Psalm 19; 14

Let the words in my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

Oh, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Words are an extremely powerful thing. They hold in themselves incredible power, power to do good and power to destroy. Much damage has been done throughout history by deceptive and destructive words. They have been the cause of many wars and quarrels.

From the very beginning of human existence words were used for evil purposes. The whole race was thrown into our sinful state by just a few crafty and malicious words from the serpent.

James in the Bible calls the tongue ” A restless evil, full of deadly poison”. We all have experienced and seen the damage a careless or intentional spoken word can have on situations or people. There is no escaping the real effects that words have in this life. As John Wayne once said ” Words are what men live by” your words are the standard by which people measure you by. Not only the people around you, but also God Himself.

In Matt 12; 36 it says “I tell you on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak”.

So we see in scripture that our words have consequences, they have impact whether it be for good or bad. Once they are spoken there is no retrieving them. They are out there and we are responsible for them. James 3;6 states “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness”.

So why does the tongue speak so corruptly and why is it so quick to spread evil? Is it the world’s influence on us? Is it the devil making us speak foul things? Jesus tells in the gospels that it’s from within and out of the heart of man which all these evil things proceed from.

Consequently that is why David says “Let the meditations of my (Heart) be acceptable in your sight”. The psalmist knows that the only way for his words to be pleasing to God is if his heart is right with God and meditating upon Him. Our words flow out of the heart. If you want to know the condition of one’s heart just listen to how they speak. This will reveal what they are meditating upon.

Everyone is meditating upon something. And in those thoughts and meditations they are shaping their vocabulary .. You can’t separate the heart and the mouth, they are one.  Whatever the one is doing so also the other will do. James says again ” Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water”?

So we see our lives can not be a contradiction. We cannot have a wicked heart and expect our speech to be Godly. Therefore meditating on the proper things is crucial to the Christian life. In order to have control over our words one  must do the hard work of purifying the heart as the man in Psalm 1 who “meditates on God’s law day and night”.

Edmund Calamy, a puritan from the 1600s wrote ” A true meditation is when a man doth so meditate on Christ as to get his heart inflamed with the love of Christ”.

If we want our words and meditations to be acceptable in the Lord’s sight, this is where it must begin. It must begin in the transformation of the wicked heart so as to purify the rest of ourselves and bring forth speech that is consistent with the nature of Christ and pleasing to the Father our Rock and our Redeemer.