If you have EVER tried to leave a comment and been denied...please try again. I will give you a good reason as well. Click on this link and read the post titled "What's Your Price". At the end...you can enter for a chance to win my give-a-way. I only had one entry...and she said she didn't want to take the prize because she won last time. Now is your chance to win!!! The contest instructions are at the end of that post. I want to hear from each of you. I want to speak words of life to you...and you to respond with words of life back to me. This is what keeps me going. When I see, and read that the heart of God is moving throughout the city, country, and world...it fires me right up. Speaking of getting fired up.......
I was talking to my oldest son (pictured above with our 'lap dog' Moose)...at the end of last week. Infact it was Friday morning...and I woke up to find him out of bed and in the living room. It was way past time to begin getting ready for school...but when I saw him I couldn't not sit with him and soak up every moment of his morning.
There he was. Alone. Only the light from the one opened curtain was shining in on him. And on the arm of the couch beside him...was his Bible. Like a real, big kid Bible. As in no big pictures and few words...but Genesis through Revelation...every verse! And he was just sitting there on his own will...reading Psalms. I could've had melted right there. I was so excited to have the ultimate Word of Life read to me by a child with such pure, innocent faith. I sat while he started to read from the book of Psalms.
After he got through a few verses, I asked him if he would read from the book of James because it is my favorite book of the Bible. I have just about the whole book underlined in each of my different Bibles. I 'randomly' (or so I thought) picked a heading...and he began to read God's word to me. I soon came to realize that it was not at all random. It was a divine appointment that God had set us up for...to teach Aiden a new truth from a recent life experience involving the two of us.
James 3:1-12 is preceeded by the heading, "Taming the Tongue." I am fairly confident that most...if not all of you have read it before. You will recognize some verses for sure. Pretend though for today that you aren't familiar with it. Read it as if you are reading it to a child for the first time. Or as if you were listening intently as though a child, with untainted faith, was sitting beside you reading it to you and Jesus. That is how my morning was. Aiden was reading to Jesus and I...and we were both delighted (some might say 'tickled pink'...but I am pretty sure Aiden would not have 'pink' associated with him. Haha! Not so manly!) to hear the Word of God coming from the mouth of His child!
James 3: "1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble, in may ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
3 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4 Or takes 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. 5 Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, 8 but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? 12 My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water."
I recently wrote a post called Thank You Jesus I am Healed. Click that link and read it if you have a minute. It will make the rest of this post make much more sense. If you already read it...then you will remember that Aiden asked me to tell all my friends and family, "Thank you Jesus I am healed." I have been doing my part...and telling people as God gives me opportunities. One of those opportunities was with my dear friend Rachel. As I told her she said she got chills. =) LOVE THAT!!
A few days later she texts me and asks me to pray for her head because she has a headache. My daughter, Ariel (age 5) and I were together...so we prayed. When I texted her back I told her that the two of us prayed. She responded by saying that she was hoping I would ask Ariel because she is a prayer warrior just like her Mama. I got chills that time. What wonderful words to read...they brightened my day! Then I reminded her of what Aiden said...that she was to tell her friends and family..."Thank you Jesus I am healed!" She told me that she kept thinking of that story I had told her...and that it 'fired' her up.
See...fired up. There it is again. It is almost like that goes with the scripture I typed out huh? You see...last Friday morning I told Aiden about how our tongues have the ability to spread words like fire. That can be a bad thing...or that can be an awesome thing. We all know that negative words, gossip, rumors...they spread at a rapid pace! Sometimes the truth, clarification, or explanation seem to come to a hault with the first declaration.
You choose the kind of words that you spread. You choose whether the flames from your words fire people up...or burn them, as if dead to you. Read those words again from James 3:5b "Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark." Each spoken/written/sung word is a spark. No word is too little to have an effect. You choose...affect...or infect.
Aiden started a powerful spark with his childlike faith. It continues to build power as more and more people hear and believe. Do you believe? Tell me about your spark. This tree (me) wants a whole forest to be fired up in the power and majesty of Jesus NAME!!
Keep sparkin' Words of life. Words of encouragement. Words from your Father. And then...tell people so that spark will grow! Hell has no power on my words. And the enemy... he has absolutely no right to think otherwise!!
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