Blah Blah Blah!

Tuesday Oct 4, 2005


Reading:
1 Corinthians 10:6-10
Thought:
Have you ever been around someone who just didn’t know when to keep their mouth shut? Whether it was grumbling behind someone’s back or just out and out blurting out things that were not nice to others. The Bible talks about this among other sins and calls it just that… sin.

I had a friend in the 8th grade who had a similar problem, he never knew when to keep his mouth shut. We were out back behind my house skating one night in the school yard parking lot. It ran up to the back of my fence and we would often hop the fence and skateboard under the lights.

We where laughing and tooling around on the curbs and benches when some gangster looking guys rolled up in their car and stopped right where we were. One guy leaned out the far side window, pulled a gun out of his coat and pointed it at us. We stood their frozen and just waited to see what he would do. We were out in the open with no where to run so we were stuck as he stared us down.

He finally spoke and said, “Don’t leave on our account guys.” My friend must have had a fire started inside of him because he blurted out with out a blink “Don’t worry, we won’t… I’m not scared of you just because you have a gun! What are you without ----- It was all I could do to grab him and cover his mouth. I held him tight so he couldn’t speak and say something that would get us shot. I said something to the effect of, “We were just leaving…” I remember him being real upset with me later on for backing down from the guys in the car. I never regretted not getting shot that night. All in all I would say that keeping my mouth shut was a good thing to do in that case.

Now when I have someone at church badmouth or grumble about someone else whether it be about a pastor or church member, I say “Wow, is that how you really feel? I think this person would like to know that you feel this way, let’s go and tell them right now and get this straightened out.” And without fail the grumbling stops.

Exercise:
Think of a time when you or someone you know grumbled about someone else.
Question:
What was the response?
The next time you are faced with a similar situation, how will you react?
What words will you use?
Will you choose to be a part of the solution of part of the problem?
Remember: If you feed a fire it will grow…
Pray: Ask God for discernment on how to recognize it and handle it.