A prayer and thoughts about my wicked tongue

The Most Articulate President

       Who taught you to speak,  I thought.  I wasn’t willing to say it out loud and sound ignorant.

The map to greater diction and greater facility of the English language, if not leadership is learning to become articulate.

Is articulation leadership?  I think not.   A great leader, may not be the most articulate.  I haven’t seen whether Alexander the Great was as fluid in speech as other great men, I am sure Moses wasn't fluid in his speech.   What we learn is that knew the secret of real camaraderie with men.  He knew how to draw them into the fray of chaos that ends in the accomplishment of a great goal.  Set the goal out there and then start running toward it,  I think.  That is what I see when I see a great leader.  Everyone looks out of their door and sees this crazed individual running with abandon and fire in his eyes and they run behind him.

It is not just the phenomenon of talking like you know what you are doing.  It is digging your heals into and getting your elbows scraped and making people follow you.

Let us do something about this or that and somebody seconds it and off you go.  We have come so far from the real relating that draws people into a great accomplishment.  Everyone is tweeting and commenting on this and that thing.  What is your status?  My status is too busy to comment on it, says the real leader.  We said we were going to do it and it gets done. 

True that there needs to be a plan and a blueprint of the thing to do.  But, more gets done before and after the plan is made up than just talking about it.   I think that is where we are deceived today.

I think we are updating everyone of accomplishment which are only on paper or in cybersphere.

It is true that many a great Black man is less articulate than he is accomplished.  This is unfortunate.  No one really respects the person who has to hire someone else to talk about what he is doing.  Both must be emphasized.  The doing and the articulating of it.

What is our Lang-gauge?  Is our clear and concise articulation a gift of God or the fruit of having taken dominion of some righteous priority?  

I see the devil sneak little deviancies into what we say to keep our speech from reflecting what we are really trying to say.

1.Say What You Mean to Say

2. You’re Welcome as opposed to De Nada

3. Slang and figures of speech

4. The Bible on speech impediments and articulation

5. The judgment of Herod

6. The use of perjoratives

7. The use of expletives

8. Why I love what they say about Teddy Roosevelt

9.  The Nelson Touch

So what, you speak so well.  What does that accomplish and what did you really say that was worth so much?

I am sure that after so many years of talking in the house and in the elections and governing, men must say to themselves,  where is the real me in my words?

In the multitude of words there is much sin, says the scripture.  I would fear and I do fear, when it comes to words.  I look at Mrs. Day in LWF seemingly a simple woman imploring her pastor to commiserate with her on the sense of futility of Wall Street.  He didn't exactly take her side.  There is a parallel between the use of money and the use of words.  A dollar is worth a hundred pennies and they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but God says every idle word will be given account of in the day of judgment.  That says shut up to me!  How many idle words do I say everyday and I am not in government. 

How do we pay the world back for being an air polluter?  Showing so much verbal ascent to nothing of real worth.

Lord, my tongue is vile and convicts me and I need the cross of Christ to clean me up and make me new.  Help me redeem the time with my tongue, Lord.  Give me grace to be a doer of the Word and not ever more of a talker than even a hearer.   Give me grace to listen to those that I love more than I talk.  Give me grace to listen to the silence of a wordless grief stricken world.  Help me redeem the fact that I was more willing to look like I was representing others than really listening to what others were needing from me.  God, I need a season of renewal in my soul.  Drain the swamp of my words.  Help me say and do what you want me to.