Watch Yo' Mouth

The Bible says the tongue is sharper than any two-edged sword!  I was studying Ephesians and reading Ephesians 4:29-32.  I have heard vs 30 quoted a lot by preachers (And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.)  Usually referring to sin in general.  But when read in context with vs 29, 31 and 32, it reads slightly different than the way I'd always heard it preached!
Ephesians 4:29-31  Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. 30And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. 31Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:  
When read in context, it sounds like the words of our mouth are what grieves the Holy Spirit!!  A lot of people (preachers) take scripture out of context to fit what they are saying when they need to fit what they are saying to scripture (the Bible changes not!).
We grieve the Holy Spirit when we MISTREAT others or TALK to them in a certain way.  Verse 29, says for edifying.  
You know what is in the heart does come out of the mouth in ABUNDANCE.  If your heart is full of praise and worship, it will come flowing out.  If it's full of bitterness and strife that will come flowing out too.  You might be thinking well my heart is clear, I don't cuss, I don't gossip, I don't lie, I don't tell dirty jokes, BUT, the Bible says out of the mouth proceeds blessings and cursings. Have you ever seen someone with a perpetual frown, so much so that it looks frozen in place?  If you can't think of one good thing God has done for you, it will put a frown on your face!  If you have joy and praise in your heart, you can't help but smile!  It will not only come out of your mouth, it will show ON your mouth!  Ever notice though, when we are down, there are times we DON'T WANT to be lifted up.  People come up smiling and we just want to snap their heads off so they are as miserable as we are.  Come on now, we've all been there, right?  What's in the heart?  Blessings or cursings?  What about putting curses on our lives, our children's lives, our spouses lives, our parents or even friends?  You know we can even curse or bless our children's children?  Any momma's reading this ever said to their child - "someday you are going to have kids just like you" when your children were acting up?  How many of us get up in the morning and when our feet hit the floor say, "I can already tell it's going to be a bad day"?  Well sure it is NOW, you just spoke it, the devil ran with it and what you said you now have!  You get what you asked for.  How many of us get up in the morning and say Good morning Lord, or is it good Lord it's morning?  Who do you want running with your words?  God or satan?  If it's God then speak blessings on YOUR LIFE and the lives of others.
How many compliments do you give in a day?  To your spouse, children, parents, friends etc.  How many compliments or blessings do you give your cranky old neighbor, that person that took your seat at church or worse yet your parking place!  How many blessings do you give those thorns in your side that not only stick you but literally rub you the wrong way?  Do you speak blessings on those who hurt or irritate you?  It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles the temple, its what comes out of the heart.  Philippians 2:14-16a says, Do all things without murmurings and disputings: 15That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; 16aHolding forth the word of life;  We can speak life, through Jesus!  1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, 18In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.   and Hebrews 13:15 has this to say, "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of [our] lips giving thanks to his name."    Sacrifice of praise.  We are to continually praise, pray, uplift and edify.  If we do that we won't have time for cursing, back-biting or inappropriate joking - Amen!
Did you know the Bible is very clear on what we should do and say?  Nothing is left out!
2 Timothy 2:16 But shun profane [and] vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.  That means no off color jokes and jestings!  That may sound strange but God knew that a little leads to a lot.   Pretty soon you think there's nothing wrong with it and soon it drags you right back out into the world!  We are to refrain from anything that is not uplifting and edifying.  Giving thanks at all times.  We don't have to praise God FOR our storms but we need to praise Him THROUGH them!  Give thanks and praise to God at all times,  in every circumstance, "for this is pleasing to God".   This will NOT grieve the Holy Spirit.  Praising and thanking God through our storms will give us a new attitude of gratitude. 
To change the mouth, we have to change the heart.  We must feed not only the body  but our mind and soul.  Garbage goes in, garbage comes out.  If you take in filth and corruption, you will spew filth and corruption.  If you want -- notice I said if you WANT -- God won't force you to do anything.  If you want to change your heart, stay in the Word, read it, listen to it, absorb it.  Surround yourself with Godly people, like minded people who love the Lord.  (I heard an old saying once, "you are the company you keep").  We need to scrutinize what we read, what we watch, who we talk to, spend time with.  "let no corrupt communication" get into your ears and into your heart.  Guard your heart first then guarding your mouth won't be such a problem.  We've all said things and been convicted immediately.  It's a choice, just one of many that we must make. If our hearts are clear and we stay in communication with the Lord, the devil will flee.  Now listen carefully - if you are a child of God and trying to live acceptable and righteously before the Lord, the devil will try to attack you again.  We should rejoice in that also because we are a threat to him, he is NOT a threat to us.  When he finds out he isn't getting to you, he will back off.  He will come back with a new tactic but again staying in the Word and close to the Lord will keep him at bay.  As christians we should be full of praise, belief, understanding, and thankfulness.  That is what should flow from our heart and our mouths.  Words are powerful -- How we use them reflects our relationship with God.  Nothing identifies us more as christians than the ability to watch what we say -- at the same time, nothing can destroy our witness faster nor more permanently!!  You can speak blessings every day for 20 years but say one thing wrong and THAT is what people will remember.  
When we accept Jesus and ask Him into our hearts, He starts a new work in us.  We become new, BUT some things we must WILLFULLY change.  Proverbs 4:24 says to avoid all perverse talk, stay away from corrupt speech.  That doesn't take much interpretation, it's pretty plain.  What we have to remember is the devil can't read our thoughts but he can hear our words.  Everything that comes out of our mouth should be uplifting and edifying, not only giving praise to God but uplifting each other.  God can't stand gossip, back-biting, lying - if you don't believe that, read through Proverbs!  If someone isn't acting the way we think they should or doing things the way WE think they should, it's not our place to judge or COMMENT, it's our place to pray and let God take care of them.  We need to pray to remove curses from our lives and the lives of others NOT speak cursings. God wants us to be clean, pure and Holy acceptable.  That starts in the heart.  He loves us so much, He sent His Son to die for us, He is preparing a place for us.  He wrote a whole book of instructions just for us, He left no detail out.
Have you been grieving the Holy Spirit?  Have you said something lately you need to repent of?  God knows.
Have you spoken curses over your life, or someone else's?  Maybe you did and didn't realize it until you read this blog.  Maybe you just need to give God some praise.  Whatever it is, He's waiting to hear from you.  Speak positives over your life.  Pray the scriptures, speak the scriptures, watch your life turn around by the words of your mouth.
Until next time,
God bless
tawanab

Blahs and Blues

Funny title? This is not my usual blog, but it just describes me today. It's raining, the sky is overcast and I'm just feeling blah. I'm blue because things around me are out of my control and I have a hard time dealing with that because I'm a control freak. These past few months God has been working with me, and He has shown me that although I have no control, He is very much in control and very capable of handling everything, if I just step out of the way.


I try to remember what my mom used to say many years ago, "this to shall pass". Even though this is hard and part of my "blues" is that I wanted my grandchildren to always know this place, as meemaw and papa's home, where they grew up, it isn't meant to be that way. We have been packing and moving things it seems like forever, lol, but in reality it has only been a few weeks. It takes time to sort through 50+ years worth of "stuff".

We had a garage sale at my oldest daughter's this past week-end and God gave us a wonderful day Friday in spite of the naysayers who kept "threatening" rain on us. We kept our smiles and kept repeating God is going to hold back the rain and He did :) However, Saturday I guess He had heard enough about rain and we were out numbered because it rained pretty much all day but people were still coming out! We ended up packing everything up around noon and we will try again next month. I'm very tired and more than a little weary right now, but I'm standing on God's promises that no matter how bad things look right now, He has everything under control.

I told my daughter there may have been a reason we didn't get to sell much on Saturday. Probably when we are able to have the next one it will be right when we need that money. All I do know for sure is that God is in control and He is awesome so I have no doubt there are reasons we don't know of for all that is going on.

I do know He has taught me several lessons along the way that I'm not going to forget anytime soon. One lesson I've learned is that He can turn any situation around for good. The second lesson is that He always comes through right on time, His time. The third and most important, He loves us, (we mean more to Him than the birds and the lillies, Matthew 6:26-34), and He truly has everything all under control.


Thanks for reading my ramblings, just know that even though I say I'm blah and blue, it's a temporary thing and I'll be back to my normal blogging soon. Maybe not as frequently until this move is completely over but I will be back. I will have testimonies from this I'm sure because I expect awesome things from God and He never disappoints me :) You should too. He is there ready, willing and just waiting for you to call on Him. Don't disappoint Him, give God the opportunity to work in your life.
until next time
God bless.
tawanab

Writer's Block

I apologize for not adding anything new. I guess I'm going through a slight case of writer's block. That and just being tired. Not that I don't have anything to Praise God for, that is certainly not the case. He controls my every day and I'm leaning on Him more and more. I claim God's promise that He will supply all our needs. He will give me the words He wants me to write in His time. In the meantime I have been filling my time (between keeping grandkids) with trying to read more of His word and find the peace I need within the pages of the Bible.

I think I'm just brain tired right now, I guess that happens to all of us at one time or another. I am blessed beyond measure, just thinking of my kids and grandkids reminds me of that, then add in the wonderful family and friends I have. I will be back soon with another blog, in the meantime, keep the faith, keep looking up and above all keep trusting God to supply your every need.

God bless

So You Want to be a Blogger

This may be the first blog you've read or this might be the 1000th. If you are just starting out this is a good place to start. I don't claim to know everything about blogging but there is one thing I DO know-there are a lot of sites that want you to pay to buy products to teach you how to blog. They want to charge you to show you how to do something that quite frankly you can figure out on your own. There are lots of "free" blogging tips on the internet. Since you are here I can tell you, this is one of them. Don't waste your money buying products that claim to teach you everything you need to know about blogging when you can research the internet and get the information for free.

The first useful information I found was:

Find your niche. The first time I saw this, I thought, what the h*** I don't even know what a niche is! What do I know that I can write about? Quite simply this means think of something you enjoy or something you are good at and start writing about it. Pick subjects you know and just start writing. Or, pick something you yourself would like to know more about and then research it. It may seem awkward at first but just write. Your first blog will probably be your hardest after that it does get easier. You don't have to be a great writer to blog. It helps if you can have someone to look over what you have written and help you with punctuation, use spell check etc. You don't want to put people off by having a tremendous amount of misspelled words but most people will overlook a few.

Get your facts. If you are writing about a particular subject and you aren't sure about something you are saying, research it. You can write about anything, even subjects you aren't real familiar with if you do your research and get all the facts about it.

Don't settle for one source. There is tons of information on the internet and not all of it is necessarily true (given). Check several resources before you settle for just one source. If you quote that source or use material from that source, be sure and give them credit, you don't want to get in trouble for using someone else's material. Watch out for copyrights.

Add pictures or captions to illustrate points. Just make sure again that what you use is free to use and that you give credit where credit is due.

There are a lot of places that offer free blogs, once again you can search the internet to find those. Blogger (where you are now) is a good place to start. It's easy to use, easy to set up. Some of the navigation might seem a bit confusing but start out simple. If you know html and want to use it that's fine but if you are novice start out with simple posting. You can navigate anywhere from your dashboard or customize. The one, two, three of blogging is Posting, Settings and layout. Those three are your main keys in blogger. Under posting you can create a new blog or edit an existing blog. Under settings you set up the way you want your blogs displayed and a few other key items. Under layout you can add items to the right side of your blog such as links to your favorite sites, pictures, adsense ads, there are tons of add ons. However, keep in mind that whatever you add to the right side through layouts will continually stay at the top of your blog. So it will move up with each additional blog you add and doesn't anchor in place. If you want to add pictures to stay with your blog the easiest way is to put them inside each individual blog.

Be sure and add some good keywords from your blog to the bottom under labels, these are search terms people use to get information which most likely if you are reading this, is how you stumbled upon my blog. For instance for this blog some of my keywords will be blog, blogging, niche, adsense, etc.

Once you've mastered blogging in blogger you can tackle one of the other many blog sites like Web 2.0, Bravenet etc.

One more tip I might add is to copy your blog and paste it in a word processing program on your computer, Microsoft Word, Notepad or something just in case something unforeseeable happens and blogger loses your blog you will have a copy of it. The worst thing to me that can happen is to spend all this time writing and then have it completely disappear, there is no way I could rewrite it word for word.

Blogger saves as a draft regularly but it doesn't hurt to save it yourself.
Once you are done, check it over thoroughly, hit publish post and you've created your first blog. There is an option to view blog so you can see what everyone else is going to see. Seeing your first blog in print is pretty cool and will most likely be inspiring. Once you've done your first one and see it in print it's pretty exciting and you'll be ready to think of your next subject. :)

That's it for this blog, I'll try to add more later and I'm working on resources for getting your blog out to the public. Good luck and happy blogging.