Daily Devotional – July 24, 2020

Yes, it is. It's Friday. Well, I understand that sentiment sometimes, but honestly, in my line of work, when it gets to Friday, Friday is kind of like a crunch day for me.

Everything has to come together on Friday because Sunday is coming and generally

I try to take Saturday off as a day of rest and refreshment to get my heart and mind and everything ready for the

Lord's day. But anyway, it is Friday. It's the end of another week and I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Trust you are. Well, have you remembered occasion like this?

No sooner did the words leave my mouth than I knew

I shouldn't have said them. I knew I shouldn't have said them, but there they were hanging in the air like an oppressive suffocating layer of deadly

CO2. There they were and it didn't matter what

I did now. There they were. There was no way I could take them back in.

There was no way I could undo whatever those words had done.

No matter how profusely I might apologize for those words and try to take them back,

I couldn't. You say, well, Pastor Weiss, when was that? Well, maybe

I could put it this way. Which time was that? It's happened more than once in my life and I'm sure it's happened more than once in yours.

Thomas Manton recognizes that possibility and that likelihood.

He made a statement that goes like this. He says, any fool can open the floodgates, but when the waters have once broken out, who can recall them?

Who can recall them? It was just a month or so ago.

There was a dam that broke in Michigan and the flood waters just went streaming down the riverbed that was not designed to handle the volume of water and it created all kinds of havoc and destruction along the way.

That's happened several times in these earthen dams. I remember when I was in college in South Carolina, there was a dam built in Toccoa Falls, Georgia, one of these earthen dams.

Near that dam was Toccoa Falls Bible College.

I remember one night that there had been heavy rains and that dam broke and it ended up causing terrible destruction to the

Bible College downstream. So yeah, Thomas Manton uses that imagery of the floodgates opening up and when the waters have broken out, what are you going to do?

You can't recall them. Indeed, you can't. When did you last experience this, that somebody let the floodgates open and the waters, the floodwaters came rushing out and caused all kinds of havoc in your life?

When did you last experience that? When did you last express that?

When did you open the floodgates? From whom did you experience that?

Was it somebody really, really close to you? That hurts all the more, doesn't it?

To whom? To whom did you open the flood? Did you open the floodgates? Was it against somebody that you really love and you really wish you hadn't done that?

I think we've all experienced that on both ends, haven't we? Listen to some of the advice and the counsel from the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 21 verse 23 says, Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

Isn't this encouraging exhortation for us? Whoso keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

Let me encourage you to apply that. I'm working on this myself when it comes to the whole social media stuff going on today.

I read something on social media and right away it makes my blood boil or I have some kind of a reaction and I'm tempted to just, whether I'm using my phone or I'm looking on the laptop,

I'm tempted to respond to this in a particular way and I'm learning.

Keep scrolling. Keep scrolling. Turn away. Don't go there.

I wouldn't say I'm a hundred percent successful with that, but I'm working on it.

And why is that? Because you keep yourself out of a bunch of trouble. It's been a few times when

I've expressed something in social media and it's come back to bite me because the thing that I expressed frustration about or whatever ended up not being a hundred percent accurate or true.

And therefore, you know, you have to come back and say, well, you know, and yeah, you get, you have a little egg on your face.

Keep yourself out of trouble. Keep your mouth and your tongue. Watch it. And then there's Proverbs 18 21 says, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. What Manton was talking about with the opening of the floodgates is the death that comes from the mouth of the fool when he gives no thought to what he's going to say and he opens the floodgates and it's like those words just are daggers in the heart of the person that he is speaking to.

Oh, may we take this advice to heart that just as life giving words can be such an encouragement to somebody else, hurtful, harmful words can bring death to their spirit.

And I've heard it said that, you know, for every harsh word that is spoken, for every death causing word that is spoken, there needs to be 10 life giving words to compensate for it.

And sometimes, you know, we do have to say things that are hurtful, that hurt somebody else that, you know, they don't take well, they don't take right, but it's truth and you try to speak the truth in love, but it still hurts.

That's necessary sometimes. Yet, there also needs to be a corresponding giving of life so it won't leave them in a state of despair.

And then Proverbs 18 .8, it says, the words of a tail bearer are as wounds and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.

Oh, have you done this? Have you shared information about somebody to a friend or to an acquaintance talking about somebody behind their back?

And before you know it, it's come back to them. Somebody told them what you said about them and their spirit is deeply wounded.

Even if they don't know it came from you, it does eventually come out what's being said of them, how hurtful and how harmful that can really be to the spirit.

Oh, the words of a tail bearer are like wounds that go down deep into the heart. It's a challenging thing for the followers of Christ to guard our lips, to guard our tongues, to be sure that we're not the tail bearers.

We're not those who cause such deep wounds in the hearts of others. Oh, listen again to what

Manton had to say. He said, the fool, he opens the floodgates, but when the waters have once broken out, who can recall them?

Think about that before you hit that next send button, before you open up your mouth and speak that word to that acquaintance, that loved one, that friend.

Think about it. Stop a minute and say, okay, is this something I'm going to wish I could recall later because I'm not going to be able to?

May that be an encouraging thought to us today. Hope your weekends well and you can look back over the week and rejoice in the words fitly spoken and that there were no harmful, hurtful words that came out of your mouth.

Let's pray and ask God to give us that kind of experience and testimony. Our Father, help us, help us to guard our lips, to guard the floodgates, lest we open them and cause great, wreak great havoc and destruction and harm to others.

Help us to be wise with our tongues, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

Well, again, have a good weekend and if you can make it on the Lord's day, 1030, we'll be meeting in service in -house and if you can't make it to the church building, catch us online, 1030 on Facebook or on the church website.