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Just Before You Speak

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Proverbs 16:1 The plans of the mind belong to mortals, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD. 

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What we say to other people really matters. An off-handed comment can do a lot of damage, where as a gentle encouragement, builds people.

So often we just blurt things out without thinking too much about them, and we end up doing a lot of damage. Have you ever done that and then lived to regret it?

I remember on more than one occasion when I was a tough, hard-nosed businessman, reducing grown men to tears. Over the years I’ve said things to people that I wish, I wish, I could take back. But a spoken word simply can’t be unspoken. The damage done, often, is near impossible to repair.

They say that whilst sticks and stones can break my bones, names will never hurt me. But that simply isn’t true. Words, even short words, spoken in anger, or in stupidity, or selfishness, or guile – they can and do, do a lot of damage.

But there’s a space, a gap between thinking of something and blurting it out. And as the Lord’s been teaching me to curb my tongue, I’ve discovered that if I turn to him in that small gap, if I take a moment, just a second even to yield to Him, many of the things I would have said, don’t get said.

The plans of the mind belong to mortals, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD. (Proverbs 16:1)

We think things in our heads and really, those thoughts, those plans, well … we can think whatever we like. They belong to us. But between those thoughts and our speaking, we can hand the answer of our tongue over to the Lord. He’s a lot more savvy when it comes to what we should or shouldn’t say to other people. He’s a lot wiser and more loving about what should be said and what should stay unsaid.

Once you’ve blurted something out, it can’t be unsaid, but with God’s help, it can be unspoken before you blurt it out. It can go unsaid because the Holy Spirit put a check in our spirit about saying it in the first place.

I still say stupid things sometimes, but a lot less than I used to, because this is something that God is working on in me. How about you?

The plans of the mind belong to mortals, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

When we put our tongue, that vicious little organ, under the control of God, when we yield to Him in that split second between the thought and the speech, things begin to change.

We find ourselves saying kind things, gentle things, generous things. And some of the things we would have said, simply go unspoken.

Yield your tongue to the Lord.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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