{"id":102,"date":"2007-12-06T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devonline.us\/dailyevotional\/archives\/102"},"modified":"2007-12-06T06:17:15","modified_gmt":"2007-12-06T13:17:15","slug":"use-with-caution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/use-with-caution\/","title":{"rendered":"“USE WITH CAUTION!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Psalm 141:3-4<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.\u00a0 Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men who work iniquity; and do not let me eat of their delicacies.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in the 50’s when I was finishing up my college degree, I worked as a county Probation Officer.\u00a0 The Juvenile Court Judge was a sheer delight.\u00a0 He was a page out of history, what with his bow tie, white hair and a wit that always kept attorneys on their toes.\u00a0 His name was Ben Riordan, and he taught me so many practical things about life that I recall them even to this day.\u00a0 I counted it one of my greatest honors to be able to go into his chambers during the recess of court cases and hear his wisdom and understanding of the law and of human nature.\u00a0 His memory lives in my heart!
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\nJudge Riordan was very much aware of the dangers and evils of the tongue.\u00a0 I am sure he didn’t invent the phrase (well, perhaps he did invent it); “You can remain silent and look stupid, or you can open your mouth and remove all doubt.”\u00a0 Another saying that he used frequently was: “That fellow is so stupid, that when he speaks, he subtracts from the sum total of human intelligence.”\u00a0 Trying to corral the tongue is a constant battle!\u00a0
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\nOne of the classes I took in college was debate.\u00a0 We learned how to make cases, establish proofs and to refute the opposition in their arguments.\u00a0 It was not enough to take one side of a particular issue–you had to debate, both in support of the issue, or against it.
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\nThe culmination of our semester was a debate tournament. Our College Debate Squad was made up of four, two-person teams.\u00a0 There were two of us, myself and Orville Hailey, who were married and working full-time while also attending college classes, so we lacked the time to prepare as the other students.\u00a0 The teams were ranked by their coaches from one to four, with the best being number one and four being the lowest.\u00a0\u00a0 Orville and I were ranked four–Get the picture?\u00a0 Each team had to argue one debate on the negative side and one on the positive side.
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\nFor our first debate Orville and I were pitted against the number four team from another school.\u00a0 Amazingly we won!\u00a0 But our second match was against their number one team who had the positive and we the negative.\u00a0 During the debate they were wiping us out!\u00a0 I whispered to Orville that we had to let them kill themselves.\u00a0
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\nWe quietly belittled every argument they proposed and asked why they could not come forward with any valid argument.\u00a0 We offered very few of our own arguments, but discounted their much more elaborate presentation.\u00a0 Bingo! We won again!!\u00a0 We were the only team from our school that took both of their debates.\u00a0 The coach wanted to move us up to number one or two, but we decided to go into retirement and not let the others know just how bad we were.
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\nThe tongue is a terrible weapon.\u00a0 It is the revealer of the heart and those hidden motives that lurk out of the sight of others.\u00a0 In a previous chapter, Psalm 139:4, we read; “For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.”<\/em>\u00a0
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\nWith that in mind, is it any wonder then why the Psalmist is here asking the Lord to set a watch over his tongue.\u00a0 We say things so quickly and after we try to take the words back, the damage has already been done.\u00a0
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\nIt reminds me of a story I heard about a traveling evangelist who was holding a meeting in a church he had never visited before.\u00a0 He and the pastor were bantering back and forth prior to the start of the service.\u00a0 The evangelist noticed a very ugly woman in the third row.\u00a0 He leaned over to the pastor and asked; “Who is that ugly woman in the third row?”\u00a0 The pastor replied; “That is my wife.”\u00a0 Grasping for a way to get himself out of a predicament the evangelist said, “No not her, the one next to her.”\u00a0 The pastor looked back with a scowl and said, “That sir, is my daughter!”\u00a0\u00a0
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\nHave you ever had days like that?\u00a0 What can you say after the words have done their damage?\u00a0 I have to feel that the Psalmist uttered his prayer for the Lord to set a guard on his mouth.\u00a0 It was a prayer of commitment on his part and it needs to be a commitment on our part.\u00a0 We need to pray for the Lord to purify our thought processes.\u00a0 We need to devote ourselves to speak words that will build up and encourage, rather than tear down and depress.\u00a0
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\nEight or nine years after the debate I mentioned, I was working for the State of Idaho Law Enforcement Planning Commission.\u00a0 As deputy director I was interviewing an attorney to go to work for us.\u00a0 As I looked at his credentials, I saw that he had graduated from the college we had debated.\u00a0 In fact he was a member of the team we had defeated. He said they would have won if they had kept their mouths shut!\u00a0 We laughed, and became close friends after he came to work for us.\u00a0
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\nDuring a terrible, depressing time in his life when he shut out everyone for quite awhile, I was the only one he would talk with.\u00a0 I can still recall driving around with him slouched down as I tried to quietly encourage him.\u00a0 Very few words were spoken.\u00a0 It was a time presence rather than speaking.\u00a0 The words that I did speak were words the Lord had sifted, and they were words of healing.\u00a0 He recovered and was restored.\u00a0 I learned another lesson about words–use them with caution!\u00a0 We need to speak words of peace, joy, love and encouragement.
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\nBlessings dear hearts.\u00a0 Walk with God today, trust Him completely and be a blessing.
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\n— Pastor Cecil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psalm 141:3-4 “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.\u00a0 Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men who work iniquity; and do not let me eat of their delicacies.” Back in the 50’s when I was finishing up my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-e-votionals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}