It Begins with the Tongue

I hear all the time the phrase, “Fake it til you make it.” I maintain that if you re genuinely working to make it, then you are not really faking it after all.

“¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. ¹⁵O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” – Psalm 51:14-15 (ESV)

In these couple of verses, David is declaring that with God’s forgiveness, he will declare aloud to God the praise due Him. Notice where that praise starts, aloud from the tongue and lips of David, not an empty gesture of sacrifice or going to church so that people may draw inferences from what they see. David is overt in his actions of vocal praise and adoration of God so there is little question as to what he is doing. He is genuinely working for all to see and HEAR of his repentance and glory declarations to God.

Now, once he has openly declared his repentance and praise to God he now takes on the actions associated with those declarations.

“¹⁶For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. ¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” – Psalm 51:16-17 (ESV)

The actions of the declarations are driven into and from the heart. Words are just words until they are from the heart. As mentioned in the title of this posting, “It begins with the tongue”. I must first make the out loud statements and then make sure that those are brought into and cascaded from my heart. The action for me is to be “broken” as mentioned in verse 17 above. I have to use my words to elicit action from my heart and then from other visible actions.

“¹⁹then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.” – Psalm 51:19 (ESV)

Only when I have the broken heart will my sacrifices to God be received. I have to first announce my transgression and seek forgiveness. Second I must have brokenness in my heart for the transgression and third, my sacrifices to God will be received. So when I say that faking it til you make it is really working to make it, what I believe is that the actions that begin with saying things and then allowing them to permeate the heart, create actions that are from the heart and generate realism as opposed to the feeling of fake.

When out there in the world what are you “faking til you make it”? Are you just going through the outward motions each day and/or time? What if you were to say it out loud, allow it to permeate your heart and then work on those outward actions, would it create a more real and genuine action?