Firestarter

James 3:5 So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.

See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, the veryworld of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among our body’s parts as that which defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. 8 But no one among mankind can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in the likeness of God; 10 from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way.

I guess you have noticed lately all of the tongue wagging in the news, in our government, in churches, everywhere. The above scripture seems so applicable as we see our tongues are out of control. We have chaos....because of words! We begin to think if we say something it might be the truth and then if it isn't the truth, we add more to it to make it seem like the truth. That used to be called a LIE! We have a lot of "used to bes." Christians used to honor God's Word. Churches used to reach the lost. Government used to work together. What happened?

PRIDE. Our pride has taken over our reasoning (as it usually does) and the effort of following the Bible has been replaced with a subjective human slant on reasoning. You may say "Well, we never really followed the Bible anyway." You are right, to a certain extent. We did follow the thought of following the Bible, but it may have only been a "thought." So what replaces the pure Word of God? Human reasoning. And boy, that is a jump off a tall cliff when it comes to getting any wisdom for living and making decisions. Human reasoning feeds relative truth and all the wants and desires of a disobedient people. All through the Bible we read about the children of Israel falling away from God and taking up new gods to please one thing. Their pride!

We as Christians have become prideful and left God out of the mix because we actually think we are strong. WRONG! We are weak at best, but in our weakness God's strength can be seen and really come alive.

Back to the tongue. Scripture is ripe with examples of the tongue starting fires and burning more than intended. James wrote a great word about the tongue in these verses and brought to mind the need to weigh heavily what we say and what kind of impact it can have on everything. Fake News, as it is called, is just an attempt to start fires, but those fires are now out of control and it seems like all attempts to get it under control fall way short. Our tongues have defiled us according to verse 6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among our body’s parts as that which defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. That fire comes from, yes, it comes from hell. A thinking person might at this point begin to consider controlling that tongue of fire because of it's source and then weigh heavily their words from there on.

Time to get back to controlling the tongue because the fire is burning out of control and the only one who can extinquish it is Almighty God. As believers we need to squelch the rhetoric and use our words to pray to the only hope we have in this world. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is our only hope, but He is our best hope. Read His Word and the pure truth that will direct our lives will be seen and understood. Let God's Word be the Holy Fire Extinguisher and put to rest the hatred and evil this world is voicing in almost every news reel. Jesus is the only answer for the world today. Let His truth be heard and lifted up.

The Pilgrimage continues.....

David Warren