Chapter 8: Communication Keys: How to Listen and Speak
This may sound exactly like Listen – w/o speaking until The Spirit prompts to speak … but one was about letting the other person finish and listening to them, and this one is about us “initiating” conversation in response to something. He gave them both, so I asked for clarity.
Oftentimes Christians SPEAK – out of turn. What I mean is, they speak from the flesh, not as Led by the Spirit, and this is more-than-likely why this communication key is given to us all. Note, it was given to me first. Therefore, I have been silent much of the time, even having “something to say”, because He, the Spirit of God, has shut my mouth.
The Holy Spirit, I’m sure, is doing this work in many of His Children, because James 3:2b-10 tells us that the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
I’m sure we’ve all been the recipient of SPEECH that has indeed fit this description, and remember how we felt, and how the evil, poisonous speech affected us for days and weeks…maybe even longer. Name-calling, gossip, belittling, insulting, snapping at someone, crudeness, verbal-abuse and all manner of evil… fits into this category.
But we must not ever INITIATE it! We are to speak as the Spirit of God gives the reply of the tongue.
We have even initiated witnessing, and speaking good advice to people, without being led by the Spirit, and were out of God’s timing. He had not yet “prepared” the listener’s heart to receive our words and have thereby done more harm than good. We need to get Our Speaking under the control of the Spirit of God.
Sometimes on Facebook, I personally want to add my two cents to someone’s post, but I’ve literally erased what I was going to say, because I was following this instruction. I knew it wasn’t as the Holy Spirit would have given a reply. I realized my response was done in the flesh!
The Holy Spirit either made me rephrase kindly what I was saying or had me remove a response altogether. I’ve discovered something: Sometimes silence is the best response…and can speak louder than words…when you see something that needs correction. I’m talking social media here. Instead, just pray, asking that your silence lets them know you “aren’t supportive” of something they’re doing or saying, because you are unable to “support them with edifying words in regard to it.” This praying is done in love and in a non-judgmental attitude, as pleases the Lord, so it can be answered by the Lord. It is your desire that He would do a work of grace in them, and they need not even know your reaction at all. It need not hurt them, thus keeping you in a “good relationship”.
The Holy Spirit will be faithful to speak to you in a personal way on this one, I’m sure. These are simply some related comments, or rather, observations.