on a regular basis can be a dangerous venture, because over time it can be easy to read or study for the sole sake of preparing a lesson. I need a reminder every now and then… “THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU TOO!”

One part of the Bible I enjoy reading is the book of Proverbs. It is so jam packed full of advice for life, you can learn something new every time you dig into it. Today was no different for me. For some reason I found a number of new things… well things that hadn’t jumped out at me the past few times I read chapter 27. There is the most widely used verse from this chapter, verse 17, “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” But that isn’t the verse I want to look at… the verse I want to get into is verse 19:

“As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person.”

Like I said, I don’t remember reading that verse before. For some reason it didn’t stick out before, but today it did. A real person is what I desire to be. It’s not always easy. Pressure to act the right way, dress the right way, look the right way, use the right words, come at us from a million directions. People at church, the TV, our friends, our family, ourselves even. These aren’t all malicious people, but the pressure to be someone elses right or real person pulls and pushes in directions sometimes we don’t even want to go.

I want to be real.

My heart is the reflection of who I really am. So how do I feel about what my heart reflects? I’m not sure, because I’m not sure what my heart looks like. How do you gauge your heart? If it tells who I really am, I want to know what it’s saying. Well Jesus gives us the answer to the question.
The answer isn’t far from our heart, it’s only 12 short inches away. Open wide, because it’s your mouth. The proverb could have continued… just as a heart reflects the man, so the mouth reflects the heart.

Here is what Luke 6.45 has to say:

“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

So here is what I’m understanding from these two verses…

the mouth = the heart

so

the heart = the man

so

the mouth = the man

If this is the case, then what kind of work do you need to do? Does the way you talk reflect who you want to be as a person? I know for me, I have some work to do. I know that I don’t always talk to my wife and kids the way I should. I don’t take the time to speak with care and concern. My tone doesn’t always indicate my love for them.

I have some work to do on my… my initial thought is… wow I need to work on my mouth. But the truth is I need to work on my heart. Remember the mouth is only the gauge of what is in my heart… and yours. It’s like an indicator on the dash board of your car.

What can change your heart? Will power will work, for a while, but the only long term, real solution is time with the master surgeon. He can do work on your heart that no one else can. But it takes time… some things take time. Some things work better over a longer period of time. I and you need to take some serious time with Jesus. Just like milk does a body good… Jesus will do your heart some good.

So today go over to the fridge and get a glass of Jesus it’ll do your heart and your mouth good.

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