Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of images and lyrics from the group Avalon singing … Testify to Love … singing of how any Christian should speak, text, or email … to testify to God’s love.
Highlight Verse[s]: 1st Peter 3:10 [NKJV] …
10 For “he would love life and see good days, … let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit.
… Peter’s exhortation for Christians to avoid speaking evil or deceitful to one another if we desire to see good days in this life.
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Highlight Context: 1st Peter 3:8-12 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… God’s calling to be a blessing in this life.
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Reference Passage #1 … Psalm 141:3 [NKJV] …
3 Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; … keep watch over the door of my lips.
… Good advice in prayer and song from King David about using our words.
Reference Passage #2 … Proverbs 18:21 [NKJV] …
21 The tongue has the power of life and death.
… God's wisdom, thru Solomon, about the power of our words.
Reference Passage #3 … Ephesians 4:29 [NKJV] …
29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.
… Paul’s teaching on how to use our verbal communication as Christians.
Reference Passage #4 … James 3: 1-12 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… God, thru Jesus’ brother, James, giving Christians warning about using “the tongue,” which these days can extend to texting or emails.
My Journal for Today: … Our Daily Bread author, David McCasland, used an illustration with which many these days should likely identify. He wrote: Have you ever sent an email and suddenly realized it went to the wrong person or it contained harmful, harsh words? If only you could press a key and stop it. Well, now you can. Several companies offer a feature that gives you a brief time after sending an email to stop it from leaving your computer. After that, the email is like a spoken word that cannot be unsaid. Rather than being seen as a cure-all, an “unsend” feature should remind us that it’s extremely important to guard what we say.
Wow, been there, done that, and have that T-shirt!! … Haven’t we all - well, at least many of us - said something or used our keyboards (or smart phones) to communicate our thoughts, many times laced with human emotions, to someone; and then, after saying or sending our thoughts, we realized that we’d like to UNSEND or UNSAY the words, ... which now are irretrievable?
Back in biblical times, one couldn’t send a message that would be retrieved and read within moments of the sender’s email or text. So, most of the biblical warnings about verbal communication dealt with the use of “the tongue.” And some of those Scriptural warnings can be found in the passages above; and I don’t think it takes a biblical scholar to translate those passages to our use of rapid digital communication today.
Personally, I think the Apostle Paul’s warning is the clearest and easiest to use when judging whether what we say, text, or email should be shared with others. With the Holy Spirit’s anointing, Paul wrote [see Eph. 4:29] that what we communicate verbally should either build someone up (i.e., edify them) or give them the grace (i.e., love) of God. If it doesn't do either of those, Paul would say, “Don’t hit the send button!!” (see photo)
My Prayer Today: Heavenly Father, … Lord, help my words do what is sung by Avalon in today’s song … “Testify to Love!” … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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