“Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” Proverbs 15:4
How does one know if they have a deceitful tongue? If they practice one, two or three of the things deceitful defines.
-Deceit (ful)-fraud, trickery, lying.
-another definition of which I love states deceitful as being marked by deliberate deceptiveness especially by pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another, also known as the double-tongued. WOW!
I might be totally off, but when I read that from a spiritual perspective, it has false preaching, false Christianity all over it. Basically, it defines one who pretends to love Jesus, all while acting under the influence of their flesh.
Would you let the Holy Spirit walk around in your heart for a moment making sure He does not find any of that deceit within you?
It is so easy for us to overlook things in our lives because we often believe it does not apply to us, but if we are honest, we would find out that at some point we have all had a deceitful tongue.
We might not think that we are frauds, but if we have intentionally used deception in our words to injure someone, than we at one point have been a fraud. Have you ever had a friend who turned out to be a fraud? I know for me when I have gotten really angry at G I have used fraud like speech to hurt him. Yes I have, and YES I admit that! Honesty-gotta have it!
Look at trickery; it is a verbal misrepresentation with the intention to take advantage of someone, for instance someone who tricks you into giving them money, or a preacher, even a teacher who misrepresents God’s word or uses it to draw people to his or her self instead of God. What about a friend or friends who tricked you with their words even their actions into believing they were a certain way, all for you to find out they weren’t sincere? We use trickery so many times in order to get things we want. People even use Bible talk in order to trick us.
Now for lying, lying has become so common in our world today we can barely even tell the difference. We lie to our spouses, our parents, our friends, our children. We lie about who we are, what we have, what we say, and what we have done, and all for what, attention, praise, significance, and acceptance?
I can think of many more reasons why we lie; to stay out of trouble, to avoid paying the consequences. We lie to get out of doing things; we lie so we don’t have to talk to someone. (You know like when your child answers the phone and you begin saying I am not here, I am a asleep, or I’m sick.) How about when we see someone calling and we don’t want to talk so we don’t answer and then when they confront us we say, Oh sorry I didn’t hear my phone, although it was in my hand, or I was in the other room.
What about when we make up lies about other people, or when we make up an accusation about someone and then lie to them by telling them someone else said it. Women how many times have you lied about spending money, in order to avoid an argument? Men how many times have you lied to your wife telling them you were at work when you really weren’t or that you only have so much money yet you have a whole other bank account that they have no clue about. Friends we have become so use to lying we can’t even tell our friends that their lifestyle is leading them further away from Christ and causing others to stumble.
We lie about our affairs, our drinking problems, our food addictions, our drug addiction, our pornography obsession, our shopping addictions, our faith, even our families. We can even go as far as lying in our jobs in order to move up. We make up stories, (like the time I was in kindergarten and told my friends that my dad stood by my door with a shotgun, ya, I know, although I have no recollection of that, they say I did, and it was bad!)
I will be honest I have sure done my fair share of lying. Anyone else?
Do you know what all these things do to us and others? It crushes our spirit.
So let me ask you, do you have a deceitful tongue?
Prayer: Lord make us each aware if we have any deceitfulness in our hearts that spill over into our words. Do not allow us to overlook this area, Lord make the conviction so strong within us that not one of us can ignore it. Amen
