Proverbs 18:21 Devo thought

I know I have posted this before but I was thinking about it again the last couple days.  

Proverbs 18:21- Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.  

This last weekend while we were out of town we stayed at some friends house who also are youth pastors.  While we were there they had a few teens/young adults stop by the house.  There was one girl who has to pay .25 cents every time she uses the words death, dying, die, dead...etc!  Apparently she over uses this word and well needless to say it is kinda a downer.  

So if we read Proverbs 18:21 we realize how much power our words truly have.  So it got me thinking more on how do we train our tongue for life and not death.  My conclusion was very simple...

Controlling our tongue means controlling our thoughts which is challenging in this world.  I don't think we can successfully train our tongue unless we train our minds.  

When we chose right thoughts and thinking our words will be life giving!  That means we have to fill our mind with positive, good, great, life giving, powerful, awesome things from above!  If we are stuck on the icky world junk our minds wander to that and so does our tongue!  (Kinda how I really had to stop thinking about a Football game... why should I let that steal my joy and over take my thoughts?)

 It truly means we need to spend time with JESUS, get in HIS word, Pray, Worship,  and let the Holy Spirit lead.  Secondly it means we need to avoid icky conversations such as gossip and other life taking conversations that are unpleasing and well just get us worked up over silly things.  It takes our focus off of Jesus and it becomes selfish which then might mean your life giving talk may turn to life taking talk.  THINK ABOUT IT.  Where are your thoughts?  Where are your words coming from?  Are you encouraging while talking or are you stealing joy?