The Word To Live By:5-17-26
Phil Waggoner
With the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach will be satisfied; he will be satisfied with the product of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18:20,21
The Word To Live By: As my high school football coach used to say, “One more time, men!” Once a week, after a grueling full pads practice, we would run 10 one hundred-yard wind sprints. (Unless he detected that we weren’t giving full effort. Then we ran until we did.) We ran them in groups of three. And he started the next group when the group in front of you hit the fifty-yard mark. Which meant you had about 30-45 seconds between each set. When we got to number nine, he would shout out, “One more time, men!” We hated that day when we had to run those, but I will tell you this - when it was crunch time in the fourth quarter and we broke the huddle and sprinted to the line of scrimmage and fired off the ball like it was the first quarter, it took the will out of the defensive. It didn’t matter if they didn’t want to give up; they couldn’t stop the power left in us. I know, I know, there’s nothing more boring than a 78-year-old man rambling about the good old days of his high school football career, but I have a point to all of this. My intention today was to move off this subject (the importance of your confession), but I read this scripture in Proverbs 13 this morning and felt like I just had to write about the importance of the things you say, “One more time!” You will thank me when you are in the fourth quarter of a situation in your life and you still have a living hope that God is going to come through for you because you have laid the foundation for a victory. Proverbs 13:2,3, “People eat well from the fruit of their words, but the treacherous have an appetite only for violence. People who watch their mouths guard their lives, but those who open their lips are ruined.” Your words produce fruit that you live on in your life, and eternity for that matter. Romans 10:9,10 says, “If you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord” and in your heart you have faith that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Trusting with the heart leads to righteousness and confessing with the mouth leads to salvation.” Proverbs 4:23-24 teaches us to, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth and put devious speech far from you.” What would devious speech be? Words that are contrary to the promises of God. Enjoy sweet fruit in your life, not bitter, rotten fruit.
Read through the Bible in a year: Acts 24:10-27; Judges 21; Psalms 46;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 17, Luke 24:28-53, 1 Peter 4
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160