The M Word: My Mouth

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Pray together.

Father, we uh have not come to settle that today.

We've come to celebrate that.

Christ is mine forevermore.

The Bible tells us we've been sealed by the Spirit to the day of redemption.

And so I pray that the uh the certainty of our salvation would propel us forward into all the things the gospel asks of us.

That we're people that are done trying to figure out if we know Jesus or not, or we're Christian or not.

If there's anyone in this room that is uncertain about that, Holy Spirit, lead them into the truth, reveal the Father to them.

This is what makes you knowable, is that Jesus, you have to reveal the Father to us.

We by nature are not Christians.

We're not, we are born alienated from God.

This is why the gospel has so much wonder and beauty to it, because we who are foreign are brought close, and we who are far off are major people.

Once we are not a people, but now we are the people of God.

So we can say Christ is mine forevermore.

It's not a wish or a hope or desire, it is a fixed certainty that is the foundation for everything we do in life.

Christ is mine forevermore.

Because of that, I am capable of everything the gospel requires of me.

And so, Lord, that is centering, humbling today.

And we receive.

Now, Holy Spirit, illuminate your word.

Bring change to our thoughts, deepen the way we understand and think about uh this today.

From your word, God, and by your spirit.

We pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to James chapter three.

James chapter three.

And uh, we're gonna finish the series we started in January uh called the M-Word.

We start in January because it's a time of resolutions, and people are, we don't want to do resolutions where you redouble your efforts to try harder and determination.

So we, the M-word series, in case you missed out, was my relationships, my mission, my body, my money.

And today we come to talk about the last one, my mouth.

My mouth.

The Bible calls it the tongue.

Talk about the mouth.

Uh, and and I want to just say this when the Bible talks about the tongue, it's not just prohibition.

Hey, hey, don't do this, prohibit this, stop doing that.

And it's not about, hey, stop cussing and stop gossiping.

Uh oh to God that we're that simple.

It's not just prohibition, it's really invitation.

So I don't want you to feel scolded today.

I want you to feel invited to think deeply and biblically about how you use your tongue.

And and this was demonstrated to me last night.

I'm sitting at our breakfast table.

It's about 11:32 at night.

I'm getting ready to go to bed, uh, and my phone rings.

And I'm like, this isn't good.

It's a friend of mine from Austin.

And I'm like, 1132, okay.

Hello?

And he's like, oh, uh, hey, hey, Neil, this is so-and-so.

I'm like, yeah, I have you on my phone, man.

I know who this is.

And he said, Man, I'm kind of caught off because I thought I'd just get your uh uh your voicemail.

What are you doing up at 1132 at night?

I'm like, what are you doing?

Call it 1132 at night.

And then he said, Well, I just me and my buddies just got done playing a gig at Garrison Brothers in High Texas.

If you know what Garrison Brothers is, say amen.

Yes.

By the way, Garrison Brothers is the high-end bourbon.

It's made in High Texas, H Y E, which is right outside of Fredericksburg.

Uh and so he said they had a big fundraiser there.

They were doing good bourbon, good deeds, and we were kind of the house band.

And so he said, I was listening to one of your sermons on the way back to Austin, and I just wanted to call and encourage you.

And I now I feel weird because you answered the phone.

And I said, That's okay.

Go ahead and encourage me.

I'm listening.

And it was reminded me that we're not good at this because we've here's my concern: we've been taught so much in the church that about prohibition that we don't understand what the Bible invites us to.

The Bible says that the power of life and death is in the tongue, and we we we get so much negative reinforcement about don't do this and don't do this and don't do that.

Then when it comes time to use our tongue to speak blessing, to speak life, we're not good at that, especially men to other men.

So I just sat there on the phone for about the first three minutes just watching my friends struggle.

And I was like, Go ahead, you were saying something.

Well, you know, at one point he said, I feel like I'm in counseling all of a sudden.

And I said, I dude, you called me at 11:32 at night.

I mean, do you have something to say?

Well, yeah, but I thought I was gonna leave a voicemail.

Go ahead, I'm listening.

Yeah, man.

Okay, and it was just awkward.

It's like watching someone drowned in slow motion.

I was like, this is not good at all.

But it reminded me how far we are from understanding.

So I'm not about, I'm not, I'm not here to give you some behavior modification about how you talk.

I'm here to remind you that the Bible says that the power of life and death is in the tongue, and you have the capacity to choose that, okay?

And so I want to read James chapter three, the first 12 verses, and then I just want to point to some things, and then some questions come up on the screen that will invite us to think deeper and more biblically about our mouth and how we use it.

Are you down for that?

Say amen.

By the way, I appreciate your prayers.

I'm feeling better.

I especially appreciate the 50 recipes you sent me for hot toddies.

Apparently, this is all you people do all the time.

So next Sunday, I'll be preaching on the evils of a hot toddy, okay?

And we got a 12-step group that's starting, and I'm gonna lead that, all right?

I sampled every one of them.

Anyway, uh, James chapter, that's a joke, just for the record.

James chapter 3, verse 1, he says, this not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

James 3:1

For we all stumble in many ways.

And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body.

If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.

Look at the ships also, though they are so large and driven by such strong winds, they're guided by a very small rudder.

Wherever the will of the pilot directs, so also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

For every kind of beast and bird, a reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who were made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water?

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

And so what I want you to see today is that it's not just prohibition, it's invitation, okay?

There's four things I want to point to in the text.

And the first one, uh, as is often the custom, the Bible starts with teachers and preachers.

And the first thing I want you to see is that greater strictness should make us intentional.

Greater strictness should make us intentional.

And then you say, Well, I'm not a preacher or a teacher.

Why does this apply to me?

Because this is what you should look for in preachers and teachers.

What this doesn't mean is that preachers and teachers should be the nicest, most mannerly people you know, as much as we should be most mindful when it comes to our words, because we will receive the stricter judgment.

Now, I believe that more preachers should be judged for what they didn't say than what they did say, because we have refined the art of talking for a long time and saying absolutely nothing.

You can get in a conversation with some people, and I have friends that are in ministry, and I have lunch with them or coffee or a phone call, and we'll talk for 20 minutes, and I just think, what did we talk about?

Was anything said?

It was just nothing of real substance.

And so I'm not saying don't be mannerly, don't be kind, don't be thoughtful.

I am saying this: you should look for preachers and teachers who use their words to bring about gospel outcomes where people, where you are moved away from self and towards the responsibility of the gospel.

Does that make sense?

You should have, you should expect us to use our words in such a way that it moves your head and heart towards gospel outcomes, not just because and away from self, because self is preeminent in our affections and our emotions.

We love ourselves.

Like someone asked me uh before I got sick, they said, Hey, what's the last M in the M word?

The M-word series.

I said, Oh, it's all my mouth.

And this person said, Oh, you know me, I can't keep my mouth shut.

This is what I mean by moving people to gospel outcomes.

This person said, I can't keep my mouth shut.

You know me, I got a problem in my mouth.

I said, The issue is not your mouth, the issue is what's in your heart.

And this person said, Excuse me.

And I said, excuse you back.

The issue is not, I say, how long have you been telling yourself and everybody have you taught everybody around you you just have a big mouth?

She goes, Oh, everybody knows I got a big mouth.

I said, I promise you the issue is not your big mouth, it's your small heart.

And she's like, I don't think I like the way this is going.

I said, That's okay.

And by the way, you should get angry at us sometimes.

Yes, you shouldn't leave here every time and kind of go, man, that kneel is awesome.

I know you do that most Sundays.

I know that you're right now, you're just kind of like, just what have we done to deserve this?

Okay, hawk Eureka, but you should get in the car sometime and ram the key in there and kind of go, and your kids go, Dad, what's up?

I'm just ticked at the preacher today.

Why?

Because we moved you away from self and towards gospel outcomes.

There's a reason Jesus Himself said, Woe be unto you if men speak all manner of good about you, because that's the way they spoke about the false prophets.

You've got to be careful because preachers and teachers, and I don't want to spend too much time on this, but you should expect us to move you towards gospel outcomes and away from yourself.

And so greater strictness, if you're here, students, and you're thinking, I might be called to ministry, uh, you don't have to live in fear, like, oh my gosh, God's gonna you know grade me extra hard.

No, no, no.

It should make you intentional, it should make you intentional with your language.

Here's the second thing we see in the text.

We gotta learn to see our tongue in relation to our whole body.

You have to learn to see your tongue in relation to your whole body.

Because on three different occasions, he kind of puts the tongue in the context of the entire body.

Why?

Because what you say and what is said to you affects you, feel it in your entire body.

There's a great book called The Body Keeps the Score, but it's about uh uh these experiences and traumas that we have.

But some of the most common occurrences of trauma are what I call verbal trauma, where people say things that just get stuck in you and they hurt you and they wound you, and your personality, it's like, see my thumb right here?

It's like this verbal trauma, and you can hear that, and then your personality develops around it.

And if you're not careful, some of you in this room, who you are and how you think about yourself was shaped and informed by something somebody said to you when you were in the third grade.

That's verbal trauma.

It doesn't go away.

And so when I say you got to learn to see our tongue in relation to our whole body, why?

Because what we say affects our whole body.

Listen to these different things: anxiety, anger, frustration, fear, curiosity, sadness, joy, wonder, excitement, pride, enjoyment, and depression are all things that we experience because of something that was said to us, or we said to somebody else, or is said about us.

We have the power to affect the way people think about themselves.

And so we gotta think about our tongue in relation to our whole body.

And James then he uses three word pictures to illustrate how this little thing controls all these big things.

Hear it again, verse three, he says this.

He says, if we put bits in the mouth of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.

Look at the ships also, that they're so large and are driven by such strong winds, they're guided by a very small rudder.

Wherever the will of the pilot directs, so also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body.

See again, you have to see your tongue in relation to the whole body.

It's it it it the tongue is set among our members and it's staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

Now, when I say you gotta learn to see your tongue in relation to your whole body, he uses these three word pictures to kind of let us see how this little thing affects these big things.

First of all, he says the a bit.

We put a bit in a horse's mouth.

Why?

So we can guide their whole bodies as well.

In preparation for today, I did research on bits and horses.

And by the way, there's about 15 or 20 different kinds of bits.

I didn't know that.

But one of them, it's got a little loop, a little uh little bend in it, and it's used when you pull it, it pushes down on the horse's tongue.

That's how you control his whole body because you put this bit in his mouth.

And then James says, this rudder, this little little bitty uh directional apparatus on the back of a ship, it creates no energy of its own, no momentum, it has no power, but the rudder harnesses the power and directs where the power is going to go.

And the Bible says that the tongue is the same way, it's just like a rudder of a ship.

And then he says this, it's like a fire.

Now, the tongue like fire has a capacity to be destructive or to be comforting.

Let me say this again: the tongue like fire has the capacity to be destructive or to be comforting.

We'll start with comforting.

Remember like a week or so ago, uh, when it was like 20 degrees, remember when it was cold?

If you built a fire back when we had that cold spell of a week or so ago, say amen.

Have you noticed that when you go to someone's house where there's a fire burning, like you walk in someone's house, they're like, oh, come on in, we got a fire going.

And it's maybe a minute, maybe two minutes max before you're over by the fire.

Kind of there's certain behaviors that only make sense if there's a fire in the fireplace.

People come to your house, they're like, oh, they walk over, they stand by the fire, and they do this like they're guarding somebody in basketball.

So they just kind of stand there and you warm your hands and you may touch your face, and then no one tells you, every one of you do this, you turn around and do this.

And it's like, I don't think I want to see that side of you, but you're you're standing there, and then here's what you're waiting for your pants to get hot, and then you go sit down on the couch, you're like, oh, oh, oh, and you don't want anybody to talk to you like, no, no one, and then after about a minute, you're like, okay, what are we gonna talk about?

That's comfort, that's fire, it's comforting.

I'm too lazy to build a fire sometimes.

I put a blanket in the dryer on high for like 10 minutes, and my wife's like, I'm gonna bring it to you.

I'm like, no, I don't want to waste, I don't want I don't want to dissipate one ounce of that energy.

After 10 minutes, I rip that dryer open, I'm wrapped myself in that bad boy, and I'm just like, hold me closer, tiny dancer.

It's amazing.

It is amazing.

And I just lay there on the couch, like, I'm the richest man in the world.

I'm like Leonardo DiCaprio, I'm the king of the world.

Wow, it's so comforting.

There's no words for it, it's just like, oh, ha ha, oh yeah, it's the same thing as stand in front of a fire.

You're just like, oh, thank you for that.

Now, what are we gonna have for lunch?

Yes, why?

Because the fire is comforting.

However, on December 30th this past year, on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado, a wildfire got started in a little utility shed, storage shed.

The thing burned a thousand homes, scorched 6,200 acres, and forced the evacuation of 35,000 people.

And nobody said it's comforting.

The same thing though.

It's fire.

Your tongue is like fire.

It can be comforting or it can be destructive.

This is what Proverbs mean when it says the power of life and death is in the tongue.

The tongue is set, verse six says the tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body.

This is why we need to see the tongue in relation to the whole body, because it makes we are made to feel things in our body because of what people say to us, and we make people feel things in their body because of what we say to them.

So before you open your mouth and the confines of your heart come out, you need to ask yourself or think about what I want this person to feel.

Because my friend that called me last night, he wanted to encourage me, but we as men are not good about that.

It was like, and I just kept saying, Go ahead, go ahead.

And he's like, Man, this is hard.

I kept, I wanted to get your voicemail.

What are you doing up at 1132?

You've asked me that four times, dude.

What did you call to tell me?

Well, I mean, I was listening to this podcast from Advent on the proportionality of love, and I just thought, man, and I said, Go ahead, I will receive your praise now.

Now, I purposely said it like that because that's awkward and creepy.

Don't you agree?

You're gonna go to lunch and go, he's kind of a narcissist.

Not really.

I just want us to be a people that aren't awkward blessing each other.

I know I had lunch with a friend of mine at Salada the other day in downtown and in town center.

It's all I could say, the best$20 salad you'll ever have.

And then we walked across the street to Starbucks.

This is our as is our custom.

And right we walked in the door, there was an older woman sitting there, she had a hat on, and I just said, nice hat or beautiful hat and kept going.

We walked over, ordered, waited over here for our order, got it, walked out, and when I walked by, she just looked up and smiled at me.

Why?

Because the power of life and death is in the tongue.

It is, it is, and it's not being some cheesy person that throws out things you don't mean.

It's hey, I think about this.

Here's the third thing the text tells us that our mouth makes visible what is invisible.

Our mouth makes visible what is invisible.

It's that little phrase in verse 4 where he's talking about the rudder.

You know, these ships have these strong winds, they're so big and strong with, and yet they're controlled by this rudder.

Here's a phrase wherever the will of the pilot directs, wherever the will of the pilot directs, what does that mean?

That means is that our tongues are not disconnected from our will, and our will is connected to what we worship.

Think of it like this words, will worship, not in a good sense, worship, but more like idol.

What we worship, you say, What do you mean?

Because it reveals what's in your heart.

It's like I was saying to my friend, it's like, oh, you know, me, I can't keep my mouth shut.

I got a big mouth.

No, no, you have a small heart, or your heart is full of the wrong things.

Well, that just sounds judgmental.

No, it's it's not your it's not your mouth, it's always your heart.

Uh you say, What do you mean?

If you have control issues and somebody disobeys you, then watch what comes out of your heart.

If you're a perfectionist and somebody fails you, watch how you begin to think about them in your head.

See, here your heart is most often on display.

Jesus said it like this in Luke 6.

He says, The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil.

For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks.

Your heart and my heart is most on display when you're talking.

It's not tomorrow when you buy some cheesy overrated card because it's Valentine's Day, and I've got to tell somebody how I feel about them.

No, anytime you talk, your heart is on display.

And what the mouth reveals is the root idols of the heart.

A man named David Pollison first pioneered this.

I said, Let me give credit where credit is due.

He says, basically, we have four core root idols of the heart, and they are power, control, comfort, and approval.

Power.

This is a longing for influence or recognition.

Power.

And so some people use their words because this is this is the idol in their heart.

This is what's driving them, is they want power.

Some people it's control.

Control is a longing to have everything go according to my plan.

And by the way, the people that most easily reveal, if you're like, I wonder what the core idol of my heart is, the people that most easily reveal your idol is your kids or your spouse.

Yeah.

When your kids frustrate you.

It's not that just that your kids are frustrating, the idol of your heart is control.

Here's another one, comfort.

Comfort is a longing for pleasure.

I have to be particularly uh mindful of this one because people with a, I don't I don't want to get out into all the psychology of this, but people had a hard childhood.

If you're not careful, you have this sense of entitlement as it relates to comfort, because you know, I had all this over here and it was so hard, and now I deserve this.

No, you don't.

No, you don't.

And you've not lived until you've had lunch with some friends.

And when I'm talking about this and this and this, and I'm gonna, you know, I have a friend who has six weeks of vacation.

Six weeks of vacation, which is great.

Glory to God.

Welcome to Europe, okay?

I don't care what you do.

Uh but he said, I'm gonna go to my boss, and they're negotiating his salary and raise and da-da-da.

And he goes, I'm gonna ask for this much of a raise, and I'm gonna ask for two more weeks of vacation because I work hard and blah, blah, blah.

And he goes, What do you think, Neil?

And I said, I think the idol of your heart is comfort.

And everybody, there's three other guys sitting there, and they all just start stuffing food in their mouth.

And I he said, Well, what hey bro, what's with the hate?

I said, That's not hate, that's love.

You can you can you not feel how entitled you talk about yourself?

Like this company, ought to be glad to have you because you're just you're God's gift to everything, and you need more money and more vacation to what to pursue comfort?

He's like, Well, what you got against vacation?

I got nothing against vacation.

I just think you should think deeper about your words when I listen to your talk.

I hear a man that loves comfort, and I know his story.

It's a lot like my childhood.

Not good, very dysfunctional.

But you, if you're not careful, what attaches itself to you is a spirit of entitlement.

Wow.

And the last uh core idol of the heart is approval, it's a longing to be accepted or desired.

This is why it's important that we press in on our souls that Christ is mine forevermore.

The person that knows me the best, the deepest, totally and completely, has accepted me forever.

Therefore, I no longer crave the approval or the acceptance of man.

And again, the people that most easily reveal your heart idol.

If you're wondering, what is my heart idol?

Listen to your kids and your spouse.

They reveal it.

Not that they tell you, but what they call out of you.

And when your idol is threatened, you you engage in certain behaviors.

And it's not always conscious, a lot of times it's unconscious because I am protecting this because this is the way my life works.

Now I love my friend.

And I was just like, hey, I again, I hope you get more money.

I hope you get more vacation.

I just I think you should really do some work around what is the core idol of your heart.

That doesn't make any sense.

I even told him, I said, if you want to read, there's a great article by David Paulison called Uh The Idols of the Vanity Fair and the Idols of the Heart.

I don't want to read about that.

I said, okay, well, anyway, who wants dessert?

By the way, there's not an easy way to end that lunch conversation.

We walked out, and the other guys were like, Hey, that was good.

I mean, because I didn't have language for it until you said that.

I started thinking, and I was like, dang, dang.

It's like, hey, let's get deal.

He likes to say awkward things.

I said, Y'all could have participated in the brother's sanctification as it is.

I'm just hung out there to dry.

Well, I thought you did good.

Thank you.

And see, this is I'm moving them towards gospel realities.

I said, I don't feel helped by that.

Matter of fact, I feel used by you three.

Oh, come on, bro.

Dude, we're in our 50s.

Can we stop saying, come on, bro?

Here's the last thing the Bible talks about our mouth is that identity makes a difference.

Identity makes a difference.

It's verse 7.

Look what the text says, for every kind of beast and bird and reptile and creatures can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water?

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

When I say identity makes all the difference, it's easy.

I'm very aware it's easy to hear a sermon like this and then walk out and increase your determination to be kinder and say nicer things and not cuss and stop lying and blah, blah, blah.

And those are all good things you should do.

That's not what the Bible is saying here.

When he says blessing and cursing, he's not talking about profanity.

He's talking about you wish ill on somebody.

And so you talk about them the way you do, because what you really want is not for them to flourish and prosper, you want them to be brought down.

You want them to get what you think they deserve.

Because you think they're getting away with something.

That's why you curse them.

It's much worse than profanity.

Really is.

But the Bible comes along and says, identity makes all the difference.

What do you mean?

He says, You we we we bless our Lord and Father, and with this mouth, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

This is the first indication of what James is doing.

He says, in the likeness of God, it's Amago Day, the image of God.

And the text closes by appealing to the fact that the people we slander are made in the image of God.

And then he goes on to remind us hey, by the way, you're a spring, you're a fig tree, you're a grapevine.

Because of this, because these things are true, this is what makes this behavior so preposterous.

Again, you have to think about if you want your behavior to change, you don't you don't need to think in terms of your determination.

You need to think in terms of your identity.

This is preposterous for me.

So James is saying to these people, hey, you guys, hey, by the way, these people you you curse, they're made in the image of God.

Joe Biden's made in the image of God.

Did I just make it awkward?

Sure I did.

Here, let me get the other side.

Donald Trump's made in the image of God.

Well, it's easier to believe than that first one, I'll tell you what.

No, see, identity changes everything.

The person you cannot stand.

You would just think, man, that person's name comes up.

I just think there's 19 things I'd like to say about that person.

Made in the image of God.

And so what God is saying is, you better handle that carefully.

I created that.

Wouldn't you like to have a conversation at least once before you die that started with this?

Hey, you know what?

I want to begin by affirming that you're made in the image of God.

And I don't want to violate the beauty of God's creation.

So if I say anything in this conversation that mars the design of God in your in the way you think about yourself, would you please tell me?

I'd be like, uh say that again.

Because we don't think about our identity, we think about determination, but the Bible comes along and says, hey, here's why you shouldn't do these things.

Here's what makes this crazy, preposterous, outlandish, totally ludicrous is the simple fact that you are a spring.

You're the fig tree, you're the grapevine.

And then he ends by flipping the script on us by saying, the very last sentence, look at it.

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

Translation non-Christians, unbelievers, cannot do what Christians can.

Because of our identity in Christ, Christ in us makes us capable of not living at the mercy of our mouths and just apologizing after the fact.

And it's not about activity, it's about our identity.

This is who we are.

Twice he calls them brothers, remind them, hey, by the way, we have this shared faith.

We're the people everybody else can spew forth all this salt water.

We're the people that breathe fresh water into the conversation.

Now I want to give you a prayer to pray this week, and we'll be done.

Who's for being done?

Say amen.

Super Bowl heathens.

Here's a prayer.

I pray this before.

I'm I try to pray this.

I I remember every time, but before every counseling uh session that I have, uh I pray this prayer.

It's Isaiah 50, verse 4.

Isaiah 50:4

The sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary.

I want you to walk away and pray this prayer this week.

The sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue.

It's not knowing everything.

It's just knowing what's what's right for this situation.

A well-instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary.

I want us to be a people that when we speak into people's lives, they're buoyed by that.

They're built up.

They're like, you know what?

Man, I think you're right.

I don't think my problem is I got a big mouth.

I think I got a small heart, or it's just our heart's full of the wrong things.

So when I open my mouth, what comes out is well, let's get down to the root idols of your heart and deal with that.

Because here's the reality: because of our identity in Christ, because we are the spring, we are the grapevine, we are all these things that he talks about here.

Because of that, because this is true of us in Christ, then these behaviors using our mouth in ways that violate our creative purpose or violate the creative purpose of anybody else is totally preposterous.

This is why and when what we do with our mouth begins to change.

Let's pray together.

If you're our guest, just relax.

We like to teach the Bible, and then we'd like to give you some space to think about it.

So I'll voice a prayer.

Some questions come up on the screen for you to think about.

You don't try to write them down.

Just take a picture.

Uh, and maybe at lunch today you can talk about it, all right?

Let me pray.

God, thanks for the Bible.

Thanks that it's thought-provoking.

Uh, it's always calling us to something bigger than behavior modification.

But the gospel should manifest in our behavior, it should show up in our lives, how we live, how we think, the way we talk, the way we use our mouth.

We're mindful today, God, that the gospel is just that, by the way, there's no slip of the tongue, it's a revelation of your heart.

So give us the the wherewithal to kind of plunge down to our heart and say, what what root idols are at work here in me?

We're tired of making promises and trying harder and it never changes.

We ask for change.

Holy Spirit, illuminate, expose.

Thank you for our children that expose the idols of our heart.

When they're threatened, sometimes we overreact to our kids.

Or we overreact to our spouse because the idol of my heart is being threatened.

And so, Holy Spirit, just brood over these beautiful people now while we think about these things.

In Jesus' name.

Lord, thank you that cooing is a good thing.

When we hear little kids cooing, we will, our spirit wants to be that way when we hear the word.

We just want to, ooh, yes.

And so, Lord, calls our spirit to kind of coo at what we've heard today, not to reject it and put it off, be defensive, make up some stuff that excuses us from the gospel.

We're never excused from the gospel.

Pray for our pastors and teachers here on staff that we would move people, we would use our words, be intentional, move people towards gospel outcomes, away from self-centered outcomes because that's too small.

When we were created for the gospel, we never settled for self.

So, Holy Spirit, continue to just ooze into every nook and cranny of our lives and expose what needs to be exposed and bless what needs to get blessed.

This is our prayer.

We welcome you in Jesus' name.

And all God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're our guest today, let me just say you're thank you for being here.

You're always welcome.

Uh uh, if you have any questions about anything you heard, uh, some of our pastors be available down front.

Uh, the guy you saw in the video, David Mertens, is one of our elders.

I've asked him if he'd make himself available down front.

Some of you men may be like, hey, dude, I just want to talk with you, or I want to get coffee with you, or I want I want to get lunch here.

I want to pick your brain because I something about that spoke life to me, okay?

And so I would love for you uh to meet David.

He'll be available as well, okay?

Uh, and so there's a few things going on in the life of our church we want to make you aware of.

So let's give our attention to the screens for our video announcements.

Thank you for joining us today.

Here's some things we want you to know.

A few months ago, we launched a new ministry known as the Varsity, the most experienced players who are still in the game.

Also known as anybody over the age of 60 who is still living, loving, and leading.

Our next varsity gathering will take place on February 24th at 10.30 a.m.

in the old sanctuary.

There will be a shaping word, some competition with prizes, and lunch.

Register at grandparkway.org.

Pine Cove City is happening June 20th through 24th here on our campus.

Kids will spend the week learning about Jesus, having fun with their friends, and come home ready for a nap.

Register at grandparkway.org.

As you greet one another in the lobby, be sure and check out our missions area on the north side of the lobby.

Here you can find out the next step for you to begin serving in your church.

If you're new, text Welcome to 281-626-5707.

This way we can know you're here and get you connected with the life of our church.

If you have any questions about what you've heard today or would like someone to pray with you, find one of our pastors at the front of the stage at the conclusion of our service.

We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing.

So if you would stand to your feet.

Now, while you're standing to your feet, let me remind you of something.

You by nature are so sinful, so wretched, so so wrong.

You should be burning in hell right now.

Not being funny.

You should be burning, but instead, you got a flat screen TV and a couch and queso.

You're gonna watch you're gonna take a nap today and watch football and commercials that are gonna be funny, and you don't deserve any of it.

You deserve hell.

And you're gonna get that, and you're gonna go eat lunch with friends here in just a minute, and you should look at each other and gotta go.

We should be burning, but we're feasting.

Is God good or what?

I just want to point out these things to you before you slip off into a food coma.

Hold your hands out.

Your God put a tongue in your mouth, and put the power of life and death in that thing.

Use it wisely to speak life to yourself and to others.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.