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. Many of us have been using harsh words with others since we were children. The potential to destroy with our words is just as real as the potential to build up. Yet how often we speak 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 call us to speak graciously to others because His grace has been lavished on us.