“Son, you need to think before you speak!”
Those are words that were burned into my mind by my dad as a teenager. Most of us, if not all of us, have at one time or another said something we wish we could erase from existence. The foolish and often painful things we’ve said have left permanent scars on the hearts and minds of the unfortunate recipients of our explosive emotional meltdowns. Remember James writes, “…the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20). However, if the unpleasant truth be told, we can never unsay words that have been spoken. We may have felt justified in the heat of the moment, be it anger, bitterness, envy, frustration, maybe even physical pain. Yet our personal justifications will never erase the pain that has been inflicted upon others and the destructive consequences that will come back upon us as a result of the words we have used. Solomon wrote, “He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction.” (Proverbs 13:3).
So, next time we feel like we want to let our feelings and opinions go free form from our mouth or online, before letting our issues be known to the world, we might want to stop and think before we speak. Just thinking.