Last week I wrote about the battle for the mind. The battle is very real, and is being fought. The victory we walk through in God, enables us to live the very best possible life while we’re on this earth.

This week, I was wondering how do you think you’re doing with this battle of the mind?  How do you know, day by day, how you’re doing?

In the verses above, we see how we can look at our own lives and see how we’re doing before God. This passage describes the Bible is a mirror. Looking at yourself in a mirror, in a physical sense, shows you exactly how you are, complete with your blemishes and your imperfections. Not the perfect image that you may think you are.

If we listen to God’s Word, it’s like looking in a mirror. But the difference being that it shows you the condition of your soul.  It’s not showing your outward appearance but your inner appearance – what you are like before God.

If you’re in a battle and you want to know where you stand within that circumstance, you can start running around and getting lost, or you can start looking into the Bible for the condition of your own soul.

We read that God has planted in our hearts the Word of God in our heart. God has given us the Bible to examine and read.

The Bible is there as a mirror.  The Bible is there for us to read. And He has implanted His Word into our hearts. This has the power to save your soul.

Do you ever think about the condition of your soul?  It’s that bit which will live on into eternity. It’s sometimes the thing we neglect as Christians. We think that we’re okay, based on what we see in the physical mirror. But our actual condition is found in a spiritual mirror and that is the Word of God.

The battle of the mind will rage on around us. But it’s the inward picture that really matters.

God has promised to implant his Word into your heart. Not the mentally read Word; but the implanted Word that has the power to save your soul.

Do you think you can be lost or destroyed instead of saved?  The battle that goes on brings to you that you’re not truly saved, not truly forgiven, not under the grace of God etc.  I have been in awe at the times when God has planted in me something that would saved my soul. I can do nothing else than trust God.

I had asthma as a child and would often have to go to the Doctor. Even though I was there because of my chest, he’d make me poke my tongue out. He’d take this great big wooden thing and shove it on my tongue. He was looking at my physical condition because of the asthma. He was checking out my general health in addition to  making sure my chest was okay. In the same way, we can look inwardly at ourselves – we can reflect on the Word of God and the Word that He has implanted in me, and see how we are by looking into that mirror. And that will give me the power to be saved.

God has given us every good thing to get through this life. God has done it all.

The first way to see how we’re doing is to look at the Word. Way number two is through our tongue.   The tongue is often the evidence of how we are spiritually.

As an example, I knew an old lady who was a great preacher and prayer warrior.  She was thought of in a particular light. But at home with her family, the most evil used to come out of her. The nastiness would come out of her mouth. They’d be in fear. People would think she was lovely and beautiful, but at home the way she was revealed how she really was inside.

How we speak reveals how we are spiritually. It allows us to measure our spiritual condition.

Here we read that if you can’t control your tongue, your religion is worthless.  In the example above, the daughter of the old lady still suffered the effects of her tongue even into her older age. People would say marvellous things about her, but there were others living in fear of her. She was claiming to be religious, but she was fooling herself. But she wasn’t fooling God.

A measure of how you’re doing is in how you’re actually able to control your own tongue. Is there a battle over your tongue?  The battle of the mind is evidenced in how it comes out of your mouth. If you don’t chose God’s way, then out of your mouth can come:

God knows. He says we have to control our tongues. We must be people that don’t just look in the mirror but must act upon it and do what God says. James tells us how we’re doing spiritually is evidenced in how we speak.

We read that when Isaiah gets called by God, he replies that God can’t call him because he’s a man of “unclean lips” (Isaiah 6: 5).

In the middle of who we are this great battle that comes of our mind, which affects our tongue.  It demands that we examine ourselves and it demands see how we’re doing. It’s God’s medicine.

We get this every Sunday in church. We have Communion – and scripture says let a man come and examine himself:

Anyone who takes communion needs to examine themselves and repent. We can’t hold onto sins, bad feelings etc. We need to examine ourselves before coming to that bread and that cup. We examine by the Word of God and of our lips. After examining ourselves, we ask for forgiveness and surely that’s the way we come to communion. We know we’ve sinned and have failed. We ask forgiveness and come in His Grace. We come in His unmerited favour.

Like Isaiah, we can come with those unclean lips and ask Him to forgive us. It tales humility. We know we’ve fallen, and we know we’ve failed.

The sad days are gone and the sins are pardoned. These passages won’t change. The Word of God stands in our hearts forever. This mirror, the Word he puts in us, won’t change. Be encouraged.

God is doing His Word and refining us, the way we speak, and the way we think. He’s winning the battles.

God’s Word is with us. He’s showing us how to look at things. And those messages last forever.

Amen.