The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.
Luke 6:45 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
In the last few months I have been seeking Jesus to help me understand more about destiny, leadership and relationship building. Not that it has not been something that I have sought for my whole life but that lately I have been seeing the desperate need we have for Christians to have practical understandings how to find their God planned destiny, how to lead and how to build relationships that are godly.
Last night as I was again praying about these essential areas in my own life I heard in my heart, "When you are who I created you to be you will do what I created you to do."
As I pondered on this and spoke to Carie about it I saw the absolute truth of it. I have said before, when dealing with an overactive emphasis on guidance, it is not where you are it is who you are.
This word says the same thing but in application it deals with far more than guidance.
I will be expanding this in the next few posts but today it struck me significantly in the area of my communication.
Many years ago God unveiled the secret of the practical way to becoming like Him and dealing with our wrong actions and attitudes - what the Bible calls sin.
He showed me that there are three roots from which all of our wrongdoing and wrong feeling grows.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
1 John 2:16 NASB
Those three roots are 1. The Lust of the Flesh 2. The Lust of the Eyes and 3. The Pride of Life.
We see from Esau, the person who most displayed the lust of the flesh in the Bible, that it is generated out of self pity and seeking short term comfort by giving up long term treasures - his birthright and his blessing from his Father.
The lust of the eyes shown best in David is discontentment. In spite of having many beautiful women in his harem and the ability to have even more, in his discontent with what he had he looked out from his palace and lusted after another man's wife, committed adultery and had her husband killed in battle.
The pride of life is shown in Nebuchadnezzar who instead of understanding his greatness as being given through the care and work of others took the glory of all that had been done by them for himself. He ended up spending seven years insane, living and acting as an animal until he came to realise that his greatness was not his but God's and all those who he had used for his own glory before.
Drawing on this understanding of the three foundations of our wrong actions and thoughts (sin) I saw that we cannot defeat them by just dealing with them. I saw that the way to defeat them is by replacing them.
We replace the lust of the flesh (substance abuse, sexual addiction, overeating and so on) which is generated by our self pitying by replacing it with thanksgiving.
We replace the lust of the eyes (keeping up with Jones, envying others, attempting to build a grandiose image like the wizard of Oz and so on) with contentment.
We replace the pride of life (using others as things for our own pleasure and glory, bitterness, control, self will, exercising power over others and so forth) by humility expressed in serving God and others before serving ourselves.
If you would like, you can look further into this teaching here http://word-of-grace.blogspot.com/2011/05/three-roots-of-sin.html
The reason I mention it here is because I saw in my prayer time how these three areas relate to our communication.
The scripture teaches strongly the principle of reaping and sowing.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
Galatians 6:7-8 (NASB)
We see that there are two kinds of seed that we sow. The one is a self centered seed which brings death. The other is the Spirit's seed which yields life.
The three roots of sin are where the self centered seeds are borne. The three opposite roots of spiritual life are where the Spirit's seeds are borne.
It is very simple to see that when we plant any kind of seed it always produces the likeness of that which bore it. Plant a flower and you get the same kind of flower. Plant a certain kind of tree seed and you get the same kind of tree that created the seeds.
Not only that but the principle of multiplication works as well. When we plant one seed we will grow a seed that will create thousands or even millions of seed in its lifetime.
So what we sow is what we multiply. And what we multiply is what we reap. No farmer plants one seed to get only one seed back. He plants in hope of much increase.
This principle works with both desirable and undesirable seed results.
That principle exists in nature and reflected in scripture to help us see that it is an absolute truth in the spiritual world.
So how does this principle work in our communication?
It is easy. The first scripture we looked at shows us our communication comes out of something in our hearts.
The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.
Luke 6:45 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
The mouth speaks out of the heart. And even though two people can say the exact same things it will be the condition of their heart that determines what they are actually saying.
For instance, I have many times spoken what is true but out of an attitude of unthankful self pity. The self pity I speak I sow into the one to whom I am speaking. The result of that self pitying destroys the truth that I am speaking and yields a harvest of rejection from the one I am speaking with.
We all have experienced this. Suppose we come to someone we feel has wronged us and we tell them how much they have hurt us and how miserable they have made our lives. They right away have deep compassion on us, see the error of their ways and immediately ask for forgiveness and promise to never wrong us again!!!! In our dreams perhaps.
The reality is that we are sowing in unthankfulness for them. Unless the person is very grounded in God's love and is very close to being exactly like Jesus we will sow unthankfulness for us in their hearts and their response to us will be exactly what ours has been toward them.
If we sow words of discontent people do not want to give to us. They begin to think of all the things they wish to get from us.
If we sow words of pride we will reap pride.
Even if we make our words so smooth and polite the sowing will occur. It is not the way we say it. It is what is in our heart.
But here is the wonderful part of all of this.
If we sow words of thankfulness we plant them in those who hear us and that thankfulness will take root in them.
If we sow words of contentment we help others to find contentment in themselves.
If we sow words of humility we begin to break down the iron bars of pride in others.
I see as well that there is a correlation between the three roots of spiritual life - Thanksgiving, Contentment and Humility with Faith, Hope and Love. Thanksgiving is strongly related to Faith. Contentment is strongly related to Hope and Love is the final result of Humility.
Our communication needs to be faith filled, hope filled and always out of love.
The other wonderful aspect I see is when we have sown seeds of destruction we can help root them out if we will turn in our hearts and begin to communicate with life giving words of thankfulness, contentment, and humility.
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