10 Powerful Uses of the Tongue in the Bible: What Your Mouth Was Made For

Most people can name a sentence that stayed with them. Maybe something said in kindness at the right moment, maybe something said in anger that took years to shake. Either way, the words outlasted the day they were spoken.

That is the Bible’s claim about the tongue, and it usually needs no arguing.

Where teaching on this subject tends to stop is at the warnings. Guard it, bridle it, hold it. All of that is in Scripture and none of it should be softened. But the Bible also says something the warnings alone will never tell you: God made this small member and gave it work to do. When a powerful instrument sits idle or gets turned to the wrong job, damage follows. Name the work, and the warnings finally make sense.

What the Bible Says About the Uses of the Tongue

The Bible uses the word “tongue” in three ways, and telling them apart clears up most of the confusion around this topic.

In Hebrew the word is lashon, and in Greek it is glossa. Both can mean the physical organ in your mouth. Both can mean a language, or a group of people who speak it, which is why Revelation describes a crowd gathered from every nation and tongue.

And both stand in for the words a person says, which is how Scripture can call a tongue lying, wholesome, or perverse. In that third sense the word covers the whole of what comes out of someone’s mouth.

That third meaning is the one this article is about. When Solomon writes that “a wholesome tongue is a tree of life” (Proverbs 15:4), he is describing a whole life of speech.

Is This the Same as Speaking in Tongues?

No, and it is worth clearing up because the two topics share a word. When Acts 2 describes the disciples speaking “with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4), the word means languages. That passage is about a gift of the Holy Spirit and how the gospel crossed language barriers on the day of Pentecost.

This article is about the organ of speech and the work God assigned it: what your mouth is for on an ordinary Tuesday. Both subjects are in the Bible, and they are different subjects.

How Often Does the Bible Mention the Tongue?

Often enough that it is a running concern rather than a passing one. Proverbs returns to the mouth, the lips, and the tongue again and again, and James raises the subject in every one of his five chapters (James 1:26; 2:12; 3:1-12; 4:11; 5:12).

Why God Gave You a Tongue in the First Place

The first thing God is recorded as doing in the Bible, he does with speech. “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). John opens his gospel by calling the Son “the Word” (John 1:1). Speech is no small thing in God’s world.

Then God made a creature in his own image and gave that creature a mouth.

Your tongue is a borrowed capacity, given by a God who speaks to a creature made to resemble him, and something given that way arrives with assignments attached. It is also why Scripture treats careless words so seriously. A gift that reflects God’s own nature is not a small thing to waste.

The 10 Uses of the Tongue in the Bible, One by One

Here are ten jobs the Bible gives to the tongue, each one resting on a passage that says it plainly:

1. To praise God
2. To pray
3. To confess Christ
4. To tell others about Jesus
5. To speak the truth
6. To build others up
7. To heal and comfort
8. To bless people
9. To teach and correct
10. To keep your word

1. To Praise God

David writes, “I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1). Elsewhere he prays, “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise” (Psalm 51:15). Hebrews calls praise a sacrifice offered with the mouth: “let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

James is more direct still. In the middle of his warning about the tongue he says, “Therewith bless we God, even the Father” (James 3:9). Blessing God is listed as something the tongue does.

Thanksgiving and singing belong here too. Psalm 100:4 tells us to “enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise,” and Paul describes believers “singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19). They are all praise wearing different clothes.

Praise is listed first because of what it does to everything else. A mouth genuinely occupied with God has less room left over for the rest. That tends to be what happens when a person’s attention moves, and it does more for someone’s speech than any technique for guarding it.

Where it goes wrong: the same mouth that sings on Sunday can cut someone down on Monday. James saw that and refused to let it pass.

2. To Pray

Paul writes, “in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). James puts it even more plainly: “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray” (James 5:13).

If praise is the tongue turned toward God in worship, prayer is the tongue turned toward him in need.

Psalm 141 shows what that looks like when the trouble is your own speech. David prays, “Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3). He uses his mouth to ask God for help with his mouth, rather than attempting the repair alone first.

Where it goes wrong: words offered to God with nothing behind them. Jesus warned about prayers made of repetition rather than intention.

3. To Confess Christ

Of everything on this list, this is the use that carries the most weight in Scripture.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

Paul holds the two together and will not let them come apart. The heart believes, the mouth confesses, and what he describes is a faith that has reached the mouth. Philippians looks ahead to the day when “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11).

There is work here that nothing else in you can do. You cannot confess Christ with your hands. Your intentions cannot say his name.

Where it goes wrong: a confession that the life never backs up. Jesus had hard words for people who honoured him with their lips while their hearts were far from him.

4. To Tell Others About Jesus

Before he ascended, Jesus told his disciples, “ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Paul asks the obvious question that follows: “how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14). Revelation describes believers who “overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11).

Peter gives the everyday version of it: “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15). That describes an unplanned conversation far more than a pulpit.

Witness is where private faith becomes public, and that is exactly why it costs something. A belief held silently cannot be used against you. Once you say it, it can. The tongue turns out to be an organ of courage as much as of kindness.

Where it goes wrong: silence where a word was owed, which is common enough to deserve its own section further down.

5. To Speak the Truth

“Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25). Zechariah says the same thing to Israel: “Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour” (Zechariah 8:16). And Solomon states God’s own posture toward it: “Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22).

Truth-telling is the floor the other uses stand on. Praise that is not sincere, comfort built on a false assurance, teaching that shades the facts: each of them collapses the moment truth goes out of it.

Paul’s reason is unusual. He grounds truth-telling in the fact that “we are members one of another,” which makes lying to another believer a body damaging itself.

Where it goes wrong: in three directions. Flat lying. Flattery, which is lying aimed at making someone like you. And false witness, which in Scripture often carries a legal setting, where a lie in someone’s mouth could cost a neighbour their property, their standing, or their life.

6. To Build Others Up

“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers” (Ephesians 4:29). “Communication” there means your talk, the things you actually say, and “edifying” means building someone up. Paul tells the Thessalonians to “comfort yourselves together, and edify one another” (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and Hebrews adds a frequency to it: “exhort one another daily, while it is called To day” (Hebrews 3:13).

The standard Paul sets asks for more than restraint. Your words are meant to “minister grace unto the hearers,” which means the person should end the conversation holding something they did not have before it.

This is speech aimed at making someone stronger than you found them, and it is meant for anyone: the person doing well, the person about to attempt something hard, the person who has no idea you noticed their work.

Where it goes wrong: the corrupt talk Paul sets directly against building up. The joke that costs someone something belongs here, even when everybody laughed.

7. To Heal and Comfort

“There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health” (Proverbs 12:18). “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24). “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life” (Proverbs 15:4).

Then there is Isaiah 50:4: “The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.”

Who is speaking there matters. That verse comes from one of Isaiah’s songs about the Servant of the Lord, and Christians have long read the Servant as pointing to Christ, so it is not a promise handed directly to you. What it does show is the pattern of a tongue God himself has taught, and what such a tongue does with its skill: it finds the weary person and says the right thing at the right moment.

A word in season means somebody noticed the season. You cannot speak to a person’s weariness without first seeing that they are weary, which makes listening part of this use of the tongue rather than a rival to it.

If building up (use six) is aimed at strength, this one is aimed at wounds.

Where it goes wrong: the piercing word Solomon names in the same verse. And something subtler: a true thing said at the wrong moment, which can land like a sword even when every word of it is accurate.

8. To Bless People

When God gave Aaron and his sons words to say over Israel, he was putting blessing into human mouths: “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). That was given to the priests for Israel, in a particular setting.

What reaches every believer directly is harder. “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not” (Romans 12:14). Peter says the same: “Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing” (1 Peter 3:9).

Blessing someone who has wronged you may be the hardest thing on this list. It asks the tongue to do the exact opposite of what the heart is pressing for. Which is why it may also be the clearest evidence that something has genuinely changed in a person. Self-improvement can produce politeness. It rarely produces this.

Where it goes wrong: cursing, which James refuses to leave alone. “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God” (James 3:9). The settled habit of speaking ill of one particular person belongs here too, even when it never sounds like cursing.

9. To Teach and Correct

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16). Paul tells Timothy to commit what he has heard “to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2).

Correction belongs to this use as well, and Scripture is not shy about it. “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:5-6). A friend who will say the hard thing is doing something for you that a flatterer never will.

Paul sets three terms on it: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). The aim is restoring the person, the manner is meekness, and the warning is aimed back at the one doing the correcting.

James attaches a warning here that he attaches to no other use of the tongue: “My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (James 3:1). Teaching carries a heavier account, which is a reason to take the work up soberly rather than to avoid it.

Where it goes wrong: correction that is really contempt wearing a helpful face. And teaching taken up lightly, which is the thing James actually warns about.

10. To Keep Your Word

“When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay” (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5).

Psalm 15 describes the person who may dwell in God’s holy hill, and includes this: “He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not” (Psalm 15:4). Someone who keeps a promise after it turned out to be expensive.

Jesus simplifies it: “let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matthew 5:37). He means let your yes be a yes and your no be a no. A person whose word holds does not need to swear to it.

A promise is made with the tongue, so a broken promise is a misuse of speech and not only a failure of character. Most of us file broken promises under being busy rather than under anything to do with our mouths.

Where it goes wrong: the easy yes, given because saying no in the moment felt harder. And the commitment made in a hard week that stops mattering once the week improves.

Where Wrong Words Come From

Ten uses, and most of us can feel the gap between that list and the last seven days. Jesus explains the gap, and his explanation is not comfortable.

“O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). Luke records the same teaching: “of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45).

Words are overflow. Whatever fills the container comes out when the container is bumped, which means the sentence a person regrets was already inside them, waiting for pressure.

That is why “I didn’t mean it” needs handling honestly. Someone may well not have meant to say a thing while still having meant it. Something had to be in there for it to come out.

It also explains the poor success rate of managing your vocabulary. You can learn to hold a word back for a while, and holding it back leaves it exactly where it was.

Jesus adds an accounting to this that should slow anyone down: “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). Words feel weightless because they leave no object behind. Scripture says they are more permanent than they feel.

The Bible does not leave the misuses vague. It names them: lying, flattery, gossip and talebearing, slander and backbiting, boasting, cursing and blasphemy, harsh words, quarrelling, and idle words. Read that list twice and most of the items will have a face and a week attached.

These days a good deal of it happens with the thumbs rather than the tongue: the forwarded voice note, the group chat where someone’s name comes up, the comment typed in anger at eleven at night, the reply drafted and thankfully never sent.

Scripture’s teaching on speech covers all of it, because the heart is what the organ reports on, and that has not changed with the technology.

What to Do When Your Words Have Already Done Damage

Some readers are not looking for a list of uses. They said something, and it is still sitting there between them and another person.

Jesus gives an instruction that is startling in how far it goes. “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). Worship waits. Go to the person first.

James adds, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another” (James 5:16), and Solomon warns that “he that covereth his sins shall not prosper” (Proverbs 28:13).

What that looks like in practice is a real apology rather than a managed one. Name the actual words you said. Own the harm without explaining why the other person provoked it. “I’m sorry if you were offended” moves the fault onto their feelings and repairs nothing. “What I said was cruel and untrue, and I was wrong to say it” costs something, which is why it works.

Sometimes the person is gone, or unwilling, or the damage cannot be undone. In that case what is left is confession to God, who forgives, and a changed pattern going forward, which is often the only apology some situations will ever receive.

Read also: Steps of Repentance and How to Forgive Yourself for Hurting Someone You Love

What Proverbs 18:21 Actually Means

This is the verse everyone quotes on this subject, and it is quoted more often than it is read.

Here it is with the verse that comes before it, which supplies the picture Solomon is working in: “A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof” (Proverbs 18:20-21).

Solomon is using farming language. Fruit. Increase. Eating what grew. The picture is a harvest: you speak, and what you said produces something, and eventually you are the one living in the crop.

That is worth saying plainly, because Proverbs 18:21 is sometimes read as though speaking a thing makes it so. Scripture does not present human speech that way. God created by speaking, and nothing in the Bible transfers that ability to us. What this proverb describes is consequence. Your words go out and they do real work in the world, and then you live with what they did.

That may be the heavier claim of the two. Words can end a friendship, settle what a child believes about themselves, or hold a marriage together through a bad year. Death and life describes what a single sentence can start.

And the harvest comes back to the speaker. “They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” The person who loves to talk is the first to eat what they grew.

What James 3 Really Says About the Tongue

James 3 is the passage most people have read on this subject, and it is often read in a way that leaves the reader worse off than before.

James starts with teachers, warning that they “shall receive the greater condemnation” (James 3:1), then broadens out. He points to a bit in a horse’s mouth and a rudder on a ship: small things that turn something much larger. “Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!” (James 3:5).

Then it gets severe. “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity… it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell” (James 3:6). Animals of every kind have been tamed, “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:7-8).

Read on its own, that lands like a closed door. Two things in the passage keep it from being one.

The first is who James has in view. Many readers understand him here to be describing the tongue as it runs unchecked, left to itself, rather than what it becomes under God’s hand. That reading fits the letter, which is an appeal for change from start to finish and would make little sense if change were impossible.

The second is a single word. James says no man can tame it. That is a statement about human ability, and it says nothing about what God can do.

Then comes the pivot, and it is the heart of the chapter. “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be” (James 3:9-10).

James is not scandalised that people curse. He is scandalised that the blessing mouth curses. He reaches for pictures from the natural world to show how unnatural it is: a spring does not pour out fresh water and salt from the same opening, and a fig tree does not grow olives (James 3:11-12). Every living thing produces after its kind. Only we manage to run two contradictory outputs from one source.

That is why James treats the tongue as a reliable gauge. “If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body” (James 3:2). He says elsewhere that a religion without a bridled tongue “is vain” (James 1:26). Your speech reports on you accurately, whether or not you would like it to.

That is the diagnosis. James is honest enough to leave it standing without softening it.

Read also: Book of James Summary by Chapter 1-5

The One Place in Scripture Where God Fixes a Man’s Mouth

If James 3 leaves you with nowhere to go, Isaiah 6 is where to go.

Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, and his first words are about his mouth: “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5). That is the honest end of James 3, said by a prophet.

What happens next is the part worth holding onto. God does not hand Isaiah a method. He does not give him rules for speech or a plan for improvement.

“Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged” (Isaiah 6:6-7).

Fire from an altar touches the place where the problem was. The text says outright what it accomplished: iniquity taken away, sin purged. Isaiah’s mouth was cleansed, and cleansed by someone other than Isaiah.

Many Christians read that altar and that coal as pointing forward to the cross, where the sacrifice that actually removes sin was made. Isaiah does not say that, so it is worth marking as one way of reading the passage rather than as something the text states. What Isaiah does say is enough on its own: a man with a mouth he could not fix met a God who could, and God went first.

And the very next thing Isaiah does with his cleansed mouth is volunteer to speak: “Here am I; send me” (Isaiah 6:8). The mouth that was the problem became the instrument.

What Does the Tongue Represent Spiritually?

Scripture treats the tongue as a gauge. It reads out something you cannot see directly, which is the state of your heart.

That is the point of Jesus saying the mouth speaks from the heart’s abundance, and it is why James can use speech to measure maturity rather than measuring it some other way. A person can manage their behaviour in most areas for a long time. Speech is high-volume, fast, and largely unguarded, so it leaks. What comes out under pressure is the most honest report available.

That is what the tongue represents in the Bible: a reliable readout of the person behind it, rather than a symbol carrying hidden meaning or a force operating on its own.

Which also means that a change in someone’s speech is real evidence of a change in them, and worth taking seriously when you see it in yourself.

When Silence Is the Wrong Use of Your Tongue

All this warning about words can leave a person with the wrong conclusion: that the safest mouth is a closed one.

Solomon does commend restraint. “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise” (Proverbs 10:19). James says be “swift to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19). Those verses stand.

But Ecclesiastes puts silence where it belongs, as a matter of timing rather than a virtue in itself: “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). Both halves are there. Silence at the wrong time is its own failure.

Think about what that means alongside the ten uses. A tongue that never confesses Christ, never tells anyone about him, never blesses, never says the hard true thing a friend needs, has not avoided misusing itself. It has skipped the work. The comfort we sometimes take in having said nothing is not always the comfort we think it is.

There are times to hold your peace, and Scripture names them. There are also times when saying nothing is the wrong use of a mouth God gave you for speaking.

How the Tongue Is Changed

Not by technique, which is why most advice on this subject fails within a week.

Paul lists what actually produces the change: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23). Gentleness and self-control appear there as fruit, which is to say as something grown rather than manufactured. That takes time, and it takes the Spirit’s work in a person, and Scripture never promises a schedule for it.

Alongside that, there are prayers to borrow. “Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3). “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). David prays about his heart in the same breath as his mouth, because he knows where the problem starts.

There is also a filter worth keeping, one that has circulated among Christians for generations. Before you say it, ask whether it is true, whether it is kind, and whether it is necessary. Most of what we regret fails at least one of the three, and often we knew which one before we opened our mouths.

In practice the work tends to look ordinary. Leaving the message unsent tonight. Saying the encouraging thing you thought and would normally have kept to yourself. Going back to someone and naming what you said. Asking God about your speech before the conversation instead of after it.

And there is a promise to end on. God told Zephaniah, “then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent” (Zephaniah 3:9). Cleaned-up speech is something God has committed himself to producing in his people. The direction of travel is his, which takes the whole weight of it off your shoulders without excusing you from the walking.

Read also: Lessons From the Book of Proverbs

Frequently Asked Questions About the Uses of the Tongue in the Bible

What Are the Three Powers of the Tongue?

That phrase is a preaching convention rather than a category the Bible uses, so Scripture does not give a fixed list of three. What Proverbs 18:21 does say is that “death and life are in the power of the tongue,” which sets out two directions rather than three: words that give life and words that deal death, with the speaker eating the fruit of whichever they grew.

What Are the Spiritual Benefits of Controlling Your Tongue?

James ties it to maturity: someone who does not stumble in word is “able also to bridle the whole body” (James 3:2). Solomon adds a plainer benefit: “Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles” (Proverbs 21:23). A guarded mouth spares you trouble you would otherwise have created.

Can a Christian Ever Fully Control the Tongue?

James says “the tongue can no man tame” (James 3:8), and he means it. No one arrives at a mouth that never fails. What Scripture describes instead is genuine growth over time as the Spirit produces gentleness and self-control in a believer, along with an honest expectation that you will still need to go back and apologise sometimes.

Is It a Sin to Speak Without Thinking?

Scripture treats hasty speech as a real danger rather than a personality quirk. “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin” (Proverbs 10:19), and James calls believers to be “slow to speak” (James 1:19). Whether a particular unthinking word is sin depends on the word. The pattern of speaking before thinking is one the Bible warns against directly.

Related Articles to Read Next

• Lessons From the Book of Proverbs
• Book of James Summary by Chapter 1-5
• God Does Not Want a Divided Heart
• How to Forgive Yourself for Hurting Someone You Love
• Steps of Repentance
• Book of Proverbs Summary by Chapter

Your tongue was given to you by a God who speaks, and he gave it work to do: to praise him, to pray, to confess his Son, to tell someone else, to say what is true, to build a person up, to reach the weary, to bless even the difficult, to teach and to correct, and to keep the promises you make.

Most of us are far more aware of the damage than the assignment. That is worth changing, and not by trying harder tomorrow. The mouth follows the heart, and hearts are God’s work. Isaiah found that out with a coal from the altar, and he ended up volunteering to speak.

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). That is a prayer worth praying before the next conversation, not after it.