I was watching a documentary on baseball pitchers who throw a pitch called the knuckleball.\u00a0 It is not as it sounds because you do not use your knuckles to throw it, rather you use your finger nails to dig into the ball and push the ball out rather than let it roll off your fingers like other pitches.\u00a0 Currently there are only two Major League Baseball pitchers who throw a knuckleball, Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey.\u00a0 It is a difficult pitch to throw and even more difficult to control where it is going.\u00a0 Yet for those guys who can master it, it can extend their career for years.\u00a0 During this documentary R.A. Dickey was being interviewed by a reporter a day after he didn’t pitch very well.\u00a0 It turns out that the problem was he broke one of his fingernails during the first inning.\u00a0 Dickey’s comment to the reporter was “who knew such a small thing could cause such big problems.”\u00a0 That got me to thinking about what James said about our tongue.<\/p>\n
In James 3:5 James said, “Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things.\u00a0 Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”\u00a0 In the previous verses James had mentioned that a horse is controlled by the bit in its mouth and a big ship is controlled by a small rudder on the back.\u00a0 James 3:2 says, “For in many things we offend all.\u00a0 If any many offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.”\u00a0 James said that we would be complete (perfect) and in complete control of all of our body if we are able to control our tongue.\u00a0 Yet the reality of our situation is given in James 3:7-8, “For ever kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”\u00a0 We have been able to tame every animal, put a man on the moon, cure many forms of cancer, and yet no one can tame the tongue.\u00a0 That is amazing to me, amazingly accurate that is.\u00a0 How many times have we had the dreaded “Foot-in-mouth” disease, where we speak first and then think?\u00a0 James closes out the section on the tongue in verse 9 and 10 by saying, with our mouth we bless God and then curse men, this should not be so.\u00a0 Maybe that is why James warned us back in James 1:19, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”\u00a0 Whoever came up with the saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” with all due respect, had no clue what they were talking about.\u00a0 Words can inflict pain that has lasting effects for weeks, months, and sometimes even years later.\u00a0 Let us all remember that with our words we can either build someone up or we can tear them down.<\/p>\n
By His grace and through His strength may we live for Him<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was watching a documentary on baseball pitchers who throw a pitch called the knuckleball.\u00a0 It is not as it sounds because you do not use your knuckles to throw it, rather you use your finger nails to dig into … Read More