Just wanted to take a second to share that my wife and I finally became fully committed to cleaning up our mouths. We realize that as we grow in Christ we will be placed in stronger positions of leadership and we do not want to have to worry that our speech will betray our ability to witness to, and help in the growth process of others.

Here are a few more Bible verses about what God thinks regarding use of obscenities:

“No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear.” - Ephesians 4:29

“But now you must put away anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language out of your mouths. - Colossians 3:8

Even if those verses didn’t mean much to you because you’re not quite sure about this whole “God thing,” you have to admit that swear words dumb down our speech and make us lazy communicators. When I use the same cuss word as a noun describing 50 totally different things, a verb, and an adjective, I’m just sounding like the smurfs, which is sometimes smurfy, but certainly never smurfy ; )

Our Struggle with Swearing

I have considerable issues with my mouth when angry. I struggle giving over my temper to the Lord and it manifests itself in the occasional string of obscenities. On a positive note, it is much less of a struggle than before, and the Holy Spirit warns me right before each occasion. Sometimes though, I give in to my flesh, ignore God, and let ‘er rip. Not cool at all : (

My wife is not a big “potty mouth” by any means, but she found some words in her daily vocabulary that she felt were not glorifying to the Lord. The main one of concern to her had slipped under the radar, since she was allowed to say it as a little girl. We had to use the litmus test of, “Would Jesus say that,” or “Would we say that to Jesus?” The answer of course, was no.

The Solution to Swearing?

1. Formally declare our Mouth as belonging to the Lord - Our body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit. I usually just think of that when I am eating a huge bowl of ice cream after blowing off the gym for the third straight day, but maybe this applies to my mouth, too : )
2. Prayer - Centering in on God and his will removes desire to sin; contradiction of God’s will. I read a great verse in Jeremiah that gave me hope regarding this and other areas of struggle.
3. Physical Reinforcement to Reign in the Flesh - We are using the “Swear Jar” technique. Each time we use one of those words, we kick in $5 to our church youth center.

   When my wife first mentioned it, I blew it off with a “That’s pretty extreme - I’ll just think about it.” Of course I didn’t mention it again but she kept bringing it up over the next few days. I tried to talk her down, saying. “$5 is a lot of money,” to which she replied, “Not if you’re committed to this”.

   Touche! So there was the truth of it - I was trying to hang onto one of these last bastions of control manifested through fleshly anger. God finally reigned me in through the influence of my wife. Isn’t marriage great?

Thus we begin the “Great Swear-off”! Come back tomorrow for the results of Day 1.

Pray for us… : )

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