Every time you speak you have an option…

So in strving to manage your mouth, you think before you speak, always speak the truth, then speak the truth in love.

Proverbs 12:18 (TEV), "Thoughtless words can wound as deeply as any sword, but wisely spoken words can heal."  Every time you speak you have an option, either build up or tear down, hurt or heal, encourage or discourage.  You lift people up or you tear them down.  You have an option, a choice, every time you speak.  So speak the truth in love.

Do you know people who justify their insensitivity by calling it candor?  They say "I'm just frank."  Listen, you can be frank without being tactless.  You can speak the truth but you speak it in love.  You don't just blow people over with it.  You don't use truth as a club. 

"Some people like to make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise soothe and heal."  Proverbs 12:18 (LB).  I'm never persuasive when I'm abrasive.  Yes, speak the truth.  Yes, think before you speak.  But speak the truth, always in love.

Some say, "I just tell it like it is" and they're proud of it.  I've discovered that those who say, “I just tell it like it is, rarely do”.  They tell it from their perspective.  They tell their viewpoint, their ideas.

Just a thought from the front porch…