 All right, hey, Radiant Church. Great to be with you this weekend. And if you're watching online, we just want to welcome you and say thank you so much for being part of our Radiant family and Portage. I want to say hello to you as well. We love you. I know I was there last week. You probably don't recognize me. I don't have that grizzly Adam's beard anymore. I was growing that for like two weeks. It was pretty thick actually. So anyways, great to be with you for those who are in the room. Just an honor always to be able to share the pulpit with Pastor Lee. And as Pastor Ben said, I hope that the Sikh season has been a blessing to you. I feel like for me personally, the fact that the restaurants are closed is a good easing into the end of a fast. Last year, I just hung out at 10, 10 for like nine hours. And the manager tried to ask me to leave, and I just dipped him in soy sauce and ate him. So it was not a good, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I have self-control. But yeah, Sikh was just so powerful for me and corporately for our church. And so hopefully we were able to take advantage of that. And so I'm speaking this weekend in a standalone message. And I spoke also on the last week. It's the last weekend of January, on the last weekend of December, like right before 2020. And that message was called by way of reminder. And I felt like God wanted to kind of remind us of some things for 2021. And one was that God was in control. Two was that our words are powerful. And three is that our past doesn't determine our future. And I didn't have time like I wanted to unpack that second dynamic of really our words, our tongue, our speech, our confession, and how powerful that is for us as believers, as followers of Jesus, and how we're literally framing our world with our words. And so I'm gonna talk about that again tonight. And so if you brought your Bibles, turn to Proverbs chapter 18, two places, Proverbs chapter 18 and James chapter three, Proverbs 18, verse 21. Now there are countless scriptures, like so many that refer to our speech, our words, our confession, what we say. Proverbs is full, Psalms has tons. You know, set a guard o' Lord over my mouth, keep watch at the door of my lips. Psalm 141 verse three, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. And just, I mean, Matthew 12, Matthew 15, Mark 11. But Proverbs 18, 21 is just the summation of it. It says, look, death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit. It means this, every time you speak, every time you open your mouth, every time you frame or structure a sentence, you are choosing with what you say to bring life to a situation, to a person, or to bring death. And those who do that, you're going to eat the fruit of what you say. And so as I was studying for this, my son Eric, him and I enjoy car rides to school in the morning, recognize that Proverbs 18 verse 21 is a core scripture for our family. We have five Zonervan family values and Proverbs 18, 21 sort of encapsulates one of them. And so Eric was like, I know that scripture. And Eric asked if he could share the Zonervan family values with the church. So I'm gonna invite my son, Eric John Zonervan to come on up on the stage, bro. Let's go. So my little future preacher man here is gonna knock out our Zonervan values. You ready, bro? God is at the center of everything we do, Acts 17, 28. We live our lives according to God's word and His wisdom, not the world's Romans 12, two. Because we speak words that bring life to others and over every situation. Proverbs 18, 21. We are generous people with our time talents and our treasures. Two Corinthians, nine, seven. Because we love Jesus, we love people. Every person matters to God, so every person matters to us. One John 412. Nice, bro. How do you do, man? Good job, Eric. Thanks, man. So proud of you, bro. That was brave. You crushed it. You crushed it. So my teenage daughters know those too, but unfortunately they didn't wanna come on the stage. With me. All right, if you write Rival Center James chapter three and we're gonna camp out there for a little bit and let's just pray before we read God's word. We thank you, Father, that you're with us, that you said that the entrance of your word, gives light and understanding to your people, that the grass withers, the flowers fade, but your word endures forever. So God, open our hearts, our minds, and our spirits to receive from you, the Holy Spirit, the author of what we hear and what we say, God. We invite you now in Jesus' name. And everyone said, amen. I'm gonna read the first 12 verses of James three. It's, he's speaking, saying, not many of you should become teachers. My brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness, for we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man, able to also bridle his whole body. For we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us and we guide their whole bodies as well. And look at the ships also, although they're large and driven by strong winds, they're guided by a very small rudder, wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and is itself set on fire by hell. Every kind of beast and bird, reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison for with it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of him. From the same mouth can come blessing and cursing. My brother, these things ought not be so. For does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. This is an entire passage, just about the power of our words, the power of our tongue, the significance of the things that we say. And I said, when I spoke a month or so ago, it makes sense that our words are powerful because we're created in the image of God. And we know in Genesis chapter one that the earth was void, the spirit was hovering over it. There was nothing there and God spoke light and there was light and God spoke and the land was separated from the sea. The power of God's word literally created every single thing that we see and our universe hangs on the balance of the words of God. And so as we are people created in the image of God, our words also are powerful. Our tongue is the most powerful part of our body. You may think it's your guns, you may think it's your quads, you may think it's your glutes. I don't know, but I'm telling you, your tongue is the most powerful force that you have. And so I want to just look at what James says and hopefully help us in our prayers. My goal is not to get up here and be like, stop doing this and stop doing as much as just let's look at it and let's see what we can do as believers. So he starts out with a warning about being a teacher. He says, look, you're gonna be judged with a stricter judgment than other people, literally people like me, like pastors. He says, because when you are on a platform and you communicate the word of God, you have influence and you're going to be held to a high standard for that. So that's why as pastors, we need to fear the word of God. We need to tremble at the word of God. It's not just, oh, I'm a good communicator. I've got a cool story about a squirrel. So I want to be a pastor. Like you want to know, like this is what God's called me to do. And he says, because you're going to be judged. And I think the other part of that is because our role as pastors involves our tongue. That's like what we do. We speak, we minister, we counsel. And so he's saying, look, there's a danger to that. And then he goes on and he says, we stumble in many ways, all of us. And that's good news to some degree. Nobody's perfect. Raise your hand in here if you've at some point said something you wished you hadn't said. Come on, Portage, three people. Seriously, no, I'm just kidding. We all have, right? We all stumble in many ways. We all have things we wish we hadn't done, wish we hadn't said, all struggles that we have. And then James says, but if you meet someone who can control what they say, he's perfect. He's able to bridle his whole body. Now that word perfect really should mean probably mature because we know only one man in the history of civilization was ever perfect. Jesus is the only one who's never said something he wished he hadn't said, never said something he regretted. And I would submit to you, he never was married. No, I'm just kidding. That's a joke, a bad joke. He would have stayed perfect, obviously. But he says, look, if you can control this thing, if this is under the subject, subjection of the Holy Spirit, it is going to control your life. You're gonna be able to bridle your life. And so the first thing James says is your tongue, even though it's little is powerful. And he gives us some illustrations there. Look what he says. He says, for we can put bits into the mouths of horses. Now I know we're in Richland and we know what a horse is, but I'm gonna explain it for Portage because they're like city people. So a horse is like a four-legged animal. Think Budweiser commercial or something. Okay, anyway. So you have a horse, right? And it's this big, huge animal, but it says, James says, you can take a little two-inch piece of steel and you put it in the mouth and then you put a piece of leather around that and you can control the trajectory of the entire horse. Like you can control it. It does what you want. It goes in the direction that you want it to. And he says your tongue is the same way. It may be small, but it's literally controlling the direction of your life. And then he says, look at boats, ships. They're huge. They have to go through tough conditions, big waves. And it's just a very small rudder that changes or alters the course of the direction of the boat. And if the pilot can do that, he can steer it any direction he wants to go. And so he says, just like those are small members or small things, but they control something larger, that's what he's saying about our tongues. Like they're not the largest part of our body, but they by far are the most powerful. Your words are powerful. And we know this to be true. Look at our lives. Look at the things that have happened so far in our lives. So much of where we are today is a result of what we've said, of what we've communicated. Think about the job that you have. How did you get the job that you have? And you can say, look, I went to school and I knew someone. And there's plenty of people though who have gone to school, been educated, no people that don't have a job. I'm gonna submit to you that many of the reasons you have the job you have is because of what you said in an interview, how you handled yourself, how you presented yourself, how you answered questions. The very fact that you can make a living is dependent in some way upon what you say. Think about books that have inspired you. Think of speeches that have been given the power of words. How many of you know if I'm gonna write a book and I'm gonna say, you know, today it was kinda cool, but you know, I was kinda whacked too. You're not gonna buy that, right? But if I was to say it was the best of times and it was the worst of times, you'd buy that book, am I right? You'd be like, wow, that sounds amazing. Sounds way better. I mean, it sounds way better to say I have a dream that one day on the Red Hills of Georgia, former slave owners and former slaves will sit together at the table of brotherhood. I mean, it sounds better. Those words are more powerful than, hey man, maybe we should just get all, all get along or something. Like, it's more powerful. There's something about what we say and how we say it that shapes our world, that changes the trajectory of our lives. And I just want to start by saying, we have to be aware of that. Look at your spouse if you're married. How did you get married? Like, you had to communicate something, I'm guessing, right? Some of how you are married and stayed married has something to do with the words that you said. I literally have no idea how I got kinda to marry me at this point, I really don't. She's so far out of my league, we're at Meyer once and the clerk tried to put a like divider between our groceries. And I was like, oh, we're together, ma'am. It's a true story. Look, was I a little nervous on our first date? Yes, for sure. But before the apps even got there, I was like, dang girl, you're from Nashville cause you're only 10, I see. And then she was like, will you marry me? And I said, sure. And then we've been happily ever after. But seriously, how you got married, how you are in a relationship, so much dependent on the words that you say. Think about encouragement. Think about things that have been said over you. Has there been a time in your life when someone said, I believe in you. I can see that in you. There's a gift in you. God's gonna, and the words that people use, the words that we use are so powerful in our lives. But then James goes on and he says something else. He says, our words are also dangerous. Look at verse five. He says, so also the tongue is a small member. Yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And the tongue is a fire. A world of unrighteousness, set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of our life and set on fire by hell. Tell us how you really feel, James. Crazy. It's a bold statement. But he says, look, your words, yes, they're powerful and they have the ability to build up, but just like you can speak life or you can speak death, you have within the power of your tongue the ability to set things on fire, the ability to tear things down, the ability to speak death, destruction and decay over yourself, your situation or over other people. We make that choice. And the reason I feel so strongly about this message is because I believe we are slipping into a season and into a time where it is becoming normal to tear other people down. It is becoming normal. Maybe if we don't say it, we type it, we put it on social media and there's all of this division and backbiting and slander that's so easy. And James is saying, look, a little thing like your tongue can literally set a forest on fire. It can literally burn relationships that we have. It can have awful effects on the trajectory of our lives. And we've all experienced that. We've all had things said to us, maybe about us coworkers that are gossiping, things that have been said about you. There's some of us who every time we look in the mirror, we're reminded of a word that was spoken, maybe by our dad or a sentence by our mom or comment from a teacher and it stays with us. We're drawn to the negatives. We know that. Like someone could say something nice about you. Oh, you look nice today. Oh, yeah, thanks. And then someone could say, look at your pants. And then what would we remember? We'd remember the bad things. We'd remember the negative things. That's unfortunately many times how we're wired. And so we know that words can have a powerful effect on our lives, children who hear things from people that should love them and cherish them and protect them. Like I wish you weren't my child or you're stupid or you were a mistake. I mean, those things happen in our world. And those words, they cut. Proverbs 12 says that there are words that pierce like a sword, rash words that we can say, things that we can communicate that literally pierce like a sword, but there's healing in the words of the wise. And so we have to recognize our words are dangerous. We have to be careful what we say. I'm telling you as a pastor for 15 years, I've seen many, many times people affected for decades because of something that was said over them, something that was communicated to them that may not be true, that may not obviously isn't God but it has affected their lives so negatively. So we make that choice. Are we going to speak life? Are we going to speak death? And I wanna ask you this, what do you bring? What do you personally bring to every situation you enter? Think about that. Ask yourself, when I go to work, what am I bringing? Am I bringing life with what I say? Am I bringing life with what I speak to others and about others? Or am I the one who's constantly negative, constantly looking for ways to cut others down or talk bad or complain or whatever it is? Like that is a real question we have to ask ourselves but in the rest of the time that I have today I wanna just look at what do we do so that we can speak life? What does it mean to speak life? What does it mean to have the trajectory of our lives go in the direction that God has for us? I wanna help us in a couple of ways. And so I'm gonna give you a couple of things. You can write these down. How do we choose life? The first thing is I believe we have to cut out complaining from our lives. Complaining, I believe, is one of the primary ways that we derail and that we fall short of God's best for us. It is a trap that we fall into. It's so easy to do. It is usually the byproduct of our fallen nature is to be complainers. I mean, we don't even think about it half the time but we're complaining about the weather. We're complaining about our boss. We're complaining about our job. We're complaining about our situation. We're complaining that there's 300 channels but there's nothing on TV. There's complaining that I have a walk-in closet like I literally walk into it and yet there's nothing to wear. Like these are things that come so natural to us and so when I say complaining, here's what I'm saying, is we have to be, remember that gratitude, thankfulness is the absolute antidote to complaining and to negativity in our lives is if you can remain grateful. The Bible says we enter into His courts with thanksgiving and we enter into His gates with praise. There is something about staying grateful, staying thankful and refusing to have entitlement, refusing to let complaining become a part of your life and I want to, and I'm gonna teach us the difference between complaining and what the Bible calls lamenting but complaining is simply that, it's just saying I should have this, I should have that. This isn't fair, that's not right and we question the character and the goodness of God and that's exactly what Israel did when God literally rescued them from Egypt. They were slaves for 400 years, they see the 10 plagues, they see the miracle hand of God, Moses leads them across the Red Sea and then they're hungry, they're not sure where they're gonna eat and instantly they turn to complaining. They say you brought us here to kill us, you should have let us die in Egypt, we wanna go back, we miss the onions, we miss the leaks, then God provides manna and they start complaining about that. We're sick of manna, we wanna go on keto, we need meat, we can't have all this bread, too many carbs and then they complain, I mean every single time they're complaining and God doesn't just say, hey Moses I need to talk to you, that people are kind of complaining, God says my people have rejected me. They question the character of God with their complaining and we have to understand and I tell my kids this, I say until you realize that you deserve nothing, you won't be able to be thankful for anything. Like that's what a generation needs to hear if we can clap for that, yeah. Listen, if you walk through life, I should have this, that's my right, that should be mine, it's not fair, why do they have that and I don't? You will never be thankful for the things that God has given you but as soon as you resolve in your heart that I'm gonna be grateful for what I have, what you have will become enough in your life and God can open the door for increase and God can trust you with more contentment is the key. Doesn't mean we have to be, we can't strive for more, doesn't mean we can't believe for more but as soon as you start to complain or feel entitled, you're already removing yourself from the goodness and grace of God. He says, look, I separate myself from that, from the proud but I'm drawn to the humble, I'm drawn to those who have a contrite heart and so complaining is when you accuse God and you literally attack his character. But lamenting, so here's what I wanted to say, you can read in the Bible and you can say, John, well what about like half the Psalms, like David's kind of complaining and David's sort of saying to God, this isn't fair and this isn't right and Saul shouldn't be trying to kill me and there's other instances in scripture so I want to just quickly say there is a difference between what the Bible calls lamenting and what is complaining. A lament literally means an outward expression of emotion, even agony. Another word you could say is wailing, like that's a lament. But it is done in a way that still honors God, allows people us to be emotional and transparent but it honors God, it's within the confines of recognizing the goodness and the character of God. So what I mean by that is this, we don't have to be robots, we don't have to go through life saying, I am still happy, everything's fine, God is good all the time. Like that's not what God is saying. We can have emotions, we can have vulnerability but when we complain, we're saying, God this is your fault, God this is what you did. When we lament, we're saying, God this is what I'm experiencing but this is what I know is true. This is what I believe about your character. This is what your word has promised. A lament simply says, God this is what's happening but this is what I know to be true. This is what I know your faithfulness is going to prevail in. And you see that in the life of David. You see that in the life of Job. If you've never read the first few chapters of Job, it's brutal. He loses everything. Like literally, servants are coming back and saying, hey, all your livestock were destroyed. All of your crops were eaten by locusts. Your camels were stolen from you. It's like one after another. Literally you read it, it says why he was still speaking, another came. And then it ends with someone saying, your sons and daughters were gathered together in a home. A wind came, it fell on them. And I'm the only one who survived. Your sons and your daughters are dead. And the Bible says that Job tore his robe, put ashes on his head, fell down. And he said, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Like he grieved and he was saved. And he was sad and he was hurt. But he refused to blame God. He refused to complain about God's provision in his life. And then you see the radical transformation and you see God's faithfulness through that. But I think the best example is in literally the book of Lamentations. It's with Jeremiah. And in that book, Jerusalem is besieged. The city is laid waste. The people have been taken captive. Jeremiah had been trying to warn his people, God's people. And then he notices and sees the literal destruction of every single thing that he ever cared about. Every single thing that he ever saw, God promise, has literally been destroyed and taken away from him. And I just want you to listen to the difference between complaining and a lament. So it says this, this is Jeremiah's words. He says, I have become the laughing stock of all people. The burden of their songs all day long. I'm filled with bitterness. I've been sated with wormwood. My teeth grind on gravel. I cower in ashes. My soul is bereft of peace. I've forgotten what happiness is. So I say, gone is my glory. Gone is my expectation from the Lord. Remember my affliction and my bitterness. The wormwood and the gall. My soul continually thinks of what has happened and is bowed down within me. You can hear the pain. You can hear the hurt. You can hear the frustration. And God's okay with that. God's not saying you don't ever have to have emotions. You can't ever be real. You can't ever be transparent. But then listen, this is how Jeremiah ends it. But this I call to mind. And therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They're new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait for the salvation of the Lord. That is the beauty of a lament where you are emotional. You have questions. You're not sure what's happening, but you come around and say, but God, you're faithful. The mercies of the Lord are new every day and we refuse to allow the enemy to bring worst case scenarios, fear and bitterness into our hearts. And instead we press into the Lord in those moments. I wanna encourage you in your prayers. You don't have to be fake. You don't have to say, okay, I'm actually, I'm happy. But at the end of the day, remind yourself of the promises of God, the goodness of his character, that he'll never leave you. He'll never forsake you. You're not alone. He said, in this world, you will have tribulation. Like we're not promised an easy life. We're not promised everything's gonna go great. We're not promised we're not gonna lose people. We love and we're not gonna have sickness and are like, those are not promised to us. What is promised to us is that you will never go through that alone. God is with you. God is for you and God is always enough. So that's the difference between complaining and lamenting. So we can't be complainers, but we can be real with God. Second thing we need to do to choose life with our words is we need to speak God's truth over every situation. We need to speak the truth of God over what we're going through. And here's what I mean. Job 22 says this, you shall declare a thing, like you should say something, and that thing will be established for you. And so what I see many times in Christian circles is people will just say whatever they're feeling, say whatever their circumstances are, say whatever's happening in that moment, and that is not faith. I'm saying prophesy to what is happening in your life. Speak to what is happening in your life. The truth of who God is and what he's promised. And here's what that looks like. People will say, and again, this is controversial in some charismatic circles. So people will say if they're sick or if they're feeling overwhelmed or they're feeling even depressed, they'll say, well, I can't say that because that's not faith. So they think a faith confession is I'm not sick. I'm not sick. I'm not sick. I'm not sick. I'm telling you, faith does not deny the circumstances that you're in currently. Faith creates a greater dimension, a greater reality for your circumstances to operate in. That's what a faith confession does. That's what worship does. Sometimes when we sing, we don't always feel it. We don't always believe it, but you sing it sometimes because you believe it and you sing it sometimes until you believe it. That's what Christians do. We walk by faith and not by sight. And so we don't say, I'm not sick when you really are sick. That's denying the circumstances. No, I'm not saying you should walk around saying, I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm sick. What am I saying you should do? Confess the truth of God's word. God, I thank you that by your stripes, I am healed and that there is healing in your wings and that God, you died on a cross for my salvation and I trust you and I believe you're working all things together for my good. We don't say, I'm not sad. I'm not sad. I'm not sad. We say, God, I thank you that you said there is a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness and I choose to worship even when I don't understand and I choose to trust you even when it's hard. That's what a faith confession does and it creates the ability for a new reality in your life. But too many Christians going to heaven, well-meaning, but they just think I gotta grip my teeth and I gotta bear it and I gotta wait till this is done and I gotta somehow just ride this out until the bitter end and I'm just saying, begin to confess what you want to see happen in your life. I don't pray over my kids what's currently happening. I pray what I believe God has promised in his word that they're going to serve him and they're going to love him and that I hasn't seen, ear as and heard as and even entered into their minds the things that God has prepared for them and I pray in faith for that to happen. I pray in faith for what I want to see and I'm not only moved by what's happening around me. We don't deny our circumstances, that's not faith but we also don't have to be victim to what's happening. We can speak life over our situations. Don't be formed by your feelings. Don't allow your feelings to dictate what you believe. There's a scripture, Mark 11, 23, 24, where it says, Jesus says, look, have faith in God for surely I say to you, if you say to this mountain be removed and be cast into the sea and do not doubt in your heart but believe what you say is going to happen, it will be done for you. And sometimes people can take that out of contacts, people can say, well, you can't really move mountains. Here's what I want to share with you about that, a revelation I believe the Lord showed me. It says if you say to this mountain and believe in your heart, it will be moved for you. And what I want you to hear when you read that verse is this, what you say and what you believe is stronger than what you feel and what you think. Sometimes we don't feel like it's gonna happen, sometimes our thoughts are not taken captive but if ultimately I know what I believe but I also know there's some times where I'm thinking some things that aren't true, that aren't good and that aren't God and I'm not gonna allow those to dictate the direction of my life. I know what I believe and so that's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say what I believe and my feelings and some of the thoughts that I have, I'm gonna take those captive and I'm not even gonna give those the platform of being spoken from my mouth. Does that make sense? Okay, so I wanna just help us in this. We don't complain but we can lament. We don't deny circumstances but we can speak faith over the circumstances that we have. There is a big difference between being thankful for everything and being thankful in everything. You don't have to be thankful for everything that's happened in your life but you can be thankful and grateful in every circumstance and it will change. It will change the direction and the trajectory of your life. It's how Paul was able to say despite being beaten, despite being imprisoned, despite being shipwrecked, despite being starved, despite being literally beaten to within inch of his life. What did he say? He said, I may be hard-pressed on every side but I'm not crushed and I may be perplexed but I'm not in despair and I may be persecuted but I've not been forsaken and I may be struck down but I have not and will not be destroyed. Your perspective changes everything and when you can see the goodness of God even in the midst of hard situations that faith will rise up in you. If you don't feel it, it doesn't matter, keep saying it. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. What you're saying you will build faith for. And so I talked about worship. There's some times where I'm in worship and I'm singing songs and I'm struggling. Like God, I'll give you everything and I surrender it all to you and then in my head I'm thinking there are things I haven't really surrendered. I'm still worrying about this, this finance piece, my kids, whatever. And I don't say, and now I'm a huge hypocrite and I should stop singing and I should resign and I'm probably not even a Christian. I don't do that. I keep singing it. I'll sing it louder. I'll sing in the middle of a storm. I'll sing a little louder, whatever it is. I will keep saying it because I don't have to feel it for it to be true in my life. I have to say it, I have to believe it and I have to say, God, this is true and I will confess it and I will say it and I will not allow my feelings or my wrong thoughts to dictate any part of my life. That's how we speak life over our situations. Third thing is this, refusing to retaliate. Listen to what James says in verses eight through 10. It says, no human being can tame the tongue. It's restless, it's full of deadly poison. Why? Because the way that we bless the Lord our Father, but with it we'll curse people who are made in the likeness of God. You're gonna have people who say things about you that aren't true. You're gonna have people who say things about you that are hurtful and you're gonna have opportunity to say those things about others. But James says that's not how it's supposed to be. We're not supposed to say we love God with our mouths, but then tear down other people that are made in his image. Tear down other people that he died on the cross for. Refuse to speak evil of anyone. Titus three verse two, that's highlighted in my Bible. Speak evil of no one. I remember when God just blasted that on the page for me. Doesn't matter if they don't look like you, act like you, vote like you, they're made in the image of God. Every person you see at work, every person you see in your neighborhood, every person you see at church is made in the image of God and God died for them. And you have an opportunity to speak life over those people or to speak death. And they may not speak life over you. They may not encourage you. They may not be a voice of goodness in your life, but it doesn't matter. The Bible says we don't retaliate. We make room for the Lord to move. We bless those who persecute us. We pray for those who spitefully abuse us. That's the hard part of being a Christian. We're kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving, even as God in Christ has forgiven us. And I feel like this portion is so important for us as believers. We cannot get caught in the web of the cycle of vengeance, the cycle of, well, you did this, so I'm gonna do that. Well, you said that, so I'm gonna type this. It's exasperated by Facebook and Twitter and social media. I'll be honest with you and I'm just gonna say this. I have, and I'm not a victim, but I have someone and who is saying things about me online right now that aren't good, they're not nice. I don't believe that they're true. And it's been ongoing for a while and it's easy to say it doesn't bother me and I don't care and I know that's not true. But words are powerful and it is hurtful and I've asked the Lord, like I'm not a perfect leader, I know that and I've asked the Lord if there's things that I need to be made aware of that the Holy Spirit needs to refine in me, I'm open to that, but I don't believe this is who I am. And have there been times that I wanna retaliate and have there been times that I wanna say that's not true and you're lying and you know that. And I have people in my life who are praying for me and standing beside me and I was reading in Luke 6 and I was just so convicted. And also when we had that message on humility at seek that's just like God, I pray blessings over their family, I pray blessings over his work, I pray that you would open doors of opportunity for him. Like that's what believers do, we don't retaliate, we speak life over every person and over every situation. James says, does a spring forth, spring forth, both freshwater and salt, can a fig tree bear olives, can a grape vine produce figs? I love James because he never explains anything. He just says it and then like drops the mic. And I think there's a reason for that. I love that it doesn't give a list. So here's what you need to do. Like you need to try really hard and you need to get a swear jar actually and every time you know, put money in there and then like give it to somebody you hate and that's gonna be your motivation. Like it's like, he says, no, there's something wrong with the well. There's something wrong with the root system of the tree. We don't tape good fruit to a bad tree and say, well, it looks better now. And that's sometimes what we wanna do. Okay, I'm not gonna gossip, I'm not gonna complain. I'm not gonna, but what I want to remind you of is that ultimately it's a hard issue. It's not us trying harder. It's not us exerting all of our willpower. It's not a swear jar. It's asking the Holy Spirit to change your heart. Jesus said, out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth speaks. So if you find yourself being negative, if you find yourself cutting others down, if you find yourself being divisive, it's not about like, okay, I'm not gonna do that. It's about God, what's in my heart? Are you willing to be vulnerable? Are you willing to ask God to really examine you? Because everything you put in is eventually gonna come out. And so I would ask us, what are we feeding on? What are we putting into our heart? What are we allowing access to our hearts? Because that is what's gonna be communicated. And you may be able by willpower to change how you talk for a couple of days, maybe some of us a couple of hours. But ultimately, what's coming in is gonna come out. And that's why we need a savior. No man can tame the tongue. It's not something we can do. It's something God has to do. It's not something we can make happen. It's something we surrender to God. I wanna ask you to stand with me if you would. And I just wanna pray for us as we close. And again, I'm not gonna say, okay, here's the six things we're gonna do. And you're gonna make a list. And you're not gonna complain. You're not gonna do this and this. I don't know how helpful that would be. But I am gonna ask us all to just invite the Holy Spirit to examine our heart. Where are the areas that we need him to illuminate? We need him to bring his grace and his peace so that we can speak life so that we don't choose death. So that we're not sub-marining our own future. So we're not cutting down the progress of others. But instead, we're lining our words with what God has said. We're lining our confession with his truth. Some of us don't need a swear jar. We need a savior. We need to really give our hearts to the Lord. I just feel led to give us an opportunity. If you're in here and our eyes are closed, our heads are bowed, and you need that to be a reality in your life. Like you've gone through the motions, but you've never given Jesus your heart. That's all he wants. That's the only way that you can change. It's the only way that we'll see a difference. And you don't have to be ashamed. I'm not gonna embarrass you. I'm not gonna call anyone out. But if you need to give your heart to Jesus, if you know I'm not in a right relationship with God, I wanna pray with you and I just want you to raise your hand right now. No one's looking around and say, that's me. Raise your hand and we'll pray together. And today will be a new day in the kingdom. Is there anyone in this room? Thank you. Anyone else? It's between you and the Lord. You know you need to give your heart to him. Thank you. Father, right now we surrender our hearts to you. We give you access, God, to even those tough places, even those darker places that you want to illuminate, God. And we say, Father, you can have it all. And even if we don't always feel that we say it, God, we give you permission. I thank you for every hand that's raised. I thank you that you're meeting them where they are, God, that that step of faith is allowing your spirit to come and to make their hearts brand new in Jesus' name. And God, for those of us who are Christians, I ask you, Holy Spirit, reveal each day the path you have for us, God, that we would weigh our words. Are they life? Are they death? Are they bearing fruit? Are they poison? That God, everything we say would bring glory to you and to your son, Jesus. We love you and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.