"Love your neighbor as yourself.' If you keep on biting and devouring each ohter, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other." (Galatians 5:14-15)-
It doesn't take the human heart long to figure out the impact our words can have. Learning from our mistakes, however, can take a lifetime. The potential to destroy with our words is just as real as the potential to build up. Yet how often we choose to use our words carelessly.
Paul Tripp, biblical counselor and author of "War of Words," encourages speaking redemptively, or "refusing to let our talk be driven by passion and personal desire, communicating instead with God's purposes in view. It is exercising the faith needed to be part of what God is doing at the moment."
Biting and devouring each other with words destroys; quarreling and surrendering to the desires that battle within kills. "Submit yourselves, then to God. Resist the devil. And he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you" (James 4:7-8).
God has come near through Jesus Christ whose gentle words beckon us to bow our hearts to Him and speak graciously to others because His grace has been lavished on us. ~ --- "May the words, O LORD, that I choose to say, bring glory, not shame to your Name each day!"
