TUNED IN
February 24, 2021
Prayer: Oh Lord! I need You to guard my lips. Please help me today to honor You and remember others are watching to see if I really live out what I speak. Please guide my words to bring Your truth to someone seeking for You. Please bring my co-workers and students to know You as Lord and Savior. Thank You. Amen.
Scripture: Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. I Peter 3:10 NIV
I usually keep my radios tuned to Christian stations. I enjoy Christian lyrics and view it as a decision to worship while keeping what enters into my ears pure, pleasing and glorifying to God. So imagine my surprise when I was in my garage and the Billy Joel song, “Only the Good Die Young” was playing.
I tried to think how in the world this could be remotely appropriate to be played on a Christian station. Some popular songs are really written as songs to God and are played on both Pop and Christian stations. Christian bands such as Mercy Me and Third Day have had many of their songs hit the Pop charts, but “Only the Good Die Young” was definitely NOT one of them!
Of course you know that the radio dial had been changed somehow – that song was not coming from one of our favorite stations, but it got me to thinking about our mouths. I pray that your friends and neighbors and especially your family know that you are a Christian. A surprising number of people you are not close to know that you attend church, you have a “Jesus fish” (as one of my friends calls it) on your car, you may have even said to them, “I’ll pray for you” or “I just pray that…” in a conversation.
Whether you like it or not, people have expectations of what they think they should hear coming out of our mouths. Through our language, gossip, inappropriate jokes, judgment, etc., what messages do we send? Have you ever given someone the impression that your “signal” was changed, just as my radio station had been?
As God’s messengers, we must guard our tongues! We must think before we speak, maybe think long and hard with prayer before we speak. Of course, we are all human. We will all slip up once in a while – then, we must send the message that we are not perfect, just forgiven, and apologize for our mistake. We cannot ignore it and try to act like it never happened. I had to go turn the dial back to my usual radio station.
We have all been planted as a seed in someone’s life to point them to Christ. So if my lips are evil in their presence, will I continue to be a godly influence in their life or will they “tune me out?” My prayer for your lips is that those around you will stay “tuned in.”
Copyright Kathy Branzell. Email [email protected]
Needed this today. Thanks!