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Three sisters, ages 92, 94, and 96, live in a house together. One night the 96-year-old draws a bath. She puts one foot in and pauses. She yells down the stairs, “Was I getting in or out of the bath?”
The 94-year-old yells back, “I don’t know. I’ll come up and see.” She starts up the stairs and pauses. Then she yells out, “Was I going up the stairs or down?”
The 92-year-old is sitting at the kitchen table having tea and listening to her sisters. She shakes her head and says, “I sure hope I never get that forgetful.” She knocks on wood for good measure. She then replies, “I’ll come up and help both of you as soon as I see who’s at the door.”
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It is always fun to laugh at a good clean joke, don’t you agree? But do you know that you are a total of everything you feed yourself daily? I’m not talking about natural food such as hamburgers and French fries. I’m talking about what you set before your eyes and ears – what you read and what you hear, consistently.
There are habits that we develop that we don’t even realize we live by. One of them is joking around about things that may not seem important to us but feed our spirit, nonetheless. Let’s take aging, for example.
People love to joke about aging – making up funny jokes, poems and stories about getting older. It seems as one heads toward the first hurdle, the great THREE OH (30) people think life is over for them and it’s all downhill from there. They moan and groan about moving slower and achy knees and backs – at 30. Puhleeze.
At the opposite spectrum, the term “senior moment” is another example. It implies that as you age, you are going to forget things. Because you are a senior citizen, you’re having a senior moment – forgetfulness. Oh ha ha. Not. Nothing funny about forgetfulness – especially when you discover you don’t have to live that way.
No where in the Bible does it say you will have senior moments or forgetfulness. It does say you have the mind of Christ (was He senile?) and other vital statements such as “as you think in your heart, so are you” – you are what you think. It also says that what is in your heart will come out of your mouth.
Job 22:28 states that what you declare, decree, state, or say, that is what will be established for us. One of the meanings of the word “establish” is CREATE. What we speak will be created for us.
Notice that it does not differentiate between good and evil, joking and being serious. ALL our words are vital and important. Our spirit can’t tell the difference between good words and bad words – it just hears words.
Then there is a powerhouse of a scripture, Proverbs 18:21. I will give it to you in the King James version then the Living Bible. It should be an eye-opener:
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Those who love to talk will suffer the consequences. Men have died for saying the wrong thing!
We speak and live by our words, like it or believe it, or not.
I use the topic of aging here but it actually works for anything. There is nothing wrong with a good clean joke. I love jokes! But people think there is nothing wrong with joking about health, aging, the economy, and all things pertaining to life.
God promised us that He would give us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Yet the more we joke, the harder it will be to believe that scripture. Why? Because the more we joke, the less we really believe those words we speak, so we don’t think they are important. And even though we don’t believe what we say is important, our spirit does – and the devil does. Those words are his language – words opposite the Word of God.
God established the word by speaking. We speak in order to be saved. Words are important to God and the creative processes of our life. So the next time you open your mouth to tell a joke, ask yourself: “will his help me or hurt me? Are these words of life or are they words of death?”
God is Good, always and in all ways!
Scripture Reference:
Prov 23:7a: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…
NKJ Luke 6:45. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man
out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth
speaks.
2 Peter 1:3 …as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through
the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,