I am currently reading three books by Stormie Omartian simultaneously: The Power of a Praying Woman, The Power of a Praying Life and the Power of a Praying Parent. I don't typically read three things at once but her books lend themselves to this as you can find parts of your life that you need to cover in prayer at a particular moment and skip ahead or move back to that particular chapter.
Yesterday I was reading a chapter in The Power of a Praying Woman and the author wrote: "We will give account of every idle word in the day of judgment. (Matthew 12:36). That sentence jumped off the page and slapped me in the face. I even wrote "YIKES" in the margin.
I am quite certain that in the last 41 years I have spoke many idle words. But what exactly is idle in this particular translation of the Bible? Maybe there was away out of this judgement. Maybe I haven't spoken idle words. What exactly does idle mean? So I checked other versions of the Bible and this is what other translations listed in place of idle:
careless
thoughtless
foolish
empty
useless
non-working
Once again - yikes! There is no way out of it. I will be standing before God with a lifetime of careless, thoughtless, foolish, empty, useless, non-working words for which to account.
At the end of each chapter, the author has written a beautiful scripture based prayer. I will be adding this one to the long list of things I am currently asking God for help with!
7 comments:
i have many "idle" thoughts/words but I don't think they are all bad. I think in this context it refers to "bad" like when you think bad thoughts or gossip about ppl...just my opinion though. No one can be saying/thinking productive words ALL the time. But you ca try to make those words/thoughts kind and good and not bad so thats what i think.
Yikes, from me too!
God used you this morning to witness to me....
Yikes is what I said just now too. I have quite a morning and God wanted me to hear this so thanks for posting it!
This is actually exactly what I needed to read this morning. Thank you Beth. I think I may just have to go buy those books, they sound excellent. Have you read the Mary books? I can't remember the exact titles, but something like Having a Mary Spirit in a Martha World, and a Mary Heart one. They're excellent.
Happy New Year too!
Yikes 3...
I've read her "Power of a Praying Wife", but I may have to look into "Power of a Praying Parent". Thanks for the idea
"Powerful" Reminder to us all!
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