**Daily Devotional** **April 21** *36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. 37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. - Matt 12:36-37 (KJV)* Whoa – this makes a person stop and think about what he says. Many other versions of the bible translate “ARGOS”, which here is translated “idle”, as being translated as “careless”. The word literally means useless, and how many careless, idle, or useless words do we speak in our lifetimes? This statement by Jesus illustrates what other Scriptures teach about the power of our words (Proverbs 18:20, 21, 23; James 3:5-6), and how we will eat the words we speak. The Lord should be our example, and He speaks words of knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:6). Jesus never spoke idle words while here on the earth, and no guile was found in him (1 Peter 2:22). We tend to think that we will only be judged by our actions while here on the earth, but this tells us that we will be judged by our words also. When you consider that God created this whole universe with His spoken words (Genesis 1), you begin to realize what power is in our words. If the Christian would pay attention to what he says, and not just how he acts, then we would save ourselves a lot of problems, and would not be condemned when we are judged for them. How many times have we said things that were stupid, and not pleasing? All we can do now is to ask forgiveness for all those times (1 John 1:9), and pray the Father counts them as some of the sins that Jesus took for us, so we don’t have to pay for them. Praise God for Jesus! Devotional by Pastor Joe W. Green, www.infinite-faith.com