Taming Wild Horses - Listen James 1:19-27 (Wednesday Night Reflection)

A few years back Anita and I had run out of CSI type shows to watch during summer reruns when we stumbled across a show unlike any of what we usually watched.  It was a Canadian television show called Heartland which centered around the fictional story of Amy Fleming and her family and life on the ranch.  The show’s focus, with various sub-story lines, on Amy’s gift of working with horses…especially her ability to work with problem horses, even wild horses, and bring them under control…the first episode begins with Amy and her mother rescuing an abused horse named Spartan. After loading the horse and leaving, Amy, her mother, and the horse are involved in a horrific truck accident in which Amy’s mother is killed.  Amy is left to carry on the tradition of her mother’s horse whispering legacy, beginning with the horse they rescued.

[Show video]

Throughout the show Amy displays the amazing and uncanny ability to bring out of control and even wild horses under control.  While fictional, the show reveals the amazing true-life ability of those known as horse-whispers—taming or controlling otherwise uncontrollable horses.

Why all this talk about horses?  Because James talks about the danger of the tongue and likens controlling the tongue to putting a bridle in the mouth of a horse.  My brothers and sisters if there is one thing that can get us in trouble quicker than the blink of an eye, it is an out-of-control tongue—the slip of a tongue can end friendships, start fights, bring about job terminations, or cause wars to erupt. 

How many of us have said something to someone that we eventually or immediately regretted?  How many of us have said things that made matters worse instead of better?  How many of us have said things that have fractured or broken relationships—either temporarily or, even, permanently?  How many of us have said things, that being people of faith, made God or His Church look bad?  How many of us have said something that we knew completely conflicted with who we are supposed to be as the People of God…serving as ambassadors for Christ in the world…being the living presence, the living Body of Christ in the world today?

We have got to find a way to tame and bridle these wild horses in our mouths—remembering that as the people of God, we follow the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ, and as the Church, the Living Body of Christ, we must ensure that the words we speak are reflective of the Word.  Tonight, we begin to do that…tonight, we begin a multi-week journey on Taming Wild Horses.

Where do we begin?  We begin with the most important of all skills in using our mouths.  The thing we need to do every time we are ready to talk…and by God-incident it tires directly back to our last sermon in the Jesus Fruit series…When we think we are ready to join in a conversation…the first thing we need to do is to “just don’t.”    In fact, we will find that the majority of what we need to do to tame these wild horses in our mouths is tied directly to abiding in Christ as Christ abides in us and exhibiting Jesus Fruit in our lives, from the core of love to the outer-skin of self-control. Before any words come out of our mouths we need to practice self-control and just be quiet and listen.

James is not the first to emphasize listening, if we were to do a search of Scriptures, we would find out that the author of many of the Proverbs, along with the prophets (particularly Isaiah and Jeremiah), and, most importantly, Jesus, emphasizes the importance of listening…among the many passages, particularly in Matthew and Revelation, is the repeated phrase, “Let anyone with ears, listen!”

Why this repeated stress to listen throughout Scripture?  Because God knows we don’t…we are a people who do not truly listen.  Consider a familiar scene:

A parent walks into a room and begins talking to their child who is engrossed in their newest video game.

“Do you have your homework done?”

“Yes”

“Have you fed the pets?”

“Yes”

“You need to wash up. It’s time for supper.”

Okay.

All of this is said without the child ever looking up from the game.  The parent begins to walk out of the room.  Suddenly the child looks up and says, “Wait, what did you say.”

Before we are too quick to condemn the younger generation with all their games and gadgetry…replace the child with either a husband or a wife…and replace the video game with either a basketball game or a Hallmark movie.  We have trouble with not listening when folks are speaking to us.

However, it is not always because we are distracted by some outside source like video games or television…sometimes we are face to face with a person having a conversation are we are so caught up thinking about what we want to say that we do not hear what the other person is saying to us.  Our minds are firmly engaged in waiting for the person to take a breath so we can jump in with our own two cents and we are so focused on what we want to say, we completely dismiss what they are saying to us—sometimes leading to an argument where both parties are saying the same thing (maybe in a slightly different way) but they are refusing to hear what the other one is saying.  Still other times, we start off listening and become distracted by the first part of what a person is saying that we are unable to hear the whole conversation and take in the point the person was trying to make.

This is why James, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others throughout Scripture, and in particular, Jesus, stresses the importance of listening…we need to stop letting things distract us, we need to stop being so focused on what we want to say or what we think a person might be saying to us, and truly and simply listen.  How many fights and arguments and problems could we avoid, in our homes, in our churches, in the world, if only we stopped and listened before we did or said anything else?

If we think about it we were created, we were designed, to listen.  It goes back to a saying I have heard throughout my whole life, and each of us here have probably heard it too…“God gave us two ears and only one mouth because He expects us to listen twice as much as we talk.”

Where do we begin listening?  We begin, before ever engaging in a conversation with another living being, by listening to God speak to us through His Word.  We begin by reading and studying the Word of God, in private devotional time, in Sunday School and Bible Study, in the Word proclaimed through worship, and in prayer.  We begin to truly listen to what God’s Word says…understanding what it said to the people He first spoke it to…and hearing how that shapes our understanding of it today.  As we do, we begin to get a grasp of who God really is…we begin to find the character of God, the character that should be that which shapes our lives…and in turn shapes our conversations.  We hear of a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast mercy; we hear of a God who is forgiving and who casts our wrongs as far as the east is from the west;  we hear of a God who is compassionate, touching the lives of those the rest of the world rejects; we hear of a God who not only loves, but is love…and not a selfish love, but a  we hear of a God whose focus is love, we hear of a God who is sacrificial, we hear of a God who seeks to redeem, we hear of a God who desires relationship.

And as we listen, and we hear God’s Word speaking to us, we are to move from simply being hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word…we begin letting this Word, God’s Word, take hold of and shape who we are.  We let it begin reforming us and creating us a new, that we might become reflective of God, that we might begin to look more like Jesus…

And as we become more like Jesus, then our conversations with others will become more Christlike, more Godlike…then we begin listening to others, truly listening in the same way and with the same attitude that we know that God listens to and responds to us…we begin listening through compassion, through mercy, through forgiveness, through love, through a desire to be in relationship with the person that we are listening to…

And as we have listened, then we must be slow to speak…we must make sure that we have heard and understand…too often we hear something and, especially if it upsets us, we have reflex response that we eventually, or even immediately wish we had never said.  We must listen, and then we must take time to think through our response carefully to ensure that the words that flow from our lips reflect the One who has saved and redeemed us…

We must be slow to anger, for anger tends to bring about words that attack and cause pain…and the words we speak are to be words that first seek healing, seek reconciliation and restoration, seek relationship…remembering that when we speak, we are speaking as representatives of our King and the words we say should reflect His Heart.

My brothers and sisters, may we always be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger…may we welcome with meekness the implanted [Word] that has the power to save [our] souls…may we be doers of the word, not merely hearers…may we begin to bridle our tongues…may we listen.  If we do this, we will have begun to tame the wild horse that too often runs free!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.