The Mouth Of The Righteous is a Fountain and not a factory.

Compare Proverbs 10:6. Streams of living water (like the "fountain of living waters" of Jeremiah 2:13; Jeremiah 17:13, and the "living water" of John 4:10), flow from the mouth of the righteous, but that of the wicked is "covered," i. e., stopped and put to silence by their own violence. Now the question below...

Why does this righteousness make FOUNTAINS out of our mouths and not factories?

Righteousness means being rooted in God, not standing outside God trying to earn your way in with a list of behaviors. Biblical righteousness is not primarily a set of things that you do but rather it is whom you trust and whom you live with and whom you fear to forsake, and whom you learn from to be wise. Or to use the New Testament terminology, righteousness is abiding in the vine, not working for the vine, but trusting the vine to work through you, and flow through you. Righteousness is being in Christ and living by faith in his power and grace and wisdom.

That kind of relationship with God and his Son makes your mouth a fountain and not a factory. There is a great difference between the freedom of a fountain and the frenzy of a factory. God means to make our mouths pure and life-giving not by commanding us to marshal more human resources and digging up raw materials and organizing labor and management like a factory like: "Get your psychological corporate act together!" Instead God means to make our mouths pure and life-giving by becoming our resources and our raw material and our labor and management himself.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," Jesus said (Matthew 12:34). And the way God means to change the mouth is by becoming that abundance. He means to be a fountain of life for us and in us so that out of that abundance our mouths can be a fountain of life for others.

What Should I Know/Do?

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain and not a factory because righteousness means living on the abundance of God moment by moment drinking at the fountain of living water which is nothing less than God himself, manifest in Jesus Christ, and welling up in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (John 4:14; 7:38–39).

So the heart of this devotional is a call to trust God as your abundance and treasure. To live in God, to feed on God, and drink from God, and fellowship with God, learn all your wisdom from God, and fear to forsake God (Ezra 8:22). He invites you this morning very earnestly and sincerely: "Let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the water of life without price" (Revelation 22:17). The fountain of life is free. And it reproduces fountains not factories.

Lifting Prayers

Dear Lord, I thank You that you offer it to us this incredible gift of Love free without a price, an offering poured out through Jesus’ great sacrifice to anyone who will accept it. I thank you, too, that you loved us enough to give us freewill to choose it for ourselves; it is never forced upon us. Therefore Lord, I declare I am righteous, my mouth is a Fountain of Life and not curses. Give me grace to brittle my tongue. Whenever I speak, let Life flow through me. Help me to always abide constantly in you. Teacher, teach me all I need to know, guide me unto the end. Amen.