James 1:19 “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” This episode talks about how important our words are and gives a split second prayer you can say to put the Holy Spirit in charge of your words. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Words Have Power to Bless or to Wound
James 1:19 “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
This verse really hit home with me this morning. It was the subject of the daily devotional I am reading “Jesus calling.” Actually it wasn’t even today’s message. I am behind because I was on vacation and I wasn’t doing my normal morning routine. This morning I got up and decided I would do two devotionals so I can try to catch up to where I should be. This book is so good. I always really enjoy the devotionals. The reason I say this mornings devotional hit home for me is because I know how important words can be and I know how much what we can say can hurt others.
I just got back from a family vacations with my husband, all three of our boys, and my husband’s whole family, his mom and dad, his brother and his wife, and their two girls. This is one of our favorite times of the year. It is so nice to get too spend a whole week with family. We get to hang out and talk. We get to play lots of games, especially with his mom and dad. My youngest two boys love to play with their two girls. They play all different board games and card games. It is music to my ears to hear them talking and laughing. The place we go to is a campground in Maine. We stay in a cabin with no internet. There is internet at the lodge, which is open 8-7 but not in our cabins. There is a tv, but it doesn’t have cable, you can just watch movies on it. I love this because it means we have so much more time to talk and to visit. However, as you can imagine my kids do not love this.
Two of them really enjoy playing games with their cousins, playing chess with their Pop (Tony’s dad) and playing parcheesi with both Tony’s parents. They also really enjoy when we rent a boat and they get to go out in the boat and go fishing, or when we pull them behind the boat on a boogie board. However, that still leaves a lot of time when they are bored. They do not enjoy the fact there is no Wifi. They miss talking with their friends on the computer and playing video games with their friends. Also, this year was super hot and the cabins are not air conditioned. Since our house is air conditioned, they are not used to sleeping in such hot temperatures. Some parts of the trip were difficult for them.
Our oldest, really did not enjoy the vacation. He really liked spending time talking with Tony’s brother, and he got to play chess with Pop a few times, but most of the time he was unhappy. I did go out and get him a fan at one point and he was much more comfortable after that but he still was very unhappy. He is the reason this verse hit home today. When he is unhappy or angry, he says things he doesn’t mean. He is really struggling right now and being away from his friends and his work for a week was more than he could take. Each day, at least once a day he would start to say very unkind things. Not because he really thinks those things were true but because he was upset and that is how he acts when he is upset. I don’t know why he does this. It is not something new, he has done this ever since he was little. In the moment, when he is angry, he does not care what he is saying or who he is hurting. However, afterwards he feels really bad about it. I wish he could hear this verse and adopt this principle. I am going to write it on a sticky not for him, because I know he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to feel this way, he doesn’t want to say unkind things and then feel bad about it later. He needs help learning to control what he says and it is not human help he needs. He needs the Lord’s help. I know my son is not the only one who says things they don’t mean when they are angry. We have all done this before. I thought I would read you the devotional I read this morning because it really explains this verse well and how important it is to watch our words.
“Watch your words diligently. Words have such great power to bless or to wound. When you speak carelessly or negatively, you damage others as well as yourself. This ability to verbalize is an awesome privilege, granted only to those I created in my image. You need help in wielding this mighty power responsibly. Though the world applauds quick-witted retorts, my instructions about communication are quite different: “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” Ask my spirit to help you whenever you speak. I have trained you to pray – "Help me, Holy Spirit" – before answering the phone, and you have seen the benefits of this discipline. Simply apply the same discipline to communicating with people around you. If they are silent, pray before speaking to them. If they are talking, pray before responding. These are split-second prayers but they put you in touch with my presence. In this way you're speaking comes under the control of my spirit. As positive speech patterns replace your negative ones, the increase in your joy will amaze you.”
I love the advice in this short devotional. Imagine how much different our interactions would be if we all paused before replying and said, “Help me, Holy Spirit.” Also, if you need to start a conversation with someone you just quickly pause and say, “Help me, Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is within us. He is waiting for us to ask Him to help us. What if we got in the habit of doing that more often? I wonder how different our days would be? I wonder how much smoother our conversations would be? I love how it says, “In this way you’re speaking come under the control of my Spirit.” Wouldn’t you love that? I know I would. I would love it if everything that came out of my mouth was under the control of the Holy Spirit. I know I say the wrong things sometimes. I have gotten so much better than I was because I have spent a lot of hard work and time learning to say the right things and to say kind things. And yet, I still mess up, I still say the wrong things. I wish I had heard this before or thought of this before. I have prayed things like, “Lord, guard my mouth.” However, I never thought to say a quick half a second prayer every time I open my mouth. This sounds like it could be a great way to become better with my interactions with others.
The other thing I wanted to quickly touch on because it really touched me this morning also was the last three words, “slow to anger.” This touched me because sometimes I can be quick to anger. Sometimes I can take offense to small things. Sometimes I can get upset over things that weren’t intentional or weren’t really a big deal. I know I can’t be the only person that does this. When I read them, it was as if the Holy Spirit shined a light on my actions. It was as if He was gently reminding me God wants us to be slow to anger. God doesn’t want us to take things so personally. He doesn’t want us to walk around taking offense and getting angry at everything we encounter. He wants us to be slow to anger. Is that you? Are you slow to anger, or are you quick to anger? If we are quick to anger it doesn’t mean we are bad. It just means we need to ask God for help. We need to ask Him to show us how to be slow to anger. It means we need to invite the Holy Spirit into more of our interactions. Maybe each morning when we get up we can hand our day over to the Holy Spirit. Maybe we could say a quick prayer like, “Holy Spirit, come into all my interactions today. Help me be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. I give you permission to take control.” That would take not more that a second or two and yet you are inviting the Holy Spirit into your daily interactions. You are handing over control to the Holy Spirit. I bet we would find this practice very powerful.
Let’s start now. “Holy Spirit, come into all my interactions today. Help me be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. I give you permission to take control.”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, please help us to be quick to listen and slow to speak and to anger. Help us to not take offense to everything. Help us to see our loved ones aren’t intentionally trying to hurt us. Helps us to hold our tongue when we get angry and not lash out. Help us to invite the Holy Spirit into our interactions before we even open our mouths to say anything. When we do speak out rashly and possibly unkindly, help those we offend to forgive us and to heal from what we said. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!