See, the tongue is used to increase value, to create value in people in their hearts, this is design. We're created to do that, and everyone longs to be honoured and valued. See, so one of the uses of your tongue, it's why we had to identify all the bad stuff, so you just get aware when that's happening to shut it down, stop it, zip it, move away from it. But now we want to move into being creative with our tongue, so we have power to bring honour, to do all kinds of stuff. Okay, so here's the two base reasons then. Number one, honour God as our creator and source, and there's a couple of ways we can honour Him. I'll give them to you. Number one, thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Psalm 69, Verse 30 says, I will magnify the Lord with thanksgiving. How do you make God bigger? He's already big. How can I make Him bigger? I make Him bigger in my experience, or I give honour to Him. How do I do it? By thanking Him, so we develop a heart of gratitude and thankfulness. We begin to thank Him, and express thank you to Him. Speaking in tongues is one way of expressing thanks and gratitude to God. The second one is praise. In Psalm 50, Verse 23, whoever offers praise glorifies or honours Me. So thankfulness or gratitude, being thankful and praise, praising God, speaking and declaring His works, and declaring who He is, and what He's done; when we do that we are giving honour to God, see? That's why we start the service this way, because we use our tongues and our bodies to express honour to God, and the interesting thing is, God has promised to inhabit the praises, to come in - He said if you want to come into my presence, the key is thankfulness and praise. I'll enter His gates with thanksgiving, enter His courts with praise, so it's a divine design that I can access heaven, if I will be vocal. I have to be vocal. I have to use my tongue for the intention God designed it, which is to magnify Him, and honour Him, and praise Him, and as I do it, the Bible says, He even inhabits the praises of His people. Hence we make such an issue of it in expressing gratitude and praise continually to the Lord, and doing it vibrantly, and alive, and expressively. Why? Because it's design. We're designed that way, and God's appointed that's the way into His presence, otherwise you have a nice little quiet thing, but nothing happens. You don't feel the presence of God.
Now remember noise is not what counts, it's words that carry gratitude and genuine praise. Man, isn't that great? Okay, second thing then is this, that we're designed to speak out as God's personal representative. We've got to speak as God's representative, so there are three primary ways I could think of that you would speak as God's representative. You don't start off by doing "this is God speaking"! It's not done that way. The first way you can speak in a way that makes you as a representative of God is this. Now this one will surprise you, and yet it won't surprise you, but it's not the one you'd first think to come up with. Here it is; when you fulfil commitments you have made, you are speaking like an ambassador of God. Oh! When you fulfil commitments you have made, you are speaking like a true ambassador of God, because - why is this? God fulfils His commitments. God watches over His word. The Bible says in Numbers I think it is, it says God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent. Has He not said, and will He not do? Has He not spoken, and will He not make it good? So when you say and do, speak and make it good, you're acting as a representative of God. How? With the way you use your words, and you know what? Here's the interesting thing. When you're a person who keeps your word people, treat you as being someone of honour. If you're a person who doesn't keep your word, people despise you, and so they should, because you're dishonourable. Have a think about it. Think about it.