Prayer
Before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 119:132-133
LORD, please turn Your face towards me and have mercy on me,
as you always do for those You love.
Direct my daily choices according to Your word;
and empower me not to allow any sin to rule over me.
Amen.
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your awareness to the voice of God, coming to you through His Word.
Reading
The primary evidence of the state of the human heart is what flows out of our lives, and especially what flows out of our mouths. And that is particularly true for those words we speak before thinking.
In verse 26, Jesus refers to “every empty word” we speak (NIV). I think the CEV translation helps us to understand His meaning, when it translates this verse as
“I promise you on the day of judgment, everyone will have to account for every careless word they have spoken.“
It’s so true that when we’re not thinking (i.e. careless), our immediate verbal responses to experiences can present either quite disturbing or quite encouraging evidence of what is currently going on in our hearts. Our words reveal the state of our hearts. What is revealed may be negative (e.g. pride, pent-up anger, lust, resentment, unforgiveness, or negativity) or it may be very positive (e.g. humility, love, compassion, patience, or gentleness).
Now, we need to beware: It’s so easy to apply this to other people. It is very comfortable to use this principle to discern the spiritual state of world leaders, public figures, or members of our family when we listen to what they say or the way they say it. And while that is certainly an application Jesus advises us to make from time to time, as His disciples we really ought to be more concerned with “taking the log out of our own eyes” and applying this to ourselves.
We need to acknowledge honestly that we can so easily “fool” ourselves about where we are on our spiritual journey. But not if we pay close attention to what comes out of our mouths in our unguarded moments, and to what our knee-jerk emotional reactions are to events that happen around us (or to us). These unthinking, unguarded, “careless” reactions reveal a lot!
We would be reading more into these verses than Jesus is actually saying if we were to take it further than that. So I think we had better stop and contemplate this one simple command of Jesus, which, put very simply, is:
Pay very close attention to the words that instinctively come out of your mouth when you’re not being careful. Allow them to testify to you about the true state of your heart.
May I be so bold as to suggest that if we don’t like what we hear and see coming out of our hearts, Jesus would invite us to bring that to Him in prayer and ask Him to heal, restore and transform our hearts by His grace and His Spirit. He does not want us to condemn ourselves, but to come to Him for transformation!
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn these declarations over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ,
- I will pay attention to the state of my heart by paying close attention to what I speak or do in my unguarded moments.
- I will assess myself honestly.
- I will bring whatever I find to Jesus – either to thank Him for His grace or to plead for more grace to be transformed.
Lord Jesus, please grant me the grace to honour the precious work of the Holy Spirit in my life, and to cooperate with Him in every way. Amen.
Dave's Diary 
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