Thursday, July 30
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STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE
When I was a boy, doctors made housecalls, and the doctor who came to our house was our family physician, Dr. Gatlin. I can
still picture him in the doorway of my room, with his black case, nodding as my mother ran through my symptoms. But
regardless of what she said, I could be sure that Dr. Gatlin would listen to my heart with his stethoscope, and take a flat, wooden
tongue depressor and say, "Okay, Edwin, stick out your tongue." If I had fever, he would call Johnson's Drug Store and have
them send a sulfur drug. If I were fever-free, he would recommend two teaspoons of milk of magnesia. I'm not sure what he
learned about my physical condition from seeing my tongue, but I know today that the tongue can diagnose my spiritual
condition in a heartbeat.
To all who desire to be mature Christians, James would say, "stick out your tongue." That is
because our words, and how we say them, reflect the degree to which we are sincerely living for God and walking with Jesus
Christ.
You see, the tongue is simply a messenger-boy of the heart, or a bucket that is lowered into the well of our soul.
It can only deliver the message it is given. It can only bring up the water that is already there. Jesus said it is not what enters the
mouth of a man that defiles him or makes him unclean, it is what comes out of the man from the heart that defiles him. If hatred
and bitterness and jealousy and slander are on your tongue, you can be certain it is because they are in your heart. And once
those words are spoken, they can never be reclaimed. There is simply no diagnostician of the heart as accurate as the tongue!
Memory Verse
JAMES 3:8
But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.
Read Through The Bible
2 Chronicles 36; Ezekiel 5-6