The other day I tripped, fell down the stairs, and I hurt my toe. I knew something was wrong, so I went into the doctor and the doctor said, “You’ve gotta go in for an X-ray, because we need to see what’s going on there.” If that’s ever happened to you, or you had similar situations where you have to get an X-ray, I thought, well, what’s the big deal? It’s just my toe, can I just leave it alone? She said, “No, can’t do that. We really need to see what’s going on inside.” Of course, that’s what the X-ray’s for, you can see through the outside and see exactly what’s happening down to the bone so that they can set it, and fix it, and it’ll all heal the way it’s supposed to.
Now, can you imagine if there were some type of a spiritual X-ray, some way that you could kind of see inside on what’s going on, so that you could then begin to grow in the right way and heal in a sense properly? Well, there really is a way to kind of have a spiritual X-ray. Christ says in the book of Luke, that “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” That’s in Luke 6:45. So in a sense, what we say, how we use our tongue, our language, is kind of like a spiritual X-ray that reveals what’s going on inside. So I think it’s important for us to consider that very thing. What is it that is going on inside that comes out of us, comes out of our mouth? The things that we’re thinking are often portrayed in the things that we say, maybe not in public all the time, but what about in private? What about at home? What about when we’re just with our family? What about when we’re working on a project? What are the words that come out of our mouth that go through our thinking process?
Christ says that that is a mirror of what’s going on inside, what’s going on inside emotionally, what really are our true values, and our beliefs, and our attitudes can have a tendency to come out especially when we’re under pressure. So I think we need to think about that.
What is it that comes out of us? Because out of that abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. So I wonder if we shouldn’t put this into practice.
There’s a beautiful Psalm that helps us, I think, especially to consider this very thing. It’s in Psalms 141:3, here’s, I think, a special prayer that we can pray to God to help us as we strive to be the right kind of people and make sure what’s inside is coming out in the way that it needs to. Psalms 141:3, it says this, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips.” And it’s more than just the things that we say. It’s really what Christ said what’s inside, so that ultimately, we’re putting in our minds the things that we should so that ultimately what comes out is exactly that. What is Godly? What is right? What is Christ-like?
So let’s consider this prayer and set a guard over our mouths and more importantly, over our minds, so that we can strive to have the kind of mind and the kind of thinking that God would have us have. Philippines 2 says, “Let this mind be in you the mind that was in Christ.” So let’s have that kind of thinking, so that out of the abundance of the heart our mouths will truly speak.
