Sayin' What Needs to Be Said So God Will Pat Your Head

...until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love - Ephesians 4:13-16

In a day when the pressures of daily living create in us a sense of urgency just to say what needs to be said and move on, we are each challenged to dig deeper into what we say, how we say it, and why we say it.

We have been reminded that our communications are directly related to our relationship with God. Do you believe this? Do you act like you believe this?

When we communicate scathing, thoughtless, and hurtful ideas and feelings without any regard to the big picture, the implications of the words, or our responsibility in the matter, we are actually conveying the level of our spiritual maturity!

A spiritually mature person is able to process, reinterpret, and package their ideas, emotions, and feelings, BEFORE expressing the message the Holy Spirit wishes them to convey. This is because a spiritually mature person does not disconnect their communications with others from their communication with God. The circle of life is truly an eternal matter. We aren't supposed to have one level of communication for the spiritual and another for the temporal. We don't treat our conversation at church differently than work or school or the street or traffic!

Isn’t it unfortunate how we think we’re spiritually mature because we read our Bibles and go to church every Sunday? Our honesty demands we discover that our everyday lives are raggedy and we’re not as spiritually mature as we thought. And the first place it squirts out is in our verbal communication.

I challenge you to process, reinterpret, and package your ideas, emotions, and feelings BEFORE expressing them. I challenge you to grow up a little bit more today in a way that our Heavenly Father interprets growth and maturity...by the grace of the words we speak; the life they bring, the message of hope and power they express.

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~