Daily Devotional

What fruit do the words of your mouth produce? Does your fig tree produce berries? Do your words produce refreshing waters or do you give people salty water to drink? Truth is, and many of us know this already, our words can speak life or death into any particular situation.

How often do you joke with people and call them names, or give them a particular stigma? In the office, for example, there is a man who constantly wears white pants or a pink shirt, he combs his hair a bit girlishly ... and instinctively everybody thinks that he is gay.

But then it gets to a stage that if somebody does not make a joke about his "gayness" the day is not over. And this poor man probably has had his whole life altered because of the way people speak about him.

In front of us these people that we pick fun at might take it as a joke. They may laugh with us and say, "Its okay; its only a joke." But what do you really know about the situation? How sure can you be that the people you "pick" on do not ponder on what is said about them? Satan looks for any opportunity to bind people through the words spoken by others.

Are you speaking words of life and exhortation into other peoples lives? Are you giving people hope through the words you speak? Do people admire you because, unlike everybody else, you will pick up a brother or a sister when others have condemned and destroyed them?

The next time you feel the urge to pick on somebody or to belittle someone, even if it is meant as a joke, think twice about what you are going to say. The Bible tells us that "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Are you ready to give an account of every idle word that you have spoken?