Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.  Colossians 4:6

Have you ever opened your mouth and spoken so quickly that you later wished you could take those words back?  God in His Word gives us much direction on harnassing our thoughts, our words, and our actions.

He wants us to always respond to others with grace, but in our humanness we often fail when we don’t take time to stop and consider what we are going to say and how it will affect the person we are speaking to.  Will our words encourage?  Will our words show love and compassion?  Or will our words wound and sting?  Will our words put a wedge between us and the person we are speaking to, or will our words help to maintain good relations between us?

Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but a fool is consumed by his own lips.  Ecclesiastes 10:12

We should always consider the other person first and not just blurt out the first thing that comes to our mind.  We should respond in love after considering our words and God’s instructions for our speech, and not just react and spew all kinds of nastiness onto the other person.

I just love the Proverbs in the Bible.  God promises to give us wisdom if we seek it and the best place in His Word to find wisdom is in the Proverbs.  Here is a nugget of wisdom from Proverbs 16: 21 and 24:

The wise in heart are called discerning, and pleasant words promote instruction.  Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Dig into the Word of God and find these nuggets for yourself, and watch how they can transform your speech!