DaySpring Daily Word of Inspiration: Proverbs 18:21 – The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Welcome back from the long weekend. We trust and pray that your time away was enjoyable, refreshing and relaxing. Now let’s get back to focusing on God’s word and how it needs to be applied to our lives.

Our scripture for mediation today is short and sweet, so I will be also. There isn’t to try and pull from this text that isn’t already obvious, however, we could miss a very important and deliberate part of what the text wants us to know. We all know that the tongue is very hard to tame. In the negative, even in our own day to day lives we see how the power of our words; how we speak to people, how we respond to people and how our general conversations go, can damage and destroy relationships, friendships , careers, and even opportunities. In the positive, it helps people reach their highest potential, it encourages others to carry on and it can speak life and hope into someone’s life.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, what is the deliberate item in the text that we could miss? It is our habits! The writer here points us to the apparent but then gives insight into how and what our habits of our tongue’s produce. Do you see that point? Let us see: As were presented with an option from within the scripture, we are also warned. We can choose to use our tongues for life or death, but whichever one you choose (that’s the one you love) is the one whose fruit you will bear in your life. So if you love the tongue that speaks death, dishonor, treachery, malice, and lies, don’t be surprised when we produce children, friends, relationships and the like that are dripping wet with the characteristics of what YOUR OWN TONGUE LOVES TO DO!!!!! On the other hand, if you love the tongue that speaks truth, love, compassion, hope, forgiveness, and unity, you can expect more of that being in all of the things that you speak of and those who are impacted by you. The other thing to take note of is that we will “eat its fruit”. Now if you’re like me everything that we eat isn’t always good for us. The same can be said about the fruits of a negative or positive tongue. If we spew off negativity from our tongue, we WILL eat whatever that negativity is back in our own selves. Basically put, the negativity in talking to your children, your spouse, your friends, your co-workers and whoever else, the fruit from that will be your children speaking back to you or about you negatively, your spouse speaking negatively, and you co-workers too! The important thing to consider about this is, just like the stuff we’re not supposed to eat, it’s not good for you; it will destroy your insides and it will ultimately ruin you! However, the tongue that speaks positivity will eat the goodness of those things back in their own bodies. It’s like the best fruit you’ll ever eat. It strengthens you, it empowers you, and it motivates you to keep on in Christ.

The problem we have is that we don’t readily believe that our tongues have the capability to do damage. The reality is that our tongues do far more damage than we can imagine or good than we could conceive, depending on how we use them.

Today we pray that you stop producing and eating the fruits of death but that you begin to produce and eat of the fruits of life that the tongue can and will produce. The tongue is the wildest beast known to man to tame, but with God as a priority and focus in our lives, we have all the tools we need to be successful in producing the crops of righteousness in our lives. Think about it. In Jesus’ name, AMEN!