Watch Your Mouth

“But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.” -Colossians 3:8

The summer before my senior year of high school, I worked on the loading dock of a trucking company. What an eye-opening experience! I realized that you can learn a lot about people by listening to them talk. There were a couple of guys who had the ability to use the same four letter word as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, interjection and preposition!

Whether it is obscenities, dirty jokes, gossip or harsh criticism, words reveal the true nature of the heart (Proverbs 4:23). In Colossians 3, Paul is challenging the believers in Colossae to live in light of the new nature they received when they trusted Christ. Old behaviors and old patterns of thinking and living needed to be thrown away, and replaced by new behaviors and new patterns of thinking and living. One of the areas Paul focused on was their speech. The following kinds of speech have no place in the believer’s daily life: anger–settled, ongoing distaste for certain people; wrath–sudden outbursts of rage in the moment; malice–cruel and vicious words attacking the character of another; slander–untruth, lies and an unwillingness to call evil what it is; obscene talk–filthiness and sexually inappropriate language.

If someone you had never met started a conversation with you, what would that conversation reveal about your heart? Would healthy, kind, encouraging words come out of your mouth? Or would they hear harsh, filthy, and cruel words? Put that kind of speech away, just like you would take off ruined, filthy clothes and put them in the trash. It has no place in the life of a Christ follower.

-Pastor Mike