Changing the Fountain

At the end of our class on September 13, one of our members asked the question the last item on our discussion sheet had been circling: how do we change the fountain?

It is the right question, because James raises it himself. "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" (James 3:11). He has spent ten verses on the tongue: the bit in the horse's mouth, the rudder of a ship, the small fire that sets a forest ablaze. Then he stops talking about the mouth and starts talking about the spring the words come from.

So if anger, criticism, gossip, exaggeration, defensiveness, or hurtful words keep coming out of us, is the answer simply to try harder not to say them? Or does James point toward something deeper?

Jesus and James locate the problem at the source

Neither Jesus nor James lets us treat speech as a surface problem. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34). "Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart" (Matthew 15:18). The words are the water. The heart is the fountain.

That has a practical consequence. A person who becomes angry or defensive every time he is corrected can be told to control his tongue, and he may manage it for a while. But suppressing the words is not the same as transforming the heart. The bitter water is still in the spring, and it will find another way out.

James names what is in the fountain

The answer to our question comes three verses past the fountain, in a paragraph that is easy to read as a new subject.

"But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth" (James 3:14). The word James uses for "bitter" is pikros, the same Greek word he used for the bitter water in verse 11. The bitter water of verse 11 and the bitter envying of verse 14 are the same word. James has named what is in the fountain, and he has placed it in the heart.

Then he describes the wisdom behind it. "This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish" (3:15). The last word is daimoniodes. The New Living Translation renders the line "earthly, unspiritual, and demonic."

And he names what it produces. "For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work" (3:16). "Confusion" translates akatastasia, disorder. In the Greek text behind most modern translations, verse 8 calls the tongue akatastaton, "restless" (NLT), from the same root. (The King James follows a manuscript reading with a similar sense, "unruly.") The disorder in the mouth and the disorder in the heart carry the same name.

So James moves from the mouth, to the heart, to a wisdom he calls demonic, to disorder. He answers the question himself: what is in the fountain is bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, with a wisdom behind it that did not come from above. The connection between studying James and praying for one another is not something we have to import into the letter. It is already in the text.

Spiritual reality and personal responsibility belong together

Paul says the same thing from another direction. "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil" (Ephesians 4:26-27). A few verses later he writes, "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God... Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you" (4:30-31). His word for "bitterness" is pikria, from the same family as James's bitter water.

Paul puts anger, speech, and giving place to the devil in a single paragraph. He does not make us choose between a spiritual explanation and a moral one. Both are true at once.

That gives us one boundary worth keeping clearly in view. Deliverance must never become a way of transferring responsibility for our words from ourselves to a demon. James says "the tongue can no man tame" (3:8), and yet he holds every one of us responsible for what we say. Whatever the Holy Spirit does in prayer, the command to put bitterness away stays in force.

How the gifts of the Spirit minister to the fountain

Within that boundary, the gifts of the Spirit have a real part to play.

Prayer ministry and deliverance can help uncover what lies beneath destructive speech: unforgiveness, resentment, fear, shame, pride, jealousy, bitterness, or wounds from earlier relationships. A simple prayer opens the door: "Holy Spirit, what is happening in my heart that keeps producing these words?" The answer might lead to repentance, to forgiving someone, to prayer for healing, to renouncing a destructive pattern, to deliverance, to reconciliation, or to several of these together. Those who practice deliverance ministry often describe an order that holds up well: confession, forgiving the person involved, renouncing the pattern, and then prayer for freedom. Deliverance does not replace repentance.

Prophetic ministry can encourage, and at times it can expose. "He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort" (1 Corinthians 14:3), and sometimes "thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest" (14:25). An encouraging or corrective word may bring attention to an area God wants to address. But the same chapter says, "Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge" (14:29), and Paul writes elsewhere, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). "God told me" should never shield our words from being weighed. If anything, James 3:1 makes prophetic ministry more careful and more accountable, because prophecy is speech that carries weight in another person's life.

Other gifts belong here too. A word of wisdom may show someone how to handle a difficult relationship. Discernment may help distinguish a spiritual attack from our own resentment or fear. Exhortation can strengthen someone who is trying to break a long habit. Mercy can create the safety in which a person admits failure. And sometimes the Spirit's instrument is remarkably ordinary: a friend who says, "That sounded harsher than I think you realized." The mature response is not always "I need deliverance." Sometimes it is, "You're right. I was defensive. I need to apologize." That too is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday afternoon

A Sunday morning class and a Monday night ministry meeting can serve each other here. Sunday gives us the biblical understanding. What does James say? What does my speech reveal? Monday gives room for a prayerful response. Holy Spirit, show me why this pattern keeps recurring. Is there something to confess, to forgive, to renounce, to be healed of, or to surrender?

Then ordinary life gives the test. A person might understand James perfectly on Sunday morning and have a meaningful time of prayer on Monday evening, yet James is finally concerned with what happens on Tuesday afternoon when someone says something irritating.

James tests the fruit

James does not end his discussion at verse 12. "Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom" (3:13). His answer is not the person with the most impressive spiritual experience. It is conduct marked by meekness.

Then he describes the wisdom from above: "first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy" (3:17). That is a searching test for teaching, for prophecy, for deliverance ministry, and for every other use of a spiritual gift. A ministry may look powerful. James asks whether it produces humility, peace, gentleness, a teachable spirit, mercy, and good fruit. (That passage has a study of its own.)

So after a powerful time of prayer, the question is not only "Did I have a powerful experience?" Over time it becomes "What kind of water is coming from the fountain now?" Is there less bitterness, less gossip, less need to win the argument? Is there more willingness to apologize, more truthfulness, more gentleness when contradicted, more restraint before repeating something about another person? The Spirit produces "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23, NLT). In time that fruit becomes audible.

Read this way, the whole chapter moves in one line:

• 3:1, responsibility for spiritual speech
• 3:2, "we all" stumble in speech
• 3:3-8, words carry enormous power
• 3:9-12, contradictory speech reveals a problem at the source
• 3:13-18, true wisdom becomes recognizable by meekness, peace, gentleness, mercy, and good fruit

Where James takes it next

James is not finished with the fountain when the chapter ends. A few verses later he asks where our quarrels come from and answers that they come from within (4:1). Then he gives his remedy in a series of commands: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded" (4:7-8).

Every piece of our question is in those two verses. Personal responsibility and resisting the devil stand side by side, just as they did in Paul. And the last command goes straight to the fountain: purify your hearts. "Double minded" takes us back to James's first chapter: "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways" (1:8). The word for "unstable" there is akatastatos, the same root as the restless tongue and the disorder of chapter 3. A mouth that pours out blessing and cursing is a double mind made audible.

For discussion

James says a spring cannot give both fresh water and bitter water. If bitter words keep coming out of us, what is in the spring? And what would have to change for the water to change?

For those who want to go further: If anger, criticism, gossip, exaggeration, defensiveness, or hurtful words keep coming from us, is trying harder to control our speech enough? What might those words reveal about what needs to change in our hearts? How might Scripture, repentance, forgiveness, prayer, the work of the Holy Spirit, deliverance ministry, prophetic ministry, the encouragement of other believers, and other spiritual gifts contribute to that change? And what fruit afterward would show that real transformation is taking place?

The longer question leaves room for those with experience in prayer, deliverance, and prophecy to share what they have learned, without asking anyone to accept beforehand that a particular problem has a demonic cause or requires a particular kind of ministry. That leaves room for the Holy Spirit to work in extraordinary ways, while the ordinary biblical responsibilities of repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, self-control, renewed thinking, accountability, and obedience stay fully in place.

The principle

Do not merely ask God to stop the bitter water. Ask him to heal and transform the fountain, and then look for the evidence in the water that comes out afterward.

For anyone who teaches or exercises a vocal gift, James 3:1 adds one thing more. The more our ministry depends on words that influence others, the more seriously we should invite God to sanctify both the heart the words come from and the tongue that delivers them.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Unmarked quotations are from the King James Version.