In fear of contradicting everything you have ascertained during pre-game interviews with athletes (which I know everyone writes on his heart), I must assert that talk is indeed NOT cheap.  Performance on the court will determine the winner of the game, and someone's daily life would certainly indicate many things about that person, but words are not cheap.  And I am not referring to lawyer salaries or the prices people pay for professional word-smithing.  I am referring to the "from the mouth overflows the heart".  

When I got married about a year and a half ago, I gained something I had never had before: a captive audience.  It was not that I always wanted someone to hear about everything I was thinking, it just so happened that now some one was right in front of me.  Over a short period of time I began to say things that for many years were just thoughts of mine, both of little or great consequence, without a filter for what needed saying.  In my mind, each utterance, big or small, deserved the same attention from my wife.  I cannot begin to convey the amazing musings I had about the essence of stain-resistant pants or the way a t-shirt must be folded.  Each topic deserved as must attention as the next, primarily because I was the one saying it.  But over time, giving value to everything I said began to devalue other words, and I started to speak with a flippant tongue.

This state of declining value led me to begin to search for more important things to say or things that would evoke some reaction (which became what I was really after).  I was speaking with no ground rules, no respect for anything of value or authority, and, like the Wild West, someone was bound to get shot.  I found myself hurting my wife and frequently kicking myself for what I had said.  The overflows of my heart had become the cacophony of my heart.

God, being graceful, put His Word in front of me a few weeks ago.  The Lord called me to think about the way I use my words by saying precisely what He needed to say in His Word.  Not one word shy of perfection, Scripture gives value to words.  Spending time learning what He has spoken have given me perspective on what I ought to say.  And that should really just be repeating His words.