Fire in the Mouth
THE MOUTH THAT CAN’T MAKE UP ITS MIND
James 3:9–12
1. BLESSING GOD, BLASTING OTHERS?
James 3:9–10 “With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.”
The Mouth Was Designed to Be a Lifegiving Fountain (Proverbs 10:11)
Proverbs 10:11 “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.”
Psalm 36:9 “For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.”
Jeremiah 2:13 For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Ezekiel 47:9 “…every thing will live where the river goes.”
John 4:14 “…the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain…”
John 7:38 “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
Proud Words Come From a Proud Heart (Proverbs 18:12)
Proverbs 18:12 “Before destruction the heart of a man is haughty, and before honor is humility.”
Philippians 2:3 “…in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.”
2. WRONG ROOT, WRONG FRUIT
James 3:11-12 “Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.”
Words Can Protect Your Life or Ruin It (Proverbs 13:3)
Proverbs 13:3 “He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction.”
Ezekiel 16:25 At every street corner you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, spreading your legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by.
Ephesians 4:3-4 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
Proverbs says this leads to destruction — not because God punishes the tongue, but because a reckless mouth is a wrecking ball.
Foolish Words Boomerang Back (Proverbs 18:6–7)
Proverbs 18:6–7 “A fool’s lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for blows. A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.”
Luke 6:45 “…out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
Lord, we pray for a ministry over our mouths.
Give us no need to exalt ourselves,
and no words that will promote our own image, admiration, or interests.
Lord, we refuse to speak from a proud, high, and haughty heart.
Before destruction comes pride, but before honor is humility.
Guard us from reckless words that pierce like a sword.
We choose the tongue of the wise, which brings healing.
Let our mouths be a fountain of life.
Let our words flow like a spring that refreshes, restores, and revives.
Wherever Your river flows, everything will live —
so let Your life flow through our speech.
Teach us to guard our lips, that we may guard our lives.
We reject rash speech that “opens wide the lips” and leads to ruin.
Make us wise, not foolish,
for the mouth of a fool invites destruction and snares his own soul.
Lord, we ask You to heal our words,
cleanse our hearts, and change our roots.
Let the fruit of our mouths
feed many with wisdom, peace, and encouragement.
Today we choose life.
Today we choose humility.
Today we choose healing.
Today we choose words that build up and not tear down.
In Jesus’ name — Amen.
Transcription
And I'm wondering if your heart is ready for God's word today. Yes or no? All right, well, good. So I can move on to the next thing.
In your seat is a ministry card. It's a welcome card. And people have been telling me, oh, we love the church. The church services are so encouraging and they're so biblically focused and we love Sunday morning. And I go, if you think Sunday morning, morning's good, fill out a ministry card, take a next step on what's next for me and watch how we will reach out to you.
Because the secret sauce, the real power of our church is not just Sunday morning. This is the front door. It's the fellowship and the communion of the saints during the week. And if you want a church that prays for you, you can look no further than this one. And so if you'll fill that out today.
And from the very first Sunday of our church, we've been receiving cards with prayers on them. We pray out loud for them as a staff and our elders receive these and they pray for them all week long. We will pray for you. You don't have to be a member of our church. You can be a guest.
Maybe you're just passing through on this holiday weekend. Let us pray for you this week and see what God does in your life. If you'll find James chapter three in your Bible, we're in a teaching series. This is part 4 of 5 called Fire in the Mouth. Verse by verse through James chapter three.
Do you guys like verse by verse preaching? Yeah. You know, our church has kind of been spoiled with that, but it's a good thing. We want to teach the whole counsel of God. And today's message is the mouth that can't make up its mind.
This is like the fourth Sunday in a row that James in our going verse by verse talks about how we speak and how important that is. I'm going to read verses 9 through 12 with it. With the tongue we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren.
These things ought not to be so does the spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening. Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. My brothers and sisters, the word of the Lord. Let's pray together.
Father, we're thankful that so many men and women risked their lives 500 years ago so that we could have the Bible printed, bound and sitting in our laps or on our smartphones today. We don't want to take this for granted. We don't want to be people that have the Bible but don't read it, that look at the Bible but don't know it. And so God, make your church wiser today. Show us your will.
Let us understand things. Help this preacher to say it right and help this congregation to receive and apply and do. Lord, I pray for anyone in the room today that doesn't have eternal life. Lord, save them. Show them the beauty of Jesus and the appeal of the gospel and draw them to yourself.
And for every believer who's thriving or hurting and somewhere in between, I pray for the encouraging ministry of the Spirit of God to come sit right next to them in their chair today and do what only you can do. This is our prayer in Jesus name and a faith filled church said, amen. You know, there's no other name given among men under heaven by which we must be saved. The name Jesus Christ. He is the only way to have your soul made right with God to as many as received him.
To those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God. And I just wanted to start this message and say that we preach to you, Jesus Christ and him crucified. And you must know Jesus if you want to know God. Do you believe that? All right, well, now that we have stated that, let's talk about how we talk.
Have you ever said something and immediately thought, what in the world? Where did that come from? Just me. Okay. Sometimes it happens in the kitchen and your patience runs thin and your tone hits harder than you intended.
Sometimes it happens in traffic. Somebody cuts you off and tells you how number one you are, and suddenly you're auditioning for the role of Christian who temporarily forgot they're a saved person.
Sometimes it happens in a text thread. You fire off some kind of sarcastic message and five seconds later you're thinking, you know, I didn't need to say it like that. It feels like a different version of you has hijacked your mouth. I mean, you love God and you want to honor him. But then something just spills out.
A snap here, a jab there a complaint, something with a sharp edge that you spoke. And you stop and you think, how can I bless God with this mouth and then turn around and blast my spouse or, or my children or my co workers or my neighbors or my incredible pastor? How can I do that?
Well, James sees these contradictions and here's what he says. Let's not pretend this is normal. Let's not pretend this is okay.
And I divided my sermon into two sections today. And James opens in section one with the contradiction blessing God, blasting others. This is verses 9 and 10. With our tongues we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made into similitude. You like that Bible word.
It means likeness who've been made in the likeness of God out of the same mouth. Proceed. Blessing and cursing my brethren. These things ought not to be so. Look, some verses in the Bible are difficult to understand and some aren't.
These are easy. Let me tell you what James, first of all is not saying. He's not saying, stop acting one way at church and another way at the grocery store or another way at the DMV be. We can find verses about that somewhere else. But that's not what he's addressing here.
He's saying, stop blessing God while attacking the people made in his image. And he's reaching all the way back to Genesis, chapter 1, verse 26, the doctrine of the imago Dei, the image of God. And James says, you're weaponizing your mouth against the artwork of the very God you praise. It says spiritually backwards as praising an artist while slashing his masterpiece on the wall at the museum. It's as spiritually backwards as honoring a parent while mistreating their child when they're not looking.
It's as spiritually backwards as worshiping a God of love with a mouth that spews hatred. James is saying, brothers, sisters, this should not be happening. These things ought not to be so. And James wants you to understand that this is not just theological, it's emotional. It's not just corrective, it's pastoral.
He wants you to feel it and change it. Both. And James doesn't just call out the contradiction, how can you bless God and blast somebody else? He shows us what the mouth was meant to be. In Proverbs 10:11, the mouth was designed to be a life giving fountain.
That's a phrase that shows up a lot in the Old Testament. Life giving fountain. Here it is in Proverbs 10:11. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
Let me tell you what that proverbs mean. That proverb means the words spoken by the righteous overflow like a spring of water, and it refreshes everybody who hears those words as they pass by. On the other hand, any unsolicited, uncalled for, unasked for words of the wicked are trapped and they're blockaded so that they cannot surface and hurt you. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of light life. But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
You know, a community depends on fresh water for physical life. Isn't that true? Two or three days we don't have water, and things just start disintegrating. In the same way that a community depends on physical fresh water for physical life, the community also depends on. On benevolent speech, kind, encouraging words for social life.
This is why every part of the world today, where people are throwing jabs and lobbing unkind words at each other and throwing rocks at each other, there's war. It starts with words, but the fountain of life traces all the way back, back to God Himself. Psalm 36:9 says it, for with you, God is the fountain of life. In your light we see light. So God's the fountain of life.
And to forsake God, who's the fountain of life, is an evil. Jeremiah 2:13. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. And they've hewn themselves cisterns.
Those are water pots, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Listen, if you try to live your life where you're the boss and you wink at God on holidays and on special days, but really, leave him out. You're this broken cistern. You're this broken water pot, which means none of the substance of your life is ever going to be held, and your life's going to be meaningless. Everything starts with God.
In fact, Proverbs 1:7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. So do you know him and does he know you? Because he's the fountain of life. And I love this. The prophet Ezekiel expands this imagery in a very famous passage in Ezekiel 47.
And in Ezekiel 47, the prophet sees a vision from God. And here's the vision. He sees God's temple, and he sees this water running out from underneath the temple. And the water becomes a stream, and the stream becomes a river, and it's flowing out from the temple, and first it's ankle deep, and then it rises to knee deep, and then it grows to waist Deep. And this water from the temple eventually goes over the prophet's head and he has to swim.
And as that rushing water builds from God's temple, it turns dead seas into fresh water. And at the end of the prophecy, here's what God says in Ezekiel 47. 9. Everything will live where the river goes. Say that with me.
Everything will live where the river goes. This is a picture of the spirit of God filling a believer. I don't know about you. I want more of God than just covering my ankles. And I want more of the power of the spirit than just knee deep.
In fact, I want more of the spirit where I have to do more than wade at waist deep. I want him to so engulf me that I have to swim with the current. Amen. Amen. Because where the river goes, that's where the life is.
This is why every day, many of us have learned from our friend Norm Wakefield to pray the live to love prayer. I'm gonna have it on the screen. I've got it on this little bookmark here. This prayer is a game changer now. It's a threat.
It's a threat to the kingdom of darkness and to the devil. It's also a threat to the lukewarm Christian because it will expose your lukewarmness. Here's the prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for another day of life to live, to know and love you and to love with Jesus. Please anoint and fill me with the Holy Spirit, the presence and power of Christ, so that I can love and trust you and love those you put in my path today for your glory.
The love those you put in my path today for your glory is my favorite part. You know what we've been doing at restaurants? Maybe eight out of 10 times, we'll say to our server, we'll mean this server, whatever his name or her name is, in just a minute, we're going to pray a prayer of blessing over our meal. We're going to ask God to bless us today. And we were just wondering if there's anything we could pray for you about.
Now, if they're receptive, they'll just regurgitate it all out and tell you everything. If they're not, they'll say, oh, pray for peace and harmony and love in the world, right? But the last couple of times we've done this, last Sunday night, we did it, and our server at Corky's just burst into tears. And she said, my mom's been sick. Had to move her in my house.
I'm waiting tables. It's hard. We don't have enough money to take care of our needs. Would you pray for me? Well, we sure would.
We sure did. And then you give a big tip, right? You don't want to be one of those cheap Christians. You want to say, look, God's gonna make a difference in your life, and he's gonna start with us. Does that make sense?
Look, I want the river. This is what Jesus said. It's what happens when a spirit, when the spirit fills a believer. He said in John 4:14, the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain. Again in John chapter 7, verse 38, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
In other words, when God fills you, he intends to flow through you.
Do you understand that? That means that your mouth was meant to carry the life of God and it was not meant to carry the poison of pride. That's our next proverb to help understand our message today. Proverbs 18:12. Proud words come from a proud heart.
Here's the verse. Before destruction, the heart of a man is haughty. And before honor is humility. So what's a hearty heart, preacher? A haughty heart is a heart that's lifted high.
It's one that's inflated. It's competitive. It has to win. And according to this proverb, a haughty heart is pre disaster. It goes before destruction.
If you have this, the ending is bad.
And we're born with this. A haughty heart is a heart that contemplates being superior to others. It's a heart that must dominate. It's a heart that must win. It's a heart that must outshine.
It's a heart that looks around the room and says, I have to be better than all men in this always ends in destruction. Proverbs says, that road leads to downfall. Do you know what pride creates? Pride creates speech that protects my own image. Pride creates speech that demands everybody admire me.
Pride creates speech that promotes self interest.
You know what else it does? Pride creates speech that lords it over others. Those are Jesus's words in Mark, chapter 10, he says, not so with us. That's not what we do. Well, if that's what pride creates, what does humility create?
Well, did you know that humility is comfortable with the lowly? I wish you could have been here on. Was it Tuesday night when we had the banquet for the Warrior center ladies? I'm telling you, the spirit of God came in the room because when you reach a point where you've given Up. And you go, I can't do this anymore.
I surrender to God. That's when God begins to turn things around. And you start listening to these ladies, been homeless, been addicted, been whatever. And they start telling you their story. And you go, that's one of the worst stories I've ever heard.
And then they tell you what Jesus has done with their story, and you go, that's one of the best stories I've ever heard. Does that make sense? Look, I love being around them. They charge my batteries. They minister to me.
It's not the other way around. Humility is comfortable with the lowly. Humility speaks words that heal.
I want to be known for lifting people up and encouraging folks. I want to be an encouragement hog where people go, oh, here comes Trevor. He's going to say something encouraging to me. Watch. Don't you want that in your life?
Also? Humility lifts others up instead of lifting up itself.
That's why the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 2, 3, in Lowliness of mind, Everybody say, lowliness of mind. That's a great definition for humility. In lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. We got to get rid of this heart that has to be better than all. Men esteem others better than himself.
You know, proud words. Proud hearts produce boasting words. Humble hearts produce blessing words. Now, which one do you think you should pick? James says, have you ever.
If you want to know why your mouth swings to both ends of the pendulum on this, all you have to do, check the condition of your heart. All right, so that's the contradiction. Blessing God, blasting others. In the second part of my message today, James takes us further. He goes from the contradiction to the reason why.
The cause. Number two. Wrong root, wrong fruit.
Verses 11 and 12. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives? Or a grapevine bear figs? Thus, no spring yields both salt water and fresh.
I don't know if you caught it, but James is making the same point in two different ways. What comes out reveals what is within. That's the point. What comes out reveals what is within. So the spring exposes the heart, and the fruit exposes the root.
You guys still with me? You following this? Let me tell you, you can fake patience for a while, can't you? You can mask bitterness with politeness. We all do it.
You can clip the leaves, you can polish the branches. You can rehearse the tone of voice that you use. But eventually the spring leaks. Eventually the fruit Tells the truth.
Let me enrich this with some words from the Proverbs. You know, words can protect your life or ruin it. That's what Proverbs 13:3 teaches us. Words can protect your life or ruin it.
He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction. That phrase open wide his lips is only found twice in Scripture. Here in Proverbs 13:3, elsewhere in Ezekiel 16:25. And there it's used of indecent exposure. It's the only two places that this phrase shows up.
Here's what it means. It means reckless words. It means shameless words. We would call those inappropriate. It means unrestrained speech, open wide the lips and connecting it with indecent exposure.
In Ezekiel 16, here's what we learn. A person with a promiscuous mouth will soon have a promiscuous life. You should write that down. A person with a promiscuous mouth will soon have a promiscuous life.
There's a word here about profanity and coarse joking. So I want to talk about this for a second. But it doesn't just talk about it in the Old Testament. It talks about it to Christians in the New Testament. Ephesians 4, 3 and 4.
Can we talk about cussing for a minute? Yes or no?
But among you, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality. Listen, depending on which English translation you have in your Bible, when you see the phrase sexual immorality might be, say, fornication in some of your verses. That's an older word, the Greek word. You're going to know it. It's porneia.
We get our word pornography from it. But among you, there must not even be a hint. Friends, sometimes we let our teenagers do more than any. We let them wear sexually immoral suggestive things in their clothing at church.
It's so violating of this. There should not even be a hint of this. Like. Let me keep reading. Among you, there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.
Like out in your Bible somewhere, you should write the word improper for God's holy people. We're talking about the holiness code. We're talking about what God expects, improper. Now here's the other verse, the next one that connects directly to our sermon today. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking.
Obscenity, that's profane words, foolish talk. That's dirty talk, coarse joking, inappropriate Jokes which are out of place. Everybody say out of place. Alright, we've said improper for God's holy people. And now the Apostle Paul says this is out of place, out of bounds.
So Christians shouldn't be known for this, but instead of that, rather Thanksgiving. And that's a timely word for this week, isn't it? Now look, our Christmas decorations are amazing. It reminds me when I was a kid I. We take field trips to downtown Memphis, to the Enchanted Forest, if anybody remembers that.
Now look, Christmas is great. We still got Thanksgiving this week and we got the pilgrims and the turkeys and the parades and all of that. But before any of that ever happened, the Bible was telling us we should be thankful to God. Yes, that's why the pilgrims did it.
So what's the opposite of thanksgiving? Obscenity. Foolish talk? Course, joking. Let me tell you something that happened during the Welsh Revival of 1904 and 1905.
Wales is one of the British islands, it's in the United Kingdom, it's across the pond. And so if you're from Wales, you're Welsh. In 1904, 1905, the spirit of God swept through the island of Wales. Every hamlet, every town, every community. And the number one industry in Wales at the time was coal mining.
And if you're in the coal mines in Wales before the revival, that's a rough place. Can you picture it? And so there were more men on the island of Wales than women because they were working in the mines. And thousands of rough, hard living miners came to Christ during the revival. These were men who had spent years underground barking orders at the coal carts and beating the mules that hauled the carts out of the mines.
Their language was so foul you could smell it before you heard it.
Every command was laced with profanity and the animals only moved when the cuss words fell. Flu. Then revival broke out. This is so funny to me. When revival broke out.
By the way, the Welsh Revival wasn't known characteristically by powerful preaching, although there was some done. What happened in the hamlets in the Welsh Revival was people gathered together at church buildings and outside and somebody would stand up and start singing a hymn and then everybody would join in and then they would stop the singing and somebody would start confessing their sin, the bad ones. And this went on for hours and hours. And the crowds would grow and the Holy Spirit would convict him and people would stand up and confess their sins and repent, and taverns closed and businessmen who would cheat their employees would stop and make restitution. It was amazing.
Started with singing. You don't expect coal miners to sing songs, but the Holy Spirit came in. The men began singing the hymns where they used to spit insults. They prayed in the same places that they once picked fights. And the biggest shock to the mind wasn't the new schedules they kept, although they did.
It wasn't the new rules that they had, although they put new rules in place. The biggest shock was the new words they spoke.
Friends, the cursing stone stopped because these men got saved. Their tongues got baptized, right? But there was an unexpected, amusing problem. The mules didn't know what to do because those animals had been trained to respond only to harsh, vulgar commands. And now the men were all speaking kindly.
They were like, come here, boy. Come here, boy. When the mule just set there. Instead of words that you can't repeat in church, they cleaned up their speech, and the mules just stood still, completely confused. The revival changed the coal miners so dramatically that they had to retrain the animals to understand kindness.
That's how far the repentance ran. Even the livestock noticed a transformation of the tongue. Friends, listen to me. When God changes a heart, he doesn't just change what we believe. He changes how we live and how we speak.
Or as the Psalm says in Psalm 107, 2, let the redeemed of the Lord say so, not just think so. Say it. Look, I think there's a word here for some of you that have been going, look, I want to walk with God, but I brought this bad habit of foul language and profanity and cussing, and I thought it'd get better by now, but it's still coming out, and maybe it's gotten worse lately. And look, I don't know what to do. I think there'll be special grace in this room at these prayer lines after this service.
If you'll humble yourself and walk forward and say, would you pray that God would do for my mouth what he did for the coal miners in Wales? And take this away. Because words can protect your life or ruin it. When someone speaks rashly, when they open wide their lips promises break and friendships strain and secrets leak and conflicts explode and leaders lose trust and families lose peace, Proverbs says this leads to destruction, not because God punishes the tongue, but because a reckless mouth is a wrecking ball.
Not only do words protect your life or ruin it, but foolish words boomerang back. Proverbs 18, 6, 7. A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for blows. Your Niv, or others may say his mouth invites a beating it invites the boomerang, the comeback. A fool's mouth is his destruction and his lips are a snare for his soul.
You know what Proverbs says a fool's mouth does? It starts fights, it stirs up drama, it invites conflict and it pushes people away.
One commentator says he sets out to damage others, but his speech boomerangs back and wounds him. His own words become a snare, they become a trap, they become a weapon turned inward on himself. And James agrees. He says, no spring yields both salt water and fresh. Do you know that we've become like the church of the Stanley Cups?
Have you noticed they always fall down and on our tile? You hear them and I realize, man, America has gotten into this drinking water. Have you noticed? I mean, I see guys are going to the gym and they're bringing like with them every day wherever they go. A big one gallon milk jug of water.
You seen this? It's like we got a hydrate. We're like the most hydrated country ever. And it's a good thing. But you want to know how to ruin us?
Just turn all of that water into salt water. Just have everybody chug that. No one can drink salt water in great amounts and live. And in the same way, no one brings life to himself or to anyone else by foolish speech. A bitter spring, friends, always yields stagnant pools.
A corrupt root always produces spoiled fruit. That's why Jesus says in Luke 6:45, out of the abundance of his heart, the mouth speaks.
If you have trouble with foolish speech or improper words or profanity. Would you listen to me for a second? Second. You don't have a vocabulary issue. You have a vine issue.
And the vine that you're plugged into is a bad root. And that's why you have bad fruit. You don't need a new word bank, you need new roots.
Good words return like a harvest. Foolish evil words return like a boomer.
So in conclusion, today, I want you to know James isn't shaming us with these verses. He's shepherding us. He's saying, come back to the fold. He's saying, stop letting the same mouth bless God and blast the people he created. In other words, pick a lane, choose a team and represent that team.
I mean, listen to me. What kind of spring do you want your family drinking from?
What kind of fruit do you want your home to taste? What kind of legacy do you want your words to leave?
You know, your mouth, just the microphone for your heart. You think about that as we pray. Pray, Lord, we love the Bible teach us to love it more when it steps on our toes.
Change us, oh, Lord, and make us like Jesus because of what we've heard today. Don't let the enemy steal the seed that was planted. Amen.
To the stage. Maggie Flowers and Ella May, come on up here.
And while they're on their way up here, I'd also like for their small group to sit. 7th and 8th grade girls led by Rachel Wilson, Anitra Polk and Issa Niswinder. Y' all come on up here. Any of you that are present. And moms and dads, you also come up here, if you would, please.
We'll just get everybody up here. You know, we say nobody walks alone at Great Commission Church. And here's a group right here that that's committed to your spiritual well being. And I'm going to start alphabetically, so I'm going to start with Maggie Flowers. Okay?
So, Maggie, you come right over here. Next to me. We have Mom, Sarah and Michael and Alyssa. All right? Now, Maggie, you shared in your testimony that you were born and raised in a Christian home.
Not giving this Christian stuff that much of a thought. It's kind of normal. And then because you're a part of our church, you get to go off to camp and these different ones. But you said that you have, like three camp experiences here. First one is like, hey, maybe there is something to Christianity.
And then you got involved in the youth group in a new camp at Central Hill Baptist Retreat, and you said, it changed my view on Christianity. But then later that summer, you went to the Access Conference, and that's where the Lord opened your heart one night and called to your soul. And that was when you cried out and you trusted the Lord Jesus to save you. And you say, from that day forth, my life was changed forever. And so, Maggie, I want to ask you in front of the members here of Great Commission Church, is it your testimony that the Lord Jesus has opened your heart and given you faith in Jesus and you trusted him for the forgiveness of your sins?
Yes. Well, based on your testimony, we're going to baptize you here in just a moment. But first we're going to pray for you. Okay? All right, so let's pray for Maggie.
Father, thank you for the fact that you love our children and that you open their hearts to see in their souls the glory of Jesus Christ. So we pray for Maggie that you'd seal this in her soul and that you would flame this love that she's experienced with you into greater growth and maturity as the Years go by. Help us to be a great church for her. I ask in your name, Lord Jesus, Amen. All right, Maggie, you step right back here, and let's let the May family come up here.
Hello, Ella. You know, we've met with all the folks that get presented as members. Our membership team does, and our children are no exception. And I enjoyed our meeting. So I want to share some of your comments.
Come up a little bit closer. So you also went to the Central Hills Church camp over the summer, said you had worship every night. And after the worship, there was a sermon that sounds familiar. And then you said the pastor told everyone to get a piece of paper and write something to God on it, and then you were to bring it to the front and pray. And you wrote that I asked God to say.
When I was finished writing, I went over to pray, and I started crying because I was so overjoyed. The girl beside me hugged me. I didn't even know who she was. That night, God opened my eyes so that I could see his sovereign hand, and I trusted the Lord Jesus Christ to save me. And I'm never turning back.
And so, Ella, in front of the members here of Great Commission Church, is it your testimony that you're trusting only in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes, sir. Well, based on that, we're going to baptize you here in just a moment, but let's pray for Ella, okay? Heavenly Father, thank you for Ella and her family, for Jason and Christy and Landrum. Lord, I pray that you would bless them all, encourage them as they encourage her, help her, Lord to love and walk with you more and more and help us to be a good church family to help them.
Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen. Now, Ella, I'm going to give your mom this book, the first 63 that you can start going through. It will take you through the first 63 days of being a baptized believer. So you hold on to that.
Here's Maggie's. Sarah, you hold on to that. Okay? All right. And if you don't know about first 63, join our church and we'll explain it to you.
No big deal. All right, let's walk over here to the baptistry, girls. I'm going to do it in alphabetical order. So, Maggie, you're going to get to go first, and Dad's going to help. Out.
Out.
Let me have your hand. You step right there, and then step down and have a seat.
All right?
All right. Maggie, baptism is a picture of your being connected to Jesus. So just like he died and was buried. You're going to go under this water to picture that. But he rose from the dead.
And when you come up out of the water, just like he rose to new life, he's given you new life. So are you ready to be baptized? Yes. Well, then, in the name of the father and the son and the holy Spirit. Spirit, we baptize you.
There you are, Ella. Your dad, Jason, is going to assist.
All right, Ella, look at me.
So in the same way, your faith in Jesus has connected you to him, and baptism is a picture of how your faith has caused you to die to the old Ella and to be alive as a new Ella, because you're connected to the Lord Jesus, who is alive. Are you ready to be baptized? Well, then we baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
All right, you folks can exit the stage, if you would, please. Thank you. Awesome. Way to be a small group.
If our prayer ministry team will come to the front, guys and gals can get in place. We pray for anybody and everybody after our services, so we invite. Invite you to that. As they get in place, I'm going to ask you to stand with me. Here's what we're going to do.
Kind of winding down this teaching series on our words. We got one more next week, but it kind of moves away from our speech, so I wanted to close it out today with a prayer of declaration. So I'm going to have it on the screens, and I'm going to read it. I want you to read it out loud along with me with power and compassion and passion and feeling. So everybody read?
Everybody ready? Try that again. Everybody ready? All right, when you get to the commas, just slow down a little bit. Lord, we pray for a ministry over our mouths.
Give us no need to exalt ourselves and no words that will promote our own image, admiration, or interest. Lord, we refuse to speak from a proud, high, and haughty heart. Before destruction comes pride, but before honor is humility. Guard us from reckless words that pierce like a sword. We choose the tongue of the wise which brings healing.
Let our mouths be a fountain of life. Let our words flow like a spring that refreshes, restores, and revives. Wherever your river flows, everything will live. So let your life flow through our speech. Teach us to guard our lips that we may guard our lives.
We reject rash speech that opens wide the lips and leads to ruin. Make us wise, not foolish. For the mouth of a fool invites destruction and snares his own soul. Lord, we ask you to heal our words, cleanse our hearts and change our roots. Let the fruit of our mouths feed many with wisdom, peace and encouragement.
Today we choose life. We choose humility. We choose healing. Today, we choose words that build up and not tear down. In Jesus name, amen.
We are dismissed.
