Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.
Proverbs 4:23
…for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Matthew 12:34
Several times in my life I have begun a conversation that seemed innocent enough, and as the topic of conversation turned a different direction I found myself spitting out words that I did not consciously know were pent up inside of me until all the words were out of my mouth and I had realized the words I had spoken were damaging to another person’s character, or were expressing frustration and hurt I had been holding onto in my heart from which my mind had disassociated. I didn’t even realize I had felt the way I did until I spoke it out loud, but the very moment I spoke it was when I felt the sting of conviction that my words were sinful.
What I want to do is beat myself up in an instance like that for saying stupid, hurtful and destructive words and I recall the lessons of James 3 and feel shame for letting my tongue potentially unleash a great forest fire on those around me.
And understand me, the fewer times we put ourselves in the situation of spewing destructive words, the better off everyone around us will be.
But I believe this sinful action is a symptom of a much deeper issue at play, and that is the condition of our hearts; what we let come in (offense), and what we refuse to let go (bitterness) and how we try to sidestep our minds in the process. We have to know what is in our hearts will eventually come out, and the words we speak are clear evidence of what’s in our heart. The issue is not how do we keep our words at bay, but how do we nurture and guard our hearts from receiving the kind of junk that will eventually spoil, rot and be expelled in any number of gross ways? I feel like many of us are conditioned at a young age to suppress and cover up negative feelings so we don’t inconvenience others with them (for example, how many of you as children felt sadness but were instructed not to cry because it was embarrassing to have a crying child in public?). So we push these feelings down, and distract our minds so we don’t think about them and what remains is our heart is full of hurt, anger, bitterness and resentment and these emotions shape and harden our hearts.
I had a mental image of an oyster getting a grain of sand in the folds of its soft tissue, and that grain of sand caused friction and irritated the oyster until it secreted whatever protein is manufactured to cover and lubricate the irritant to avoid problems. Over time, that tiny grain of sand becomes a pearl, which somewhere in our culture became a valuable commodity and we think they are beautiful. Perhaps the wonder of an oyster to be able to produce a pearl is a beautiful wonder, but if we are the metaphorical oyster, we are prone to carrying around “pearls” that are really years of covered up irritations that we have glossed over with whatever we could find to make ourselves feel better and we are walking around with hearts that are full of weight we were never made to carry. We must allow ourselves to be open to the Holy Spirit and let Christ flush out the impurities in our heart before they turn into baggage. The oyster clamps down on the irritant and tries to go to work with his own resources to deal with the issue, but we are called to open ourselves up to the Lord and confess the hurts and irritants of our lives, and the living water of the Holy Spirit can flush those things out. That’s a MUCH better solution to sand in the tissue, to have it flushed out than to cover it over.
When our hearts are free from these kinds of impurities, then what springs from our hearts are wells of beautiful, clean living water. And whatever our mouth speaks from this abundance will be beautiful, clear and pure as well. Our tongue is not the issue. A tongue can also spread the gospel like wildfire to the ends of the earth, and we see that as miraculous that something so small can light such a great fire. God, help us to guard our hearts above all else, for it directs the course of our lives.