James 3:4-5a Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.
James offers several illustrations to support his key idea that our speech must be carefully controlled because so much depends on what we say. A lot of communication is non-verbal. It is difficult to know how our non-verbal communication works. But surely, we can work on what we say. The physical tongue is small, but it serves as a metaphor for the things we say. The things we say come from our mind, our thinking. Sometimes the Bible refers to this mind as the “heart,” which is the inner most person. We talk like we think, although our thoughts are much faster and spontaneous. Some people seem to speak without thinking, or at least, they do not consider the ramifications of what they say. Others are more “thoughtful,” meaning that they put some thinking into what they say before they say it. This may be related to personality or such factors as fear, intimidation, or something that causes reluctance. The key issue is that the tongue sets the direction for so much other things in life. Just like the small rudder of a huge boat, what we say will send us in certain directions. We can speak positive words and these words will be like seeds that sprout and grow and produce life. Or, our words can be a drop of poison that infects, brings illness, and eventually even death to some much in our lives. How do we want our relationships to be? Health and thriving or dying and broken? Do we want to excel in what we do or do we want to struggle to never get ahead? What we say is often the key to this. What we say is determined by what we think. What we think is determined by the condition of our heart. If our hearts are transformed into the likeness of Christ, this will affect our thinking as we take on the “mind of Christ.” This impacts how we talk, with the end result of bringing life to those around us.
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