Other Love Notes in the “Controlling Your Tongue” Series:

1. The Power of the Tongue

2. Kind Words- they might not be what you think

3. Can words kill?

Transcript:

Welcome to Love Notes with Abby. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

So I have to tell you that the Lord bruised my toe with today's lesson, but I'm going to carry it on with it anyway.

This week we've been studying all about the tongue and the power of our words. If you're just joining us, I'll post some of the links below so you can catch up. But today we're going to shift from the power of our words to the power of our listening.

The Bible says in James 1:19

As we look at this verse, we're going to dig a little bit deeper into the three main parts of the verse.

The first part is: Be quick to listen

My Dad is one of the wisest people that I know and one of his favorite sayings is, “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”

And I think this is the kind of listening that that James was talking about.

He wants us to be quick to listen so that we can understand.

Then he goes on to say, Be Slow to Speak

Yeah, so, this is where the Lord really began convicting me because basically I talk too much. I talk too much.

Growing up my whole life, I was forever having my seat changed in school. But that really didn't work that well because you know, I would just chat with the person beside me.

I love to talk and I love conversation, but sometimes I get so excited about what I'm going to say, that I quit listening to the person talking so I can formulate my response.

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Miscommunication is a real problem and God knew this, hence James 1:19

God knows our nature.

He knows that we're quick to speak, and we don't necessarily listen to the person talking to us. And so He gave us this command: Be Slow to speak.

And I'm hearing it, I'm hearing it and I'm gonna work on it.

Now, let’s continue to move forward in this verse, and look at the third part of this Scripture where it says,

Be Slow to Anger

I know that there are lots of different interpretations of what that means and I know there are many layers to it, but today God really revealed to me how related that third part is to the other two verses.

Think about how many arguments start because we're not listening, we're not hearing, we're not understanding, and then we're quick to respond.

How many arguments and and and misunderstandings can be avoided if we truly were quick to listen and understand and slow to speak?

And I'm going to go one step further. I think it carries over not only in our relationships, in our lives with our spouses, with your children, with our friends and our church homes. I think it also carries over into our relationship with God.

So go with me here.

What if when we read the Bible, we were quick to listen to what God was really saying, that we were quick to seek understanding for the heart and the intent and the spirit and the truth of what He meant about a specific verse.?

And then we were slow to speak? Even if it's just in our own minds what we're immediately thinking and we're speaking to ourselves and, we can easily come to that wrong conclusion.

How could that revolutionize our relationship with the Lord?

So even though the Lord kind of bruised my toe with this, it was appropriate and needed correction.

And I think that it just reiterate the fact that throughout the entire Bible we see that God's way of doing things is the best way of doing things.

So my charge for you today is to look for opportunities to seek to understand and then be understood. And I want to hear how it goes. I want to hear how it's impacting your life when you're slow to speak, quick to listen and slow to anger.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I really am thrilled that you are here. Now it's your turn. Go be great!

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