Lovers Less Wild, Pt. 2

A year ago I started this song, and wrote the first half of it in about fifteen minutes.  Over the next 11 months, I basically played what I’d written and tried to put something else with it and failed miserably.  I was actually beginning to get pretty discouraged because it wasn’t as if I just couldn’t finish this song – I couldn’t write anything, with the exception of two worship songs that basically came straight out of scripture.

This past Wednesday morning I was getting ready for bible study by reading over the Psalm for the week, and praying when I decided to play a couple songs on guitar.  For some reason I decided to go back to that song, and the second half came to me as I was playing.  It was pretty incredible; I was actually singing words faster than I could write them down.  The coolest part was that the second half really stood out to me as being perfect for Kelsey White.  She just recently asked me to perform at a benefit concert that will help support her in going to Scotland for YWAM.

This is the first song in a long time that I feel like really came from the Lord, so I hope you all enjoy listening to it.

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Something that has surprised me about starting this blog is how much I’ve enjoyed the writing process.  I have always enjoyed writing in blog format, because I feel like it gives me freedom in what I say and how I say it.  Having to sit down once a week and put my thoughts into words is something that has been really good for me, and it has helped me open up and share some things I otherwise probably wouldn’t have.

In the next month, I’m going to be writing a series based on the “lovers less wild” in my life that I tend to pursue before the Lord.  My plan is to look at those issues, look at what scripture says about those issues and then attempt to lay out some plans for how to remedy the issue.  So far doing so has put me in the Word like I haven’t been in a while, and I’m excited to share what I’ve been studying.  During this series, if I do not quote scripture during the post, I will have a link to biblegateway.com with the verses available to read, and they’ll open in a new window.  I read the Amplified Bible most often, and it’s the translation I will be using to study.

I decided to start off with what I knew would be the most challenging for me to write about: guarding my tongue.  According to 1Corinthians 6:10, I am a foul-mouthed slanderer.  Since I can remember, I’ve always been a talker.  On report cards dating back to Kindergarten teachers have noted how talkative I am – I always got in trouble for talking in class.  If I wasn’t getting in trouble for talking, I was getting in trouble for passing notes.  I have always been a communicator in the purest definition of the word.  Talking in general is not necessarily a bad thing; my talking gets out of control at times, though, and I need to learn to control what, and who, I am talking about.  Over the years I’ve gotten better about “gossiping,” but I still do it, and I still talk about people when I should keep my mouth shut and mind my own business.  Not only that, but I regularly make my opinions known when they aren’t asked.  I think if you compared how I am now to how I was 5 years ago, you’d find that I have improved but it is definitely still something I struggle with.

The question I’ve been struggling with in the last few months is “why do I keep doing it?”  The answer, as I’ve come to understand now, is that gossiping and talking are both lovers less wild than Jesus.  Talking about other people’s lives to my friends is so much easier than talking about myself and issues I’m having.  On top of that, it requires me to be much more intimate to talk about Christ, or what God’s doing in my life, and I’m uncomfortable with that.

When I started looking into scripture I knew I would be convicted almost instantly.  Matthew 7 starts out by plainly stating that we shouldn’t judge, and that we should instead look at ourselves and figure out what’s going on there first;   1 Peter 3:10 says that in order to enjoy life and see good days, we have to keep our tongues from treachery and deceit;  The Psalms and Proverbs also give great illustrations to the destruction words can cause. What I found most interesting was how much emphasis the bible puts on controlling your tongue.   James 3: 2 – 13 especially stood out to me.  I love how it points out that even though the tongue is a small part of the human anatomy, it heavily influences the conduct and expresses the heart of a person.  In a nutshell (which is silly, you can’t put the bible in a nutshell) God says we have to control our mouths in order to grow at all in our spiritual walk.  I can’t get close to the Lord if I’m not focused on Him.

I do not want my heart to be full of judgement, and the only way I know to fix that is to allow the Lord to control it, and surround myself with people who expect me to be better.  As a good, non-Christian, friend put it recently, there is “no value” in gossiping, or in talking badly about someone.  It adds nothing to my life that is positive.  If it does anything, it makes me look bad and fills my brains with worries about problems that aren’t mine.

Thank you guys for reading, and I love your feedback.  I’m excited about this series, and I hope that everyone else is too!