Pure in Heart Day 10
For Day 10 of our Pure in Heart study, we are going to continue discussing the importance of the words we use and how they affect our heart. Today’s verses are Psalm 37:30-31 “The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom, and his tongue talks of justice. The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.”
In this Psalm we don’t see David talking to God, but to his fellow man. He is older now and is trying to impart the wisdom he has gained to others. In this Psalm specifically, he is focusing on how God will save and prosper the righteous, and how the wicked will fall. David also discusses that while at the moment it may seem that the wicked are prospering, their day of justice will one day come. He also says that it is better to be righteous with a little than wicked with a lot. All of this is because those who are righteous will one day have an eternal reward in heaven, while those who are wicked will have an eternal punishment. No matter what your life looks like on earth, it will only last a little while.
Moving into our verses for today, we see that those who are righteous speak wisdom and talk of justice. The word wisdom means having experience, knowledge, and good judgement. If we are to be righteous, these are the types of words that should come out of our mouths.
It takes experience to have wisdom, but we should be sharing our experience and knowledge with others. In our ladies Bible class last night, one of the women talked about an experience she had years ago. She had been in a class and had spoke on a way that God moved in her life in the past. Afterwards one of the ladies came up to her and asked why she hadn’t shared that story sooner, because she really could’ve used that advice a few months ago. Since then, this woman said she has tried to speak on how God has moved in her life more frequently instead of holding that back, because you never know who needs to learn from an experience you’ve had. That is one of the ways that we should be using our words as Christians, to share our experiences (both good and bad) for others to learn from and see the goodness of God.
Another way that we can speak with wisdom is by having good judgement. We need to judge when it is the right time to say things, and even if something needs to be said at all. Proverbs 10:19 says, “In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise.” This verse reminds us of the importance of thinking before we speak. It is much better to say nothing than it is to say something we may regret later. If we want to be wise with our words, we should consider them carefully before we speak.
We also see that a righteous person’s tongue talks of justice. According to Dictionary.com, the meaning of just is something that is “guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness.” If we want to speak of justice, we need to be saying things that are true and fair. We should not be speaking of things that are not true, such as lying or gossiping, and we should not be unfair in our speech to others.
If we want our words to be wise and just, we must have the law of God in our hearts. When we store up God’s Word in our hearts, it can help us to say the right things, and convict us when we don’t. As verse 31 says about a man having the law of God in his heart, “none of his steps shall slide.” David uses this imagery in many different places and we’ve already looked at it in Psalm 119. The repetitiveness of this thought shows us just how important storing up God’s Word in our heart is in order to prevent us from sin. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but we cannot know what we should and shouldn’t be doing unless we spend time in God’s Word learning about it.
I love this quote that I read earlier today (though the author is unknown) it says, “He hath a Bible in his head and another in his heart.” We should all strive to be this way. Not only having the head knowledge of what the Bible says, but we should also be internalizing it in our hearts and living it out in our lives. The only way to do this is by spending time reading God’s Word and dwelling on it.
Today let’s strive to not only read God’s Word and hide it in our heart, but live it out in our lives as well. When we allow God to transform us through His Word, we are inviting Him to purify our hearts. One way we can see this transformation is by the words we choose to speak.
