Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, October 25th.
What we say and how we say it reveals a lot about us. Today's podcast challenges you to take note of your words and be sure you are honoring God by speaking with grace. I want you to turn, if you will, to Colossians chapter four. Paul has been talking about prayer as it begins this chapter.
And then he says in verse five, conduct yourselves with wisdom taught outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, seasons as it were with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person. So what I want to talk about this evening for a little while is this whole idea of speaking with grace. And that is grace speaking. How do we speak with grace?
Now, when he talks about grace speech, always with grace, what is he talking about? Well, our speech should certainly be kind. It should be courteous. It should be in the spirit of humility. It should certainly be polite.
It should be edifying and encouraging. That's the kind of conversation I believe God expects of his children. That is, speech that is graced and that is speech that is favorable, speech that is encouraging and polite and kind and assuring. And he says here also, seasoned with salt. That doesn't mean salty because there are people who say, I just tell it like it is.
Well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you exactly, if you want to know what I believe, just ask me. Well, that kind of prideful arrogance is not what he's talking about. When he talks of it being seasoned with salt, he's talking about it being the kind of conversation that is not harsh, not critical, but simply the kind that oftentimes has some truth in it that once in a while may cause hurt. He said, conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be graced, seasoned as it were, salt. Now, as believers working in offices and in our families and among people and friends and strangers, conduct, yes, conversation, yes. It is such that when it is spoken, the other person will sense something.
What? Kindness, courtesy, thoughtfulness, encouragement, uplifting, not criticism, judgmental, condemning, tearing down, attempting to destroy someone else, rejecting. There's probably a thousand words you and I could use to describe the wrong kind of speech.
But he says, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt. And, you know, most of the problems in churches today are people can't get along with each other. You know what gets them in trouble? It's not their feet and it's not their hands. It's not their eyes or their nose or their ears.
You know what it is? People talking about each other, criticizing one another. It's like arrows, not expressions of love and kindness and gentleness, but like firing arrows, flaming darts at someone else. And he says it causes strife and disunion and disharmony. Now, there are a couple of prayers I think are interesting here I want you to turn to. Go back to Psalm 19 for a moment.
It's a good word to get up in the morning before you ever get out of the bed to quote this to yourself. Verse fourteen of the nineteenth Psalm. Father, let the words of my mouth today and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight.
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Let the meditations of my heart and the words of my mouth be acceptable in Your sight. That is, Lord, don't let me say anything that would displease You today and dishonor You in any way.
But let my speech be pleasing and honorable to You. Then turn to the hundred and forty-first Psalm. And I think this is another one that we probably would do well to pray to the Lord about our tongue.
Listen to what he says in Psalm 141 verse three. Father, set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. Usually, isn't it what gets us in trouble, the things that we say without thinking? And you know, once you've said it, you can't take it back. I mean, you'd like to take it back. And sometimes things we say we'd like to take back, we can ask somebody to forgive us for it. And sometimes maybe they just can't forgive.
Maybe it cut them too deep. Set a guard upon my lips. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight. O Lord, my God, my strength, my rock and my redeemer.
Set a guard upon my mouth and toward my lips. Hear two prayers that I think are great contributors to making it possible for us to speak with grace. Then I want you to notice, if you will, in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, and notice how Paul sort of said the same kind of thing here in this twenty-ninth verse. He'd been talking about anger and about speaking and so forth. And he says in verse twenty-nine of the fourth chapter, Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification, according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear, that it may send favor their way and encouragement their way.
Look at that. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth. You see, there's never an excuse for a Christian telling a dirty joke.
None whatsoever. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth. Or a caustic, hateful, critical kind of remark that sends like a target you're shooting at. And so we have a responsibility as believers, especially before the unbelieving world, but likewise to each other, to guard our lips, as he says, to set a guard upon our mouth. Now, going over to First Peter chapter three, in verse fifteen of First Peter chapter three, Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that's in you.
Yet, he says, do it with grace, with gentleness and reverence, that is, with respect for the other person. And so he says, now when you make your defense, he says, now you should be ready to be able to defend what you believe. And there's no indication in the Bible that we should say man be pamby and yes and just whatever you say. Well, no, I'm not going to get into argument.
You believe what you want to believe and I believe what I want to believe. Jesus didn't say that either. And the apostle Paul certainly didn't say it. But rather, when we do defend the truth, we must defend it, he says, with speech that is gentle and reverent with respect to the other person. You see, grace has this power about it that is indescribable. And he says, always let your speech be with grace and with salt. Gracious, kindness, reverence and respect for the other person, whether they're right or wrong doesn't make any difference.
That's not even the issue. The issue is that I'm more concerned about my witness and testimony than I'm about being right. What he's saying in this passage is this, that more important than whether I'm right or wrong or whether it helps my self-image or damages it, let your speech always be with grace seasoned as were it with salt.
He says, so that you may know how you should respond to those no matter what. Now, the best preparation for grace speech is in this same chapter. Go back to Colossians, on the third chapter. Colossians chapter three, look at this.
Here's good preparation for gracious speech. Look at this, verse sixteen. Let the word of Christ begin to dwell in you richly, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with thanksgiving in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in the word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
The best way to get my speech heading in the right direction is to fill my mind and heart with the word of Christ. Listen, he says, let the word of Christ richly dwell in you. Now, in order for it to be richly dwelling, that means I've got to have a lot of it.
And I need some understanding of it. Be rich in the things of God. Be rich in the language of Scripture.
Be rich in the words of the Word. And see, then you and I can talk in a term and on a level that no matter what is said to us and how it comes about, you and I can respond. And you know, listen, I have a long ways to go.
I'm a long ways from being there. But every once in a while I'll run into one of those kind of situations where I just get absolutely clobbered. And the sweetest feeling in the world is to walk away and say, Lord, thank You, that didn't even ripple one bit. You see, you and I will never know whether we can speak with grace until we get in bad situations and everything in us would normally want to defend ourselves and blare back. And then when you don't even have a feeling of wanting to, you don't even want to defend yourself. You just let it go by and be able to say, well, is there anything else?
And that's the best defense I know when somebody's really let you have it and they've just listed all the things about you they don't like or whatever it might be. And the best way you can answer that is, well, is there anything else? Then what do they say? Well, they probably already shot both barrels.
I mean, they've loaded them both and just emptied them both on you. And then when you say, well, is there anything else? Well, there's nothing else to be said. That isn't being manipulative or being smart aleck. It's just a matter of being in control. And whatever we say, we say it with grace and kindness. Thinking about the other person. So, let me just mention several things.
You might want to jot these down. And that is, how do I know that my speech is now speech that is grace speech? That is, God has favored me and God's grace is being expressed through me. That is, my speech will be graced I believe by God when several things are true. First of all, when I speak to others the way I want them to speak to me. When I learn when it's the habit of my life to speak to others the way I want them to speak to me, then I'll know I'm learning, I am learning what it means to speak with grace. Secondly, when I speak of others the way I want them to speak of me, then I'll know I'm learning something about speaking with grace. When I speak to others the way I want to be spoken to. And when I speak of them the way I want to be spoken of. And, number three, when I determine to speak the truth, not gossip of things I've heard, not picking up on somebody else's tale or gossip of what they've heard and they pass it on because you and I know by the third person it's totally out in left field.
By the time it gets to the seventh person it's not anywhere close to what it started out being. You see, you and I can know that we're speaking with grace, when we just choose to speak the truth, what we know to be true, and if we don't know it to be true, then we don't say it. The fourth thing is when our speech is edifying and encouraging and never attempt to damage someone else. When our speech is under such control that what we want to do is we want to be an encouragement.
We want to edify the other person. Listen, even though they may be wrong, I don't have the right to condemn, to accuse or judge. Jesus didn't.
He said He didn't. He said, I didn't come to judge, condemn, and He didn't do it in practice. And you and I can know that the Spirit of God is in control of our speech and we are speaking with grace when we have purpose in our heart that not only are telling the truth but we are, that we are edifying when we speak with other people, that we want to be an encouragement to someone else. And then I'll know that God has something going in my speech and grace is beginning to be in control and in charge of it when I speak fairly of the other person. The other person may have done something wrong, they may have said something wrong, but somehow if grace is really my speech, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt or maybe they didn't know any better. Maybe they heard wrong. Maybe they misinterpreted. And what happens is we give them the benefit of the doubt. That's what grace is all about.
He says, Let your speech always be with grace. Be fair to the other person. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe someone said something about you and they just repeated it because they really believed it. It wasn't true. Or maybe they said something and they didn't mean what they said. Give them the benefit of the doubt.
And then I think one of the primary things is this. I'll know that I'm able to speak with grace when I'm aware of the fact that whatever I'm saying and wherever I'm saying it, I'm speaking as an ambassador for Christ. Whether it's at home, among my friends, among my enemies, or on the job or wherever it may be. You and I are always ambassadors for Christ. The unbelieving world has a legitimate right to expect you and me to talk like the Bible said Jesus lived.
They have a right to expect that. And so when He says, Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about something having happened on the inside of us. Now, I want you to turn to a passage, I believe, Matthew chapter twelve. Because if my speech is going to be grace speech, if it's going to be the kind that is uplifting and edifying and kind and considerate and encouraging, listen to this. On this thirty-fourth verse, Jesus really put it on him.
He said, You brood of vipers, that is, you bunch of snakes. How can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the what?
The heart. You see, if we speak angrily, it says something about our heart. If we speak encouragingly and lovingly, it says something about our heart. Our conversation and our conduct are the products and the fruits of our character.
It is what is in our heart that governs what we say and governs how we say it. So when he says, Let your speech always be with grace seasoned with salt, then that means I first must learn how to walk in His grace and allow the Spirit of God to control my heart and my thinking. That's why it's so important to become rich in the Word of God. Wealthy in spiritual truth. Rich in the principles of the Word of God.
Then what happens? We know how to respond. We know what to say. And you remember, I used to claim this verse, especially the first sermon I preached, I remember I got this verse down real good. Here's what it says, And the Holy Spirit will teach you in the same hour what you ought to say. And there are many times I have to claim that, Lord, I don't know what this situation's going to be like, but you said the Holy Spirit will teach me in the same hour what I ought to say. Now remember this, the Holy Spirit, whose responsibility it is to produce the fruit of the Spirit into us, and that fruit is what?
Love, joy, peace, goodness, gentleness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control, kindness, gentleness, all of these things. If He is the one who's doing the talking, then He will speak with grace. Now, I want to challenge you to do something. Probably all of us may have one or more persons with whom at times we may have conflict.
I want to challenge you to make this a determination that the next time you are confronted with that person, you have one simple goal. And that is that no matter what happens, I am going to speak with grace. My words are going to be courteous and kind and encouraging. They're going to be truth. They're going to be edifying. And I may have to mix those with a lot of silence. But I will speak the words of grace and speak graciously no matter what.
I believe that you and I could win most anybody. By the way, we talk with them and the way we respond to their criticisms and the way we respond to their arguments. There's something about this old tongue, which on the one hand He says it's like it's been set on fire by hell. But think about this. Think about Jesus' tongue.
What was this set aflame by? By heaven. Listen to this. Come unto Me all ye that labor unto heavy laden and I will give you rest. Asking it shall be given you, seeking you shall find, knocking it shall be opened to you. Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more. You think about all the beautiful things Jesus said that were so absolutely transforming. So, our tongue can either be set on fire of hell or it can be set aflame with the glory of God to speak things that are encouraging and uplifting and kind and gentle with respect to the other person. And friend, there's not a single one of us who's ever been on our knees before God and God spoke to us and said, You rascal, you. But when God speaks through our heart, through our spirit, is it not always?
With grace. God doesn't condemn us. He is a God of loving kindness, all the condemnation He placed on Jesus. And when you and I come to Him, He always responds to us with grace. And He says that He's in the process of conforming us to His likeness. And if you and I can get our tongues under control to speak with grace, we will indeed have made a great step forward in our spiritual walk. Thank you for listening to Speaking with Grace. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
