For the past few weeks, I’ve been stuck on a passage in the Gospel of John.

“Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.’” — John 5:19

The implications of this statement are far-reaching.  Jesus did nothing unless he first saw Father doing it.  Think about it.  Jesus comes to the pool of Bethesda, a place filled with the sick and dying.  Everyone is waiting for their own personal miracle.  This Jewish man steps foot into a sea of need and interacts with only one lame man.

“Do you want to get better?” he asks him.  Notice, this is an exclusive offer for only one.  The rest of the crowd is waiting, watching, hoping that Jesus will come to them and repeat the same scenario.  However, the time never comes.  The lame man is healed and a few verses later we see that Jesus is no longer at the Pool of Bethesda; he’s in the Temple.

Why didn’t he heal the rest of the people?  That is the wrong question to ask. We begin with our assessment of the situation.  We start with the crowd of people and consider that factor to be the most significant.

Let’s review what Jesus said to the Jews shortly after healing the lame man: “The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing…”

Jesus based every action on what Father was doing.  His “ministry model” was simple and relational.  The needs of the crowd were secondary to Jesus’ need to see what on the heart of Father.

Question: What do you think of this approach to ministry?  How do we position ourselves to see what Father is doing?

Source: Milt Rodriguez, Milt Rodriguez’s Blog

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not be entangled with the yoke of slavery again.” Galatians 5:1

A friend of mine recently told me about a conservation group in Zimbabwe that is taking captive lions and rehabilitating them back into the wild.

This is a difficult, four phase process, but they are having success with it. The rehabilitation process has many snags involved because of the effects of captivity on an African lion. When lions are bred and raised out of their natural habitat, some very abnormal patterns begin to develop. In short, they become domesticated. Yet lions were born to be wild.

In captivity, the lions basically forget that they are lions. The forget how to hunt. They forget how to live in the wild. And they forget how to live in a pride. The “pride” is the name for a community of lions. Lions are by and large social creatures and do not do well as loners.

The Effects of Captivity

You and I were born (again) to be spiritual lions. That’s who we are, but we have forgotten our true nature because of our captivity in the religious system. Captivity has conditioned us to believe things that are just not true. We have become something less than our true calling and destiny because of this conditioning. We have become domesticated.

We have become isolated pew warmers; a mutated race that sits and listens instead of participating and functioning. The clergy/laity system has made us passive and spiritually lazy. In other words, we have sold out our birthrights. Just like Esau we have sold out for the comfort of a bowl of lentil stew, that is, our warm and comfy pews. We no longer wanted to bother with functioning as members of the Body of Christ, so we sold out and instituted the clergy/laity system.

We Have Forgotten How to Hunt

This is definitely one of the most important aspects of a lion’s life. Without the act of hunting, how will you eat?

How will the pride eat?

We have forgotten how to hunt for our own food. Part of our conditioning has been that everyday (or every Sunday!) someone opens our cage and throws us a piece of meat. This bypasses the whole hunting process.

Who is this person that throws in that piece of meat? Where did he get it? Apparently, he went and hunted for it himself. But that is not my prey! And I never had to hunt for it myself.

Hunting is much more than just killing an animal and then eating it. There is the encounter of the hunt itself: finding the right place and time; having the right equipment; getting very quiet; smelling the prey; stalking the prey; taking aim, etc. Sometimes you come up empty handed, but the actual engagement is the thrilling part.

As believers, our food is Jesus Christ Himself! Not just teaching and doctrine about Christ, but the very Person and experience of Christ. You need to hunt for this “food” yourself. Sharing someone else’s food is alright at times. But there is nothing like you going out on your own “hunt” and capturing some new revelation or insight into your Lord. This is exciting. This is discovery. This is how you were born to live!

But then what? What do lions do after they have captured the prey?

They bring it home and share it with the pride.

As I said before, lions are very social creatures and they live in a pride. But in captivity there is no hunt and there is no pride. Lions are thrown their food everyday and they do not live as a pride. They are just individual lions living a mutant life of individualism.

A lion in captivity never has to hunt for his own food. He becomes lazy and complacent. He actually believes that this is normal. He believes that someone else is responsible.

We Have Forgotten How to Live in the Wild

“Because we do not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” II Cor. 4:18

There are two kinds of realms that exist. There is the unseen realm (or the eternals) and there is the seen realm (or the physicals). Both of these reams exist together at the same time.

One realm is spiritual and unseen. That is, it has no physical substance or what we would call matter. It has no size or dimension, and it exists without time or space. You could say that this spiritual realm is totally “other than” the seen, physical realm.

Of course, we know that the seen physical realm does have matter, energy, space, time, and dimension. Science tells us all about electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, and molecules. We seem to know a lot about the seen realm. But the scriptures tell us that this realm is only temporary.

It is the unseen realm which is eternal, and yet, we really don’t know much about that realm at all. How do we live in that realm? How do we live in spirit?

The Creature of Two Realms

As lions, we are called to live in two realms at the same time. But we should live mostly in the unseen realm. This is the “wild” for us. And it is mostly unexplored. It really is the “wild.” It is our natural habitat. And we can never be fulfilled with anything less. And yet, because we have forgotten who we are, we have become comfortable in captivity. We have become comfortable in the seen realm. We actually start believing that the physical realm is everything and then we start investing our lives into it.

Yet we have a Lord who is both Lion and Lamb. He is definitely gentle. But make no mistake about it, He is not tame! He is as wild as they come and the wild realm that is our home is inside of Him (Eph. 1:3).

But our natural habitat is not lived alone. This is a place of community. This is the place of the pride.

We Have Forgotten How to Live as a Pride

The “pride” is the social unit for the wild lion. They do not live alone. They interact in small groups know as prides.

Dear believer, a very important part of your natural habitat is the spiritual “pride.” This has been lost to us as well. Lions in captivity don’t live in prides. That is a special feature only found in the wild. When you discover that you are already free and begin living in the other realm, you will see the need of community life. This wild life is a shared life. Shared with your Lord and shared with His people.

But we are not used to sharing our lives with others. We have been isolated (held captive) for so long that we have forgotten that this is just the normal life for wild lions. In a true pride, you all share your food, share your joys, share your sorrows, and share everything in life with one another.

The big question is: how do we get to this place of freedom? How do we remember how to hunt? How do we remember how to live in the wild? How do we remember how to live in a pride?

Our great God has already provided a solution to this situation. And this solution was in force as early as the first century.

God’s Solution: Walking with Lions

As I told you in the beginning of this article, there is a conservationist group in Zimbabwe that is successfully rehabilitating lions back into the wild. But how do they do it?

They take the young cubs for walks everyday in the wild. An experienced lion “handler” (not trainer) will take a cub on long walks everyday to introduce the young lion to life in the wild. Eventually, the lion’s natural instincts will begin to kick in. They will begin to respond to their natural prey and eventually begin to stalk them. Then, one day, they will learn to hunt for themselves. The lion handlers will also introduce them to a pride in the wild so they can be socially integrated.

God does the same thing with His people. He re-introduces His “lions” back into the wild by the use of “handlers.” These are men and women who are called, prepared, and sent by Him for this difficult task. They do not become caretakers of the believers, but their job is to be re-introducers. Then the believers re-discover their spiritual instincts and habitat that has been long forgotten in captivity.

We can see these people at work in the first century. They were sent out by God as itinerant apostolic workers (or church planters) to lay a foundation of Christ for the assemblies of believers. Their job was to work themselves out of a job. Peter, John, Paul, Barnabas, Titus, Silas, Timothy, and others did this work or re-introducing God’s people to the wild. Then they would leave them on their own to live as wild lions! Every one of these workers had already experienced true “pride life” for themselves and knew about the hunt, the wild, and the pride by personal experience.

In the Zimbabwe program, the handlers have less and less contact with the lions. The goal is to completely release them to the wild, not to control them and keep them domesticated.

Christians are leaving the religious institutions in droves. They are seeking more reality, a deeper spirituality, and freedom. They are being set free from the captivity of the religious system and it is a beautiful thing to see. But that creates an altogether different problem.

Now that all of these believers are being set free from captivity, what will happen next? How will they now be re-introduced to the wild? How will they remember how to hunt? How will they be introduced to the “pride” life?

God’s own rehabilitation program must be the answer. We need to pray that God will raise up many “handlers” who have been called, prepared, and sent to walk with the lions.

You are a lion and you have a divine right to be free in the wild with His pride!

There’s something ironic about short words with deep meaning.  Take the word “prayer” for example.  There are only six letters in the word, but it is used to describe interacting with the limitless God.  Seems ironic, doesn’t it?  If I was in charge of creating a word to describe prayer, I’d probably end up forming a long, German-looking word with multiple hyphens in it.  I’d probably make it nice and complicated, just so that everyone realized the immensity of what they were getting involved in.

Condemnation and Shame

It seems that prayer is a word that Christians speak and write a lot about, but actually do very little.  At least, that statement has been true of my own life.  I’ve spoken on the importance and ease of prayer, but struggled to daily interact with the Lord.  In fact, if I’m going to be downright honest, I haven’t especially enjoyed prayer.  Sure, there were times when the Spirit would intervene and I would experience some delight, but for the most part the place of prayer has been a dry and arid region of my life.

Condemnation and shame (i.e. thinking I am something wrong) have contributed to my hesitancy to engage God in the place of prayer.  Whenever I would struggle to stay on the right path, I would sense a wave of condemnation and shame.  I’d suppose that God was disappointed in my poor performance. Why wouldn’t He?  He died for my sins and to free me from this horrible cycle of unrighteousness and I repay Him with endless mistakes.  I think many people identify with this way of thinking.  It’s the way I used to think until I read, The Shack, by W. Paul Young.

God Is Never Disappointed

In The Shack, there’s a conversation that takes place between Mackenzie, the main character, and Holy Spirit.  During the conversation, Holy Spirit makes a statement like, “You know it’s not possible for me to ever be disappointed in you, Mack.”

Mack responds with astonishment and unbelief.  “Surely, it’s not possible that You’ve never been disappointed in me.”

Holy Spirit then launches into this beautiful discourse on how it is not possible for God to be disappointed in us.  The logic goes something like this:

• Disappointment is results from unmet expectations.  For example, I expected you to clean up the house by the time I got home, but you didn’t. Therefore, my expectation is not met.  Therefore, I feel disappointed because you did not meet my expectation.
• Expectation is the “strong belief something will happen or be the case in the future.”  Notice, it is not the knowledge that something will happen in the future.  It is the “strong belief.”  Therefore, expectations are only possible for beings that do not know the future.
• God knows the future.  He is the “Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.”  David said in Psalm 139 that before a word was even on his lips God already knew it.
• Therefore, since God knows everything He cannot have unmet expectations; and if God cannot have unmet expectations then He cannot experience disappointment towards me when I sin.

It may take a minute to wrap your mind around this logic, but it will liberate you once you understand.  God knew me, and loved me, before I was even born.  When I was chosen in His before the foundations of the world (Eph 1:4), He already knew the list of sins I would commit.  However, in spite of that, He still chose to love me and make me His own.  Therefore, there is never any reason for me to live under condemnation (Rom 12:1).

Talking to Dad

The next day, I went for a walk during my lunch break.  I like to walk in the middle of winter because I can be outdoors and by absolutely alone at the same time.  No one else is as crazy as I am to go for a walk when it’s 10 degrees F outside!

As I was walking down the road, I found myself praying and, oddly enough, enjoying the experience.  This was unexpected.  As I began to think about what I read the night before, Holy Spirit showed me how He used the story to break off shame and condemnation from me.  I no longer had to live under the cruel taskmaster of disappointment.   As Paul told the Ephesians I had been, “freely accepted in the Beloved,” (Ephesians 1:6) which is Christ.  No matter what state of being I am in, I can run to Him and find full acceptance.

Up until then, I had always called God my “Heavenly Father.”  As I prayed, I felt the need to ask God for another name to call Him.  “I associate all these feelings of disappointment and condemnation with that title, God.  Is there another name I can call You?”

I began to try out other words that mean “Father.”

“Let’s see…Abba…no…Papi….no….hmm.”  I couldn’t figure something out.

Then Holy Spirit spoke to me and asked, “What do you call your father?”

“Dad,” I replied.  “I just call him my dad.”

“Then that is what you can call Me,” He said within.

Truly?  Could I dare to call God such a name that was common and plain?  “Yes,” I said to myself.  “That is exactly what I will call you!”

The experience was so freeing to me.  I did not have to live under the false idea that God was disappointed in me.  Neither did I need to speak to Him as if He were far off.  He is the One who has come near to me even when I was far away from Him.  I am freely accepted by my “Dad.”  I can encounter someone called “Dad.”  That is something that I can relate to.

Such a small word to convey such a limitless God.  There’s that irony again.

Source: Cole-Slaw, by Neil Cole

I read of a church in which two people were shot dead and many others were wounded by mad gang violence on the church property early Sunday morning. Later that morning, police cars were all over and yellow police tape was cutting across the crime scene as an open investigation was taking place. The coroner was taking away body bags, while a sign, hastily hung below the police tape, read, “Church Service Will Go On As Usual.”

Our first response might be admiration for such a thing. Nothing can keep God’s people from obedience; they will worship no matter what happens. But obedience to what? There is no command in the New Testament to attend church services as we know them on Sunday morning.

Is it wrong that this church met despite the ongoing investigation of murder on their campus? No, it isn’t wrong, just a bit extreme and portrays that we may have our priorities out of balance.

A pastor friend of mine does not understand the reason I think this is so extreme. He asked, “If a murder happened on the same block as the house where your organic church meets, would you cancel a get-together?”

I said, “No, but if the murder took place at the same house where we meet, and the police were still dusting for fingerprints and removing body bags–yes!”

I have heard pastors say that what we do on Sunday mornings is the most important thing we do all week. Such platitudes sound religious and pious, but I do not believe they are true. I think God is far more concerned with how you treat your family, your neighbors, and the strangers on the street than how well dressed, timely, and inspired you are on Sunday morning at church services.

Just the fact that we can get away with convincing people that Sunday services are the most important thing we do all week is testimony to how far removed we are from the Scriptures. The devil has succeeded in deluding us and removing us from truth. We leaders are taking people down a path that is not the truth with all of the conviction of our belief in the Bible and none of the substance of it.

I would imagine that many of you reading this post right now are shocked by my assertion that a Sunday church service is not a biblical mandate. You are probably searching for verses in your mind right now. You will not find any, and the ones you think you find do not carry the theological assumption you’ve been told that they do. I will address this a bit more in a later post.

All of this shows us how out of balance we are on the importance of a Sunday worship service. I’m not against gathering and worshiping. I am not saying it is bad or wrong or even wasted energy. I am against placing Biblical authority on a duty to something that is not instructed in the Bible.

Two people died that morning on the church grounds. Police were still actively investigating the crime scene, taking testimony, and searching for evidence when parishioners started arriving for the service. The coroner was trying to remove the bodies before the choir started singing! In any other context the police would have prevented anyone from entering the scene of the crime, but I am sure a church on Sunday morning is an intimidating force even to a police department.

Source: The Plague of Gossip in the Body of Christ by Jon Zens

Bob Mumford once said, “The Christian army is the only one that shoots its wounded.”

Regrettably, I have observed his statement to be all too true.

As long as I’ve been a Christian I have watched friends and their families undergo untold pain and hurt because of the incredible power of gossip and slander. Years ago we were traveling and after speaking in a church a brother came up to me and said, “I heard that you had quit teaching in churches and took up potato farming.” How and why such a rumor got started is anybody’s guess! This rumor was fairly innocuous, but imagine the untold harm done by vicious judgments on the life and character of others.

In this article, I would like to address this issue head-on. My hope is to raise the awareness of my brothers and sisters in Christ on this matter, so that we all will better follow the Lord’s teachings regarding our speech about and actions toward others.

What exactly is gossip?

Gossip is second or third hand information that someone dumps on you without your prior consent and without the consent of the person being gossiped about. Gossip can be true, partially true, or completely false. It can be motivated by good intentions, but it’s always negative personal information about another that puts them in a bad light.

What is slander?

The Bible defines slander as accusatory speech that is injurious to a person’s name and reputation. It’s essentially character assassination . . . the act of smearing someone. Gossip and slander color people’s perceptions of an individual unfairly and unjustly without their knowledge or consent. One major component in both of these sins is that the person being torn down is out of the loop. Talebearers usually avoid speaking directly to the one they are demeaning.

I will admit that I have listened to gossip in the past. At the time, the thought never occurred to me how deeply a person and their family could be hurt when someone attacks their character without their knowledge or consent.

It seems that most people who spread gossip never think about this. Nor do they realize that what they’re doing is engaging in gossip and slander. (Some people, of course, who intend to smear another human being know exactly what they’re doing. Many Christians, however, naively spread gossip without realizing what sort of destruction it brings in the lives of others.)

For this reason, I have raised a standard in my life. To the best of my ability, I always evaluate people based on my first-hand experience with them, not on what someone else tells me about them – for the obvious reason that second-hand information can be very misleading and inaccurate (sad to say, I haven’t always lived up to this standard in the past).

Gossip and slander violate the Lord’s own maxim: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” If anyone has suffered the agony of being gossiped about, they understand the force of those words. No one wishes to be the subject of gossip and slander. There are few things so hurtful.

One of the problems is that gossip and slander seem innocent and they often come to us subtly. One doesn’t have to be operating in malice to be guilty of gossip and slander. Again, the motive is irrelevant. Spreading negative or shameful information about another person is contrary to walking in love. Love “thinks no evil” and “believes the best of others” (1 Cor. 13).

What does gossip and slander usually sound like? It usually begins with something like, “Did you hear about such and such . . .” The rest of it goes on to put an individual in a shameful or negative light. A.W. Tozer had these powerful words of advice about the sin of gossip:

Never pass anything on about anybody else that will hurt him. “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). The talebearer has no place in God’s favor. If you know something that would hinder or hurt the reputation of one of God’s children, bury it forever. Find a little garden out back — a little spot somewhere — and when somebody comes around with an evil story, take it out and bury it and say, “Here lies in peace the story about my brother.” God will take care of it. “With what judgment you judge, you shall be judged.”

If you want God to be good to you, you are going to have to be good to His children. You say, “But that’s not grace.” Well, grace gets you into the kingdom of God. That is unmerited favor. But after you are seated at the Father’s table, He expects to teach you table manners. And He won’t let you eat unless you obey the etiquette of the table. And what is that? The etiquette of the table is that you don’t tell stories about the brother who is sitting at the table with you — no matter what his denomination, or nationality, or background (from Five Vows for Spiritual Power).

So what should we do if we hear a rumor about someone else?

If we are in conversation with a person and they begin to express words that put another brother or sister in a bad light, we have a responsibility to interrupt such speech and exhort them to speak directly with the person they are criticizing. If an email containing gossip is sent to us, we should disregard the content and ask the sender to go to the one being spoken against. In all circumstances, as much as lies with us, we should not be a party to gossip and we should confront those spreading evil speech. We must not forget that matters of concern about others must be confirmed with witnesses (Matt.18:16), and others should only be notified if the person refuses to repent – which means they refuse to stop their sinning. We sin by entertaining accusations against others that have not been confirmed by witnesses, or that have already been repented of. It is sinful to spread information about the past sins of others when they are already under the blood of Christ.

In addition to the above, we should go to the person being targeted and make them aware of it. We should then ask for them to confirm or correct it. This is the loving thing to do. Think about it: If someone was spreading something negative about you, would you not want to be made aware of it? Again, love treats others the way we wish to be treated.

It’s not good enough to ask the gossiper if they’ve spoken to the person gossiped about. In my experience, oftentimes a person spreading the gossip will say “yes,” but when I’ve tracked down the person being gossiped about, they will deny having had such a conversation. Or the conversation really wasn’t a conversation at all. Nothing can replace going directly to the person being spoken about.

Whenever we hear gossip, we should consider these questions: “Would I want someone talking about me like this? How would my family feel about this? My spouse, my mother, my father, my children, my best friends?” (These thoughts are typically never considered when a person listens to or spreads gossip about another individual.)

Have you ever noticed that speech that tears others down travels like a brush fire, but news of repentance and restoration seems to move along at a snail’s pace? Why is it that we often immediately believe and embrace negative assessments of people, but reports of repentance, change, or the dispelling of a false rumor are met with skepticism? As believers, the exact opposite should be our practice: we should be hesitant to entertain and skeptical of adverse words about others, and quick to rejoice in and embrace news of the dispelling of a rumor or another’s repentance!

Satan’s nature is to accuse. He is called the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12). In fact, the word “Satan” means adversary, and the word “devil” literally means “slanderer.” That should say volumes to us. One sister noted these warning signs of a spirit of accusation:

• Being suspicious of others
• Having bitterness toward others
• Being easily offended without cause
• Having envy and jealousy toward others
• Believing the worst about others
• Exaggerating the offenses of others
• Refusing fellowship with a person after they have changed
• Holding people to their past failures
• Imposing our perfectionism standards on others
• Basing harsh judgments on misunderstandings without seeking clarification
• Judging others for misbehaviors that we are prone to
• Becoming the Holy Spirit for others
• Using others as a scapegoat
• Bearing down others so we look better
• Bringing skeletons out of the closet
• Being unsatisfied with any amount of confession and sorrow from another

(Marsha Fisher, “Accusation,” Be In Health Conference, April 29, 2008, Thomaston GA)

Further, the union of Christ with his people should certainly give us reason for great caution with our words about fellow believers. Paul said in Romans 14:15, “Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died.” I think we are also warranted in saying, “Do not by your words destroy your brother or sister for whom Christ died.” It is a very serious matter to hurt anyone in Christ’s little flock (Luke 17:1-4).

A careful reading of the Bible shows the destructive nature of gossip and slander. It says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man’s inmost parts” (Prov. 18:8, 26:22). Gossip is likened unto poison that once someone drinks, they cannot get out of their system. And it always separates people. Even close friends and loved ones.

Put another way, gossip not only damages the person being gossiped about, but it also damages the person hearing the gossip, for it causes them to judge the other unfairly.

Consider these texts prayerfully:

“A perverse person stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends” (Prov. 16:28).

“Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down” (Prov. 26:22).

“He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool” (Prov. 10:18).

“Brethren, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it” (James 4:11).

“The tongue has the power of life and death . . . ” (Prov. 18:21).

“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all people” (Tit 3:1-2).

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Eph. 4:31).

“Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman” (Psalm. 15:1-3).

In conclusion, the next time you hear a rumor, go to the person being rumored about. And never spread something about another person without talking to them first and having an open mind to hear their heart. Unconfirmed notions about others should not be spread abroad.

In the pursuit of mutual edification and peace, our mouths play a very important role. Our words should be carefully chosen, and designed to build up, not to destroy (Eph. 4:29.31; 5:4; Col. 3:8,16; James 3:10; 1 Pet. 4:11). We must “slander no one” (Tit. 3:2), and be ready always to speak a good word about our brothers and sisters in Christ. In the human realm, words are most often the spark that leads to wars and atrocities, and there is a parallel in the realm of the church, for “if you keep on biting and devouring each other” with hurtful and damaging words, “you will be destroyed by each other” (Gal. 5:15).

May our speech to others and about others be “only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Eph.4:29).

For further reading

• Thomas Dubay, “Verbal Contention,” Caring: A Biblical Theology of Community, Dimension Books, 1973, p.184: “Sacred Scripture comes down hard on sins of speech, so hard that it is safe to say that few people indeed manage to come close to living its full message.”
• Margaret Foth, “Life is too short . . . to let conflicts go unresolved,” “Life is too short . . . to bear grudges or harbor bitterness,” Life Is Too Short . . . to Miss Today, Zondervan, 1985, pp.75-80, 87-92.
• Joyce Huggett, Listening to Others: Hearing Their Hearts, Hodder & Stoughton, 2005. Karen Burton Mains, You Are What You Say: Cure for the Troublesome Tongue, Zondervan, 1988.
• John Wesley, The Cure for Evil Speaking (1760), http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/49.