So Many Words...

Psalm 19:14

Let the words of my mouth and the
meditation of my heart,
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Psalm 51:15
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise.


I have been thinking about the words that have come out of my mouth lately. While there has been a great deal of prayer passing my lips;there has also been a few jolts of complaint. Something will startle me or disturb my peace; and then I erupt into spurts of volcanic activity. I am honestly sorry afterwards; but I confess that it feels good to just let my inner Krakatoa let loose. Thankfully these breaches of peace do not continue beyond short spurts, and those bursts of color pass and fade as I recall the mercies of the Lord. I am hoping that I lose my way on the way to the sea of forgetfulness; as I feel my hand reaching for the pole as I speak...

I have been so brash to suggest to God that He can let up for now because I must be half-way to becoming a diamond. As soon as I let those words pass my lips I feel a twinge of regret and a flood of repentance. What right have I to complain when my comfort zone has moved to where I am not? The patches of unrefined dross in my soul show themselves when these snippets of my inner conversation leak out. The Lord has said in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. That means that what I experience cannot be unique to me. I am banking on that as a source of comfort...

In long for the contents of my mind and the words that I speak to be acceptable in the Lord's sight. I can walk towards this goal by focusing on what is pure and lovely as much as I can. When those nettling thoughts sneak in through the back door and whisper their little nasties into my mind, I can pray for the light to shine on them and show them out of my inner room. I am instructed to take every thought captive; to look at what I am thinking about and evalutate it in the light of scripture. My success in doing just that at any given moment can make the difference between a handle on joy or taking a digger.

The longer I live the more firmly I believe that praise makes everything beautiful right where it lives. Each day I can choose to "sing with grace in my heart to the Lord(taken from Colossians 3:16)." My burdens are eased as I shift my gaze towards Jesus and away from the distressing issues. The benefits of praise don't stop there, either! The emotional atmosphere around me changes as I praise the Lord. Others are blessed with a patch of sunshine and replentish both their joy stash and mine. Praising God is good for us; and opens the door for God to do more than we could even hope for. In that spirit of praise, I will be more likely to please my creator in both thought and speech. Torment does not ultimately triumph when praise is present; as it wages warfare on that which is dark.


There is something glorious and beyond my understanding that happens when I praise the Lord. His presence floods my soul and shines His light on that which is dark within me. His Word comes alive in me in a fresh way as the Spirit whispers into my ear. My hope for transformation into who I was destined to be is renewed as I stay open to what His word says about the issues of life. It is indeed a glorious journey, in spite of the valleys.