Years ago, the Lord taught me some lessons from a couple of experiences I had of missing buses.
One day I'd just come from grocery shopping and was waiting at a stop across the street from the market. This was at a corner where a number of city streets either converged or diverged, depending on your perspective. Two buses originating from downtown came down the same street, and then, at this particular corner, the street transformed into two that eventually ran parallel to each other, though a good distance apart.
I frequently rode these two busses, which ran on similar schedules, so it was probably out of a little bit of complacent inattention that I ended up boarding the wrong bus this time when it came along. It pulled up, and functioning on autopilot as I was, I got on with my little cart of groceries. I'd no sooner sat down than I realized my mistake as the bus immediately made a sharp turn at the corner. And it was too late to catch the other bus because it had just come and gone, too. Yes, it was a good lesson on the necessity to read labels carefully and not just jump aboard the first bus that comes along.
So I was going to have a long walk ahead of me. At least a half-hour of walking while dragging my cart along beside me.
But immediately I started laughing happily at the thought. Years ago my first and only reaction always would have been to fret, discouraged by the thwarting of my plans. And even today, that is still my natural reaction. But there is another reaction that competes with it, and often soundly defeats it -- the reaction of supernatural faith. At the moment I realized that I'd taken the wrong bus, I laughed because I knew the Lord well enough by then to know that He must have some purpose for my error. There had to be a reason. If He'd wanted me to catch my proper bus, nothing could have stopped me from doing so.
A few minutes later, as I got off the bus at the closest point to home, I realized I was near the local library. I hadn't been there in awhile, so I decided to go in and look at their used book section. Maybe there I'd find the source behind my mistake.
Sure enough, as I started looking over the books, I noticed one called, "Return to the Hiding Place," by a man named Hans Poley. He had been hidden by the ten Boom family during World War II, and this book was his account of their ordeal. Amazingly, I'd just given my copy of The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom herself, to a woman at church a couple of days before.
Finding that book more than made up for the long walk home I had that day.
Around the same time period, I missed a bus at the same corner on another day. I was grocery shopping again and just didn't make it out of the store in time.
My destination -- home again -- was almost an hour's walk from where I was, and busses came by about every half an hour. The weather was pretty nice for a Great Lakes winter morning. Sidewalks had been cleared of recent snow, and there wasn't any wind. It was just quite cold.
Rather than standing around waiting for the next bus to come along eventually, I thought I'd walk towards home and see how far I could get before it did. I did a lot of walking and thought that, all things considered, I was a pretty fast walker for a short woman. So I would get some exercise while challenging myself, and all while avoiding the unpleasantness of feeling like I was starting to freeze.
Though a weekday morning in the city, it was very quiet. With no wind and the snow that blanketed the ground muffling much of the noise of traffic, the stillness of snowy winter prevailed. After 20 minutes of brisk walking, I was pleased with how far I'd gone. I was on a main street, and there were bus stops every two or three blocks. I was right in between two of them when I thought that I'd better get to one and stay put there just to be sure that I wouldn't end up walking all the way home. I pictured the bus with its warm occupants cruising past me at the inopportune moment when I was nowhere near a stop. But I was at least a block now from the nearest stop. So should I keep going forward, or turn around and go back to the one I'd just passed?
Naturally, I wanted to keep going forward. After so many minutes of walking as a challenge to myself, I felt almost driven along, like I'd become a machine. But I also felt some opposition forming within me, and a surprisingly strong check in my spirit. I suddenly felt convinced that God wanted me to turn around and go back to the last stop I'd just passed by.
I did turn around and go back, but not before it took me several seconds to stop myself. It was almost like a tug-of-war was playing out in my spirit. I had set my mind and my will on achieving a certain goal, and it took a few seconds of God's voice calling me away from what I wanted for me to obey.
I had a strong sense, too, at that moment, that while we human beings are very small and insignificant in the world in the physical sense, we are much larger and more powerful spiritually -- and that is both good and bad. It felt like my own will was the size of a battleship that, despite the usefulness of its great strength, couldn't very easily or quickly be stopped or turned in another direction, given all of its momentum when I was determined to reach a certain destination in life. And that was true even when I really wanted to obey the Lord, and even in a situation that was insignificant to me in the grand scheme of things, as my walking goals were that day.
The experience gave me a sense of how the Lord really has His work cut out for Him in dealing with us human beings. When people are determined to do something, sometimes that's described as having an "indomitable" will. It begins early in infants and toddlers, continues through childhood and adolescence, and really becomes ripe in adulthood. While our willpower can drive us on against great challenges and tremendous difficulties, it's nevertheless an eternal liability until it's submitted to His will. When we truly submit our will to His, then the truly miraculous can happen as the indomitable human will is working alongside the almighty divine will. As Jesus prayed just before His arrest that would end with Him on the cross:
"And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done," (Luke 22:41-42).
With those words, absolutely true in His heart, Jesus demonstrated that He was the Savior of the world.
In Matthew 12:36, He tells us that we will be judged for every last word that we've said here.
"A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned," (v. 35-37).
Despite our words feeling utterly disposable and the belief that "talk is cheap," our words are indeed very powerful and eternal. The Bible says that again and again, though we are often slow to believe it because we don't feel it. We usually don't see our words having any instant, world-changing or people-influencing effects, so many people become intensely frustrated by a feeling of ineffectiveness and impotence. Our individual voice seems to get lost in the cacophony of the human population seemingly all shouting at once. Yet, we care very much about what everyone else has to say because *their* words are perceived to have a lot of power, especially over us.
Certainly, our lives today are at least in part the product of even the most casual of conversations and the most carelessly uttered comments of our ancestors hundreds and thousands of years ago. Our lives can and are affected by all sorts of off-the-cuff remarks made by the people around us -- some close to us, but many by strangers. Many of these remarks aren't remembered by anyone, either, except the person profoundly affected them.
"For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile." 1 Peter 3:10
"Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips." Psalm 141:3
"Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof." Proverbs 18:21
"We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be." James 3:2-10
There in James we see what we can do about turning our massive, hard-to-control wills over to the Lord so that His will and ours merge more and more into one. It's in our words.
Talk *is* cheap, sort of. Our mouths have a great deal of freedom, and when we are relatively free to say what we like is the perfect time for practicing obedience to the Lord and learning to like to say what He would like to hear from us. Spiritual readiness for anything begins here. And the Lord doesn't leave us in the dark about what type of talk should and shouldn't be coming from us. Praise, prayer, encouragement and humble correction for others, witnessing of His goodness and His work, edification.
Eyes that see, ears that hear, and human hearts that love the Lord through union with His will are only possible with mouths that not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.
-- Erika Schwibs