Keeping a civil tongue

 When my wife Jill and I had been married only a year or so, we were invited to become involved in a premarital counseling ministry at our church. Since we both had a background of divorce, we were frankly quite perplexed by this turn of events. What could we possibly have to offer to young people in love and planning to marry? After all, we had both had failed marriages. As the result of long discussions and a good deal of prayer, we decided to accept the invitation to attend a meeting of the premarital counseling ministry. 

Let me back up a bit. Although this invitation seemed to come out of the blue, in fact I believe it fit in with God’s plan for our young marriage. When Jill and I were courting, we both had some interesting encounters with God. During that time, the Lord impressed on me the message that He intended for me to marry Jill so that together we could minister to families for the purpose of strengthening marital and family bonds. This message resonated with both of us, since we had weathered the storm of marriages that ended in divorce, and we had seen our respective children grow up in the shadow of the uncertainty that is inherent in the lives of the children of divorced parents. 

During that same courting period, Jill told me that she had a message from the Lord in which He told her that she would “get closer to Me [God] through marriage to him [Tom].” Neither of us felt we had any detailed understanding of what these messages meant, but as we are told in the old hymn, we needed to 

Trust and obey, for there is no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. (source)

So, we attended a couple of ministry meetings, and then we agreed to undertake the training for the privilege of speaking into the lives of people who were interested in entering into the covenant of marriage. We met with a lot of couples. We attended a lot of weddings. Frankly, some of our most important interactions with couples manifested in their deciding NOT to marry. 

Eventually, I earned a masters degree in Biblical Counseling, and our ministry expanded to include counseling with married couples. Many of the couples we worked with were young and starry-eyed, and others were contemplating a second or even third marriage. Among the married couples we met, some just needed a little encouragement and advice. Others had very dark and discouraging histories including violence and betrayal. 

As you may imagine, the young starry-eyed couples were sometimes the most challenging, but others among them were the most uplifting and inspiring. They were the ones who were able to see past the stars in their eyes to the reality that marriage was more complex than simply saying, “I do,” and living happily ever after. 

Some of those young couples remain in our circle of close friends to this day. One of the husbands periodically challenges me with faith related questions or challenges. This morning, he texted me to say that he was challenged by some passages of Scripture. The first passage was Proverbs 13:3

Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life;
    he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

At first glance, this passage seems to indicate that we should keep our big flapping mouths shut so we don’t come to ruin. But I think the meaning is more nuanced than that. God made us in His image, which means that we were designed to be communicators. Here is what I wrote in my reply to this young man. 

 My take on this one is that we need to be careful what we say and how we say it, not only for our own protection, but because of the damage we can do to others. James 3:5-9 - "How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life,[a] and set on fire by hell.[b] 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God." Note verse 8: "no human can tame the tongue." Have you ever wished you could eat the words you just said? Once they are said, there is no undoing the damage of ungracious words. Our only hope to avoid such situations is a) abide in Christ and speak His words, and b) "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

I will address some more of the passages to which this thoughtful young man referred me in future posts. I guess my point today is that every soldier is trained in the proper use of his weapons, but that doesn’t mean that, in an unguarded moment, he can’t shoot himself in the foot. Now it is pretty normal when we injure, say, a finger to soothe it with our tongue. Perhaps, that is how we get the idiom about putting one’s foot in one’s mouth. Lock and load soldier, but keep the safety on until it is time to go into battle.