Thursday's in the Truth: Oh Pickles!

Have you ever dropped a dish that shattered in a million pieces? Perhaps one of your favorites, a Le Creuset that was holding a potluck size batch of pasta salad that you spent at least an hour preparing? Perhaps in the driveway as you were rushing to get said pasta salad into the car so you could get it to the potluck previously mentioned? And when that dish hit the ground, did any unsavory words fill your head and shoot out of your mouth like word vomit? Yeah, me neither. ;)  Ok, fine.  I said it.  That was my word vomit.

I know how those words got in my head.  There was no slick invasion.  There was no Trojan horse.  I heard those words around the playground as a kid.  I heard them in movies.  I heard adults I knew using them.  And, as a kid, I thought it was quite cool to use them as well. 

Now, as a mom, I’m like the language police.  We don’t even use the “S” word in our house.  You know the one.  It rhymes with "lupid."  Even still, I can’t prevent my kids from hearing those other words outside of my house.  I mean, how can we have a rule against using the "S" word if they’d never heard of it.

Lately I’ve been reminding my kids that what goes in is bound to come out.  It’s true for farts and it’s true for bad language. 

Proverbs 4:23 tells us to “watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”  Luke 6:45 reminds us that “his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”  So if we allow it into our hearts, it will eventually come out of our mouths. 

That’s all well and good but you might be thinking along the same lines as my children.  How can you control what you hear?  Sure, you can monitor which TV shows or movies you watch or which music you listen to but you can’t control the people at the store who are spewing vulgar profanities.  You can’t un-hear the nasty way they speak to others.  So then what?

In Philippians 4:8, we have Paul telling the people of Philippi to look past all of the nasty stuff and focus on God.  I love the Message paraphrase of this verse: “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not to curse.  Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized.  Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.”

So whether it is bad language or mean thoughts or inappropriate thoughts about someone, we have to choose to filter what we allow our minds to dwell on.  He’s not saying you won’t have these things in your mind.  He’s saying fill yourself up with the good stuff.  We will see ugly stuff.  We’ll see the worst.  But we get to choose what we intentionally put in our minds and what we allow ourselves to meditate on.  As 2 Corinthians 10:5 says “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

What do you allow into your mind and heart?  What do you need to filter out of your mind and heart?