"An Evil Tongue: The Beginning of Strife"

Well Bishop sure superbly poured his heart out yesterday morninging and last night with his sermons on "Strife" and "The Gospel of the Grace of God."I wanted to kind of add a bit more light to the first subject and I will blog on "Grace" at another time. Proverbs 26:20-21 says this saints, "Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth.As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife." Now something I realized as Bishop preached on strife yesterday was that places in my life where I thought I was right about a situation, I had been holding ought against these 2 friends of mine. So I immediately made it right between them right after church and we are all ok now. Notice something in Proverbs26:20, it says "where no wood is the FIRE goeth out.." and in verse 21 it says, "as coals are to burning coals,and wood to FIRE.." If you notice that here strife is mostly compared with "FIRE." almost all throughout scripture strife is directly in coexistence with the words of our mouths. "Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out:so where there is no TALBEARER strife ceaseth." FIRE SPREADS AND CONSUMES AND CORRUPTS EVERTHING IN ITS PATH JUST LIKE STRIFE SPOKEN WORDS.

Talebearers are people who can hold their tongues and go about to spread rumors these people are talbearers according to God's word(A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter. Prov.11:13) Strife is usually started by words there is evidence of this not only in our day but it Jesus' day.You will many times read that "a fame of Him spread abroad(Lk.4:37)" or "there was a division among them because of Him(Jn.7:43)" Jesus never caused strife but the words of His mouth were grevious to some; and because of the gracious words that came from His mouth many perverse men strived with His words and sought to kill Him because of it. Though Jesus is not a talebearer the principle of strife always starts with words whether the words were kind or grevious in some cases.

Finally James said it like this, "Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue [is] a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell (James3:5-6). The bible says the tongue is a"world of inquity...it defleth the whole body," We have to learn to allow our verbage to mimic that of Jesus Christ. David said "The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word [was] in my tongue(2Sam.23:2)" We have that same Spirit in us.It is our duty to lend ourselves to the "wholesome words" of the Spirit instead of the "grevious words" of our flesh James 3:2 says, "..If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to BRIDLE the whole body." Strife is the author of sin in our lives. Are you struggling with habitual sin? and you find it hard to stop? well ask yourself, what have I been saying lately????
Let's kill strife where it starts saints...in our mouths.

God Bless