You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Mt 12:34-37)
Who hasn’t said or thought at one time… “Why did I say that?!” or “I wish I hadn’t done that!” or “I wish I had that to do over again.”
95% of what we say and do is done without consciously thinking about it… it just flows out of us. When we talk, rarely do we think hard about our choice of words… sentence construction… grammar and syntax. Not only that, most of what we do is also “on the fly” with at best a general plan, thought, or idea about what will transpire. Our words and actions come from what I’m going to call spillover.
Spillover is what is in us… What is in our heart. The Scripture above reveals that we will be judged on our spillover because that is what is in our heart… it is who we really are. (Pause) I don’t know about you, but that is a tad bit scarey for me…
God knows that what spills over from the heart is who we are and the basis for how we will be judged by God. For that reason He caused to be written in His Word the following…
Psalm 119:11 I have stored up Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
Life is spontaneous… it just flows… it happens with little conscious thought in regards to words and actions. In fact, we don’t have the ability in ourselves to reign in the evil/sin impulses within us. And that is the reason for the admonition of the above passages to immerse ourselves in Scripture!
The mind of Christ and being able to discern God’s will happens as a direct result of immersing ourselves in God’s Word so as to discern the will of God as we live each day.
When I examine the “spillover” of my life I realize how much I need God to control me so that my spillover glorifies Him rather than causing others to stumble.
What does your spillover say about you and the condition of your heart?