A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! James 3:3–6 (MSG)   Whether we speak negatively or positively, our mouths determine the direction of our lives. Today’s verses say that our tongues are like the rudder of a ship. When a storm begins to blow, it’s the rudder that steers that ship through the storm. If the ship’s captain loses control of the rudder, that ship is at the mercy of the storm. In the old days when a storm began to blow on the sea, you’d find the captain …

He got up, rebuked the windand said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. Mark 4:39   We’ve been on a series in this devotional about how Jesus dealt with the storms of life, based on Mark 4. In today’s verse, Jesus spoke to the wind and waves that blew against him, and there’s a very valuable lesson contained in this verse. You see, Jesus didn’t speak about the wind and waves, he spoke to them. When we’re going through something, we tend to want to talk about it. Now, I’m not saying that we can’t talk out our struggles with others, but we have to be careful. Sometimes we talk about our problems not because …

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. Hebrews 4:1   Having a day of rest is great, but we as believers also need to remember that there’s a rest we can enter into all week long. Our daily lives shouldn’t stress us out so much that we collapse on the weekends. We don’t have to endure night after sleepless, anxious night or work our fingers to the bone fifty weeks a year just to frantically try to unwind in our two short weeks of holidays. That’s not living. Today’s verse says we have a promise of rest. We have to be careful. In our day-to-day lives, …