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KEEP YOUR TONGUE – 02/15/19

By February 15, 2019Daily Devotionals

KEEP YOUR TONGUE
February 15, 2019

Prayer: Dear Lord, please send Your Holy Spirit to guard my tongue. May I only say words that edify and build others up. May I be an example of avoiding gossip and useless talk. Thank You for Your help. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

Scripture: Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.  He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” 1 Peter 3:9-12 NIV

Throughout the past few years, we have been flooded with information and pictures of celebrities in turmoil. Week after week their faces were on the covers of almost every magazine cover in the grocery line. Talk shows and so-called entertainment “news” shows report nightly on the affairs, relationships, divorces, pregnancies, break-ups, make-ups, slip-ups and any other tidbit of pain or gossip that they can get their hands on; and Americans eat it up.

Our country spends millions of dollars and thousands of hours reading and researching people and their lives. Why? For entertainment? How can we define other people’s pain as our entertainment?  For knowledge? Knowledge that would get us where or what? To celebrities that are chased around with little or no privacy so that they would do what for us? Why is gossip such a big business?

I wonder what kind of transformation would take place if there was at least one Christian magazine sitting in the rack of every check-out line at our stores. What if there were Scripture verses in bold headlines that shoppers could stare at or devotions they could thumb through while they waited. I wonder what transformation would occur if we started with five minutes of Bible reading instead of watching that one story on the entertainment show.

What would happen if we worked our way up to reading or praying during the whole thirty minutes we would have watched a particular gossip TV show? What would happen if we cared more for what was happening in the lives of our neighbors than the celebrities? What if we paid more attention to our relationships and potential relationships around us than those of the famous?

Gossip is a deadly weapon. It can kill a reputation or a relationship faster than you can say, “Have you heard…?” Is gossip a problem at your school? Have you seen the damage it causes your students? Is there just as much gossip going on between staff as there is between students? Have you ever been the target of gossip? How does it feel to be talked about behind your back? Have you ever spread a rumor later to find out is was not true? How did that feel? My prayer for you is that you would seek and spread the Truth. Now that is news we can use!

Copyright Kathy Branzell.  Email [email protected]