Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Taming Your Tongue


We have been talking about the crudeness of our tongue in class the past couple of weeks. It's something we all have problem with. I have big problems with mine, at least in the past I did. But yet it sometimes slips up and I got to put it back in the cage.
Why do we have such problems with the things we say? One person said his son had gotten in trouble for calling another kid a "Doofus." I just sank in my chair, I just felt bad. My kids say worse names than that. Nothing foul. They have been known to call each other idiots and morons. I believe they got those words from my driving vocabulary. But I just felt bad, they get in trouble when they say those things to each other. One person had stated he had something foul to another person and was pretty upset about it. Before I had realized he was starting to get teary eyed about it, I had leaned over to another guy and said everyone is too nice in here. I was meaning they were soft. That was my tongue getting me in trouble. But I'm just so hardened to comments people might say to me, I just blow them off. I really appreciated that class Sunday though, it struck me how insensitive I am sometimes to others people feelings. I need to become a much nicer person, it's just hard sometimes to see that some things hurt some people more than others. Some comments are not appropriate for some crowds.
I've said my share of hurtful things in my life, and regret all of them. So I go by the phrase, "If you have nothing good to say don't say nothing at all." So I have done pretty well trying to do my best, but yet a lot of times I don't think before I speak. The other day in Walmart I said something to these two guys. I was just upset. As I was approaching the front to checkout, I decided to get some football cards. As I approached the stand my eyebrows were beginning to touch. These two guys were feeling every package of cards to see if they could find the one that had an autograph card in them. I walked up to them and said, "You know that's just plain cheating. I said "why don't you just buy a package without feeling them." Then I said " Would you get out of the way your hogging up the entire section." They didn't even look at me. I know they heard me they just didn't have the guts to look at me and notice someone had finally spoke up about their cheating. I don't like cheaters, they irritate me a lot. I don't cheat, so those who do, need to be called out. So I didn't feel bad about anything I said to them, I was going to report them to the manager. It's not the first time I have said something to this guy. But I think sometimes we need to say nothing at all. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, but I just had too.
I wanted to speak up in class ,but I shied away. My story about the house across the street was perfect to tell. It was a perfect theory about taming the tongue and not spread rumors. Somebody had told me the owner had died. It was not true, I saw him the other day. So I don't know if the feller knows it or not, but he is supposed to be dead. It just shows how rumors can start a huge fire. Or how one slip of the tongue can really hurt someone. We need to keep our tongue in place until the message reaches the brain and it's had time to review it.
I don't like rumors. I try to stay out of other peoples business, and I try to really not bad mouth anybody. It's a big thing of mine to ridicule a business or a certain doctors office. I really don't like it when somebody does me wrong in the world of business. Like our floor having to replaced after five of wear. Our builder did us wrong by cutting corners so he could pocket some extra money. I see things in this house that make me not like the guy and his shady ways. It's a good thing he retired. But I don't need to be like that, God says that we should be forgiving at all times. So I should keep my tongue in its place and quit bad mouthing this guy.
Another example would be talking bad about a person because they don't ever talk to you when you say hi. It is to me rude if you say hi to a person and they don't say hi back. I just write that person off my list, but then I realize I mumble my HI a lot of times. So I was the one at fault, because I'm a mumbler.
Our tongue is tough on us in life. We say bad things all the time and then on Sunday we praise God with the same foul mouth. I really feel bad about the things I say a lot of times and really ask God for his mercy and grace to keep me from saying anything that doesn't appeal to him. Let's all watch what we say to others and try to keep that tongue in tight reigns.

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