Focus verses: Psalm 64

David knew the importance of words. They can comfort and heal, or they can wound and kill. This is true whether on a personal level with gossip and slander, or on a business level with craft and subtlety.

God must have thought words and the tongue that speaks them quite important because David is not the only one writing about them. Look at the third chapter of James:

2: For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.
3: Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body.
4: Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.
5: Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!
6: And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
7: For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:
8: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

We can only learn to tame our tongue and our words when we are in complete submission to Christ. It is His power that rules, not our puny mortal wills.

Father, God,
Help us to bring our tongues into line with what You would have us say. Keep us from hurting others with thoughtless or malicious words.

In Jesus' most precious name.
Amen.