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To hear this Morning Devotion, click on the link below:
What overflows from your lips?

Most every adult over 45 recalls the line from the opening to the original Star Trek programs on TV — “Space… the final frontier.”

Even though Captain James Kirk’s voiceover was quite intriguing as the U.S.S. Enterprise zoomed by on the TV screen, I actually think something else much smaller than space should be described as the final frontier for Christians.

I’m talking about the domain of our mouths.

More specifically, the overflow of our lips.

Bringing our tongues and lips under subjection to the principles and practices of Christianity is perhaps the most challenging part of sanctification for most believers.

When we converted to Christ, we likely started closing down all sorts of sin operations in our lives. You have your list of “used to do that” behaviors just as I have mine.

But I’ve observed over the years that many Christians don’t get a real handle on surrendering their tongue and lips until they’ve been in the family of faith for a good chunk of time.

Yes, they can speak with clean words and calm words when things are going well. But when times get tough or tempers get hot, the tongue dripping with patience can all too easily revert to the tongue dripping with poison.

Sometime the lips that want to laugh with the joy of faith become ensnared in laughing at tasteless humor that pains God’s heart.

God has called us to a higher standard. And as we surrender more of our minds and hearts to Him, striving to imitate His Son Jesus Christ, our words more frequently and more fully reflect the nature of God.

Simply put, we become better examples of the teaching found in Psalm 40:3.

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”

You and I know that Jesus not only died to save our souls but also so that we might become His tools for making disciples.

We are to be walking, talking testimonies to how God can transform corrupted lives into surrendered lives that celebrate faith and motivate others to seek the same.

If many are to see and fear and put their trust in the Lord, they need to have vibrant, surrendered examples of people who DO have a new song in their mouths and hymns of praise to their God.

That new song of joy and inspiration and confidence for the future cannot come by human effort.

If that were the case, the multitude of cults or permutations of established world religions would have satisfied centuries ago all the spiritual seekers of the world.

Simply put, nothing the world offers genuinely scratches the itch that only faith in Jehovah can take away.

When a person gains the peace from the Lord that surpasses all understanding, a joy begins to flow that can’t be concocted by human origin.

It is actually an overflow of the heart that brings praise to God as it is shared with others.

While God loves to hear us sing to Him individually and collectively in worship, the “new song” in Psalm 40:3 is referring to more than church singing.

I believe the psalmist is referring to that song in our hearts that sometimes overflows from our mouths as we appreciate the blessings we have rather than bemoan the “wants” we don’t have.

Dear friend, we’re surrounded by people who are discouraged. Not just by the poor economy and the resulting joblessness or reduced income among those working, but also by the emptiness found in so many taste tests of various religions.

Those people need to see someone whose life portrays joy and love and purpose. They need to see ones willing to verbally and joyfully credit God with the blessings in the believers’ lives.

Invite God’s Holy Spirit to stir and steer your tongue and lips into being more like Jesus.

Pray that your words reflect more of a calm pasture overseen by the Good Shepherd rather than the wild, wild west where anything goes.

As always, I love you
Martin

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