The Word To LIve By: 5-13-26
Phil Waggoner
The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart of the wicked lacks value. The lips of the righteous nourish many people, but fools who lack sense will die. Proverbs 10:11,20-21
The Word To Live By: To begin with, you are the righteousness of God in Christ if you believe in your heart that Jesus is your Savior and admit publicly that He is Lord. (Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…” 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”) Therefore, your mouth is a fountain of life, and your tongue can speak words of value and produce nourishing fruit in other people’s lives. On the other hand, they can cause violence, be of no value and even cause you to fail. (Death is symbolic of failure.) What you say matters. Jesus said that your mouth speaks what fills your heart (Luke 6:45). What you say about yourself and what you say about others matters. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and it produces fruit (Proverbs 18:20,21). The question becomes, “What kind of fruit do you want to produce in your life and in the life of people you come in contact with?” Here’s an observation I’ve made; call it old man wisdom. People who are constantly complaining and bad mouthing their jobs, their bosses, their neighbors and everything else they come in contact with are miserable and consistently unhappy. They seem to have an abundance of problems and never quite get over the hump of failure in their lives. Just an observation. I’m going to look at James 3 tomorrow and see if that has anything to do with our quality of life.
Read through the Bible in a year: Acts 21:1-36; Judges 16; Psalms 42;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 13, Luke 22:37-71, James 5
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160