“You have minds like a snake pit! How do you suppose what you say is worth anything when you are so foul-minded? It’s your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words. A good person produces good deeds and words season after season. An evil person is a blight on the orchard. Let me tell you something: Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you. There will be a time of Reckoning. Words are powerful; take them seriously. Words can be your salvation. Words can also be your damnation.”

my words. oh man. that cuts to the heart quickly. i thought i could be saved by praying a prayer.  oh wait.  YOU never said that.  so my words matter?  not even my intent, or what i want to tell myself my intent was?  my heart, not the dictionary gives meaning to my words.  so if i substitute a more offensive word for one that is less offensive, but my intent is still to offend, then that’s not ok?  i mean, i know it’s not ok, but that’s how i was raised.  i need YOU to renew my mind on this one.  i am the complaining, critical, gossip.  i am more careless with my words than my wit, and that has too change.

honestly, the hardest thing to say right now is this (i know it’s stupid and it shouldn’t be, but if i’m honest, when everyday normal interactions occur, this is what i need to admit):  i want to be like YOU more than i want people to think i am funny.

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock.  Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.  “But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach.  When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”

it doesn’t have to be like the second one.  work these words into me.  these words that Jesus speaks, let them define what i am doing, who i am becoming, how i am living.  let me base what i believe on HIS words, and not apply HIS words to what i believe.  where there is no foundation, today, let me have the courage to tear down the house and make room for a foundation.  i bring nothing to the table.  nothing that YOU haven’t already given me.  let me remember that all day.