What’s a Word?

PROVERBS  Ten…. (v. 18-22)

Verses 18-22                                                                       James 3:5-6

This passage begins and ends with the wisdom of holding one’s tongue! It contrasts those who talk sensibly and wisely with those who just talk rubbish! We all know the person who thinks they are smart, and makes senseless jokes at others’ expense.  The trouble is that it tends to make us try to match comment for comment, with us overdoing it!

     It is well if we remember the advice of the old timers…..  “is it true? Is it kind? Do you HAVE  to repeat it?” before passing on gossip or news. So many times we get carried away with what we hear and then speak without thinking! James tells us that what is said can never be retracted.….great fires are started from a small match!   Do we want our  speech to build up or to tear down? To feed others or leave them  feeling empty? To be like choice silver or of little worth? To tease others or to make them feel good? It is very true that those who make others feel good are remembered long after others are forgotten!

     Let us take notice of verse 22….God’s blessings make us rich and keep us from sorrow….and then try to follow this in our contacts and speech with other people!

To always say things that make others feel good, Are our speech and actions be all that they should? To show our love and concern for each other, In loving our God, our sister and brother!

***                             ***                             ***                     

Useless Bits of Junk!

       I went into the kitchen and turned the electric jug on to make morning tea. Nothing happened. The jug stayed dead. “Bother!” I said, and turned to try the light switch. Nothing there either. “That’s funny!” I thought and then went into where the computer was. Well, that was going.

 “That’s even more funny,” I said out loud this time. “Hubby,”  I called out, “Some of the power plugs aren’t working, “We’ll have to see if a fuse is blown!”

 So we went around all of the power plugs, one by one, and checked them all out. Nothing stopped the main switch flicking up each time it was pushed down. We got in touch with son-in-law and told him what was happening.

“Hmm,” he said, “It could be out on the pole if you have three phase power. You’d better ring the power company.”

So we did this, and got a very obliging man on the other end. “No,” he said, “If that were the case, nothing would be going anywhere, and  yet you say half the house is going. Go through everything again, and pull the plug of each appliance right out of the socket, and see what happens.”

By this time we were getting quite weary, but thought we had better do what we were told. We were standing out in the garage at the time, so we started there, and pulled the plug of the freezer out of the wall socket, and hubby flicked the main switch down. Cheers! It stayed down this time.

“Well, that might have solved the problem,” he said. And so it proved to be. All the power plugs were going again and the lights that wouldn’t go before were now all on. So the problem was in the freezer.

    We didn’t bother to try it again as it was obvious to us that was where the problem was. Fortunately we had a smaller spare freezer, so we pulled it around and swapped the frozen goods into it, taking the other one to the back wall. Problem solved!

    I couldn’t help thinking what a lot of useless junk our appliances were without the power to make them go. The washing machine had no life in it, either did the drier. The microwave wasn’t any good for anything at all without the power going, and the frig was just getting warmer by the minute, and not doing its job. It didn’t bear thinking about having no lights in half the house when it got dark!

   It reminded me of what we as people are like if we don’t have the power of God connected to us. We aren’t capable of having fellowship with Him, in fact we don’t WANT to have fellowship with Him as we were made to do. An iron won’t work unless it is connected to the power, and a toaster won’t go at all but remains dead. That is how the Bible describes people who don’t know God as being dead in trespasses and sins, and it is only Jesus Christ who can give us life and connect us to the power of God to bring the light on in our lives. What a difference it makes in every way!

    It pays to think seriously about these things. After all, if this way of looking at things is wrong, then we have nothing to lose, but if it is right, we have everything to lose, and that is very sad indeed!

Near Enough!!

    We were working on a project together, and I was thinking it  was time we were finished. “Well, that’s near enough”, I said as I put my gear down. My brother looked at it, and said, “Near enough is not good enough, Gwenyth, you’ll have to spend a bit more time on it!” Those words have stuck with me for over forty years, and whenever I am tempted to think “Near enough”, they come back to haunt me.

    King Solomon was one who chose what was good, but it was not the best. We would normally think that the fact that he asked for wisdom to rule his people well was a good thing to ask for, but in spite of that, in his older age he stopped trusting the Lord for safety, and used his human reasoning instead. He figured that if he married princesses from the surrounding nations, that their fathers would not attack the land their daughter was in! He trusted these ideas more than he trusted God to keep him safe from an enemy attack.

But there seemed to be more and more of these princesses, and he ended up with “seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. (1 Kings 11:3,4,8)”.

    What a warning this is for us! No-one could have had a better start than Solomon did and yet he allowed himself to be swayed by the opinions of others rather than what God had told him. We have to be so careful that we continue to read what God’s Word has to say to us, and to follow what it tells us rather than what others tell us. Those who we associate with closely, have a greater influence over us than we think.

    We all know the dangers there are in our teenagers keeping company with the wrong crowd, but here was a mature man, and supposedly a very wise man, being swayed by the opinions of his many wives. Instead of him being the leader of his household, he was being led by the women of his household. He could have said his thoughts and actions were “near enough” as far as God was concerned, but they weren’t enough to keep him safe from turning away from the things of God. So you can see that we need to be so awake to the dangers around us and not allow ourselves to be swayed by anything that will take all our thoughts….any game, club, or interest that takes all our time or thoughts needs to be pruned out of our minds!