By Senator John Grant, Florida (Retired)
Week Twenty-One, 2019
THE TONGUE
Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. James 3:5
The Chicago Fire of 1871 burned for three days, and destroyed thousands of buildings, killed an estimated 300 people and caused an estimated $200 million in damages. It all happened when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern in a barn and started the fire.
Seemingly little things can lead to big things and not always good things. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Consider what great forest is set on fire by a small spark.
Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it can set in motion great things, both good and bad. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.
Words, delivered at the right (or wrong) moment, can change the course of history.
Consider Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” oration on the eve of the American Revolution. This was the most influential speech in inspiring the war of independence against Britain.
General Eisenhower on the eve of the Normandy invasion turned to his staff and said to his staff “Let’s go,” and Operation Overlord was set in motion committing 156,000 troops.
But, it is not only the great and historical events which are guided by the tongue. It guides things like telling someone you love them or telling your children you are proud of them. As the tongue can change the course of history, it also can change the relationships in a family or fellowship in our churches.
We should use caution with how we use our tongue. Words from the mouth are like messages after we hit the send button. We can’t get them back. One kind or unkind word can change someone’s entire day. We should be careful with our words, because once they are said, they can be only forgiven, not forgotten. We can say something hurtful in ten seconds, but ten years later, the wounds are still there.
The tongue does a lot of physical things for our body, but I believe that the prime gift God gave us with our tongue is to edify the saints and spread the Word to the sinners.
Perhaps the greatest use of the tongue was give to us by Jesus: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
– Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:7
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SOMETIMES TRUE STORIES
TASTE BUDS:
Sometime during the 6th day of creation, while omnipotence was fashioning man, the Creator must have said, “Let there be taste buds!”…and God saw that it was good.
With that one stroke of divine creativity, our Maker so decreed that eating would be an act of diversity, not monotony—a sovereign gift to us fans of Ben and Jerry. Ah, God is good!
Taste buds—or gustatory cells, as the lab coat crowd calls them—are the unsung heroes of the mouth. These highly complex little buds were designed to recognize life’s four distinct flavors—sweet and salty, which, as the myth goes, are colonized at the tip of the tongue; sour, which sits along the sides of the tongue; and bitter, which does its work way back just before the food plunges into the digestive system.
Infants are the real beneficiaries of taste buds, possessing more than 10,000. In fact, babies have taste buds in every nook and cranny of their tiny, little mouths. Obviously, it’s God’s brilliant plan to encourage eating and growth.
However, by the time those infants get to be our age, their quantity of taste buds will greatly decrease—no doubt God’s gift to encourage restraint as they grow older.
Apparently, most Americans believe they do not need to trust in Jesus’ atonement for our sins to go to heaven.
What can we say to them?
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Florida has over 5.3 million residents who are 60 years or older. That’s over a quarter of our total population.
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Since “Unplanned” Movie Released, 300 Abortion Clinic Workers Have Quit Their Jobs.
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Not one crisis or challenge in today’s headlines would have existed in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve tried to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Every natural disaster and disease we face is a direct consequence of their sin (Romans 8:22).
But we make our fallen world even worse when we continue repeating the sin that caused the Fall. Either God is God of our lives or we are. Either He is on our throne or we are.
Unlike the IRS, the King of the universe demands not part of our possessions but all of us. He calls us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), to be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus told his followers, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up His cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
This is not because God needs what we have. His government requires not one penny from its residents. It is because He can do so much more with us than we can do with ourselves. He will use every gift, ability, and resource we surrender to Him for his greatest glory and our greatest good.
In this sense, every day is Tax Day.
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From 2011 to 2017, 259 people have died while taking selfies, according to the National Institutes of Health.
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QUOTES YOU CAN USE
Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge. 1 Timothy 6:20
Our significance does not depend on our status.
Servant leadership is the key to a great leader’s success. Serve wholeheartedly. Remember, don’t serve yourself, but the team and the mission, never the face in the mirror.
D. A. Carson: “It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross . . . it was His love for sinners like me.”
Rabbi Evan Moffic writes: “Heaven has [an] open door policy: Heaven is not a gated community. The righteous of any people and any faith have a place in it. Our actions, not our specific beliefs, determine our fate. No concept of Hell exists in Judaism.”
You have never lived until you have done something for someone who cannot repay you. John Bunyan
Jesus plus nothing equals everything.
God measures success by fruit. The tree had a trunk and roots, branches and leaves. It might have been tall and beautiful. But it did not produce what it was created to produce. The good news is that when we give God’s Spirit control of our lives, he manifests the “fruit” we were created to produce (Ephesians 5:18; Galatians 5:22–23). And, as Good Friday shows, there is nothing Jesus will not do to pursue such intimacy with us. Jim Denison
Early Christians knew that they were the church. Buildings they used to gather for worship were just that—buildings. Jesus launched the church as a movement intended to attack the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18). The church is not a location but an army that marches on its knees as it makes disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19).
Get ready for the future. Change is coming at a fast pace. Social media is great if used properly and with discipline to affect change. Unbridled, it could cause a disaster in a life or business.