The deadly tongue
Lately my prayer has been that I will be more aware of the spiritual transactions I am making with my actions - that I won't ever think my sin harmless.
As some of you know, I carry on an e-mail conversation with 4 or 5 guys from Fort Stewart. My excuse always being that we went to war together, I can't just stop talking to them. We're friends!
But last week, after one such conversation, I logged off feeling really convicted. I had been ignoring conscience pings for weeks about this subject. But God said, "there it was, Kate. When you pressed send on that email, you allowed satan a foothold. Don't you know I abhor the tiniest sin as much as the worst?"
Later that afternoon, while reading 2 Timothy, I found at least 4 verses I felt the Lord wanted me to pay close attention to, the most prominent of which was verse 16, which reads, "Avoid godless chatter because Those who indulge in it become more and more ungodly."
And I realized that's true. I wonder why I'm not getting closer to God? Because I spend an hour in his word, five minutes in prayer and the rest of the day either watching TV and filling my mind with things of the world, or indulging in godless chatter.
So I'm cutting off the email conversation.
posted by Kate Robinson at
1:54 PM
2 Comments:
I think sharing a few laughs with each other is in a way spiritually edifying.
I agree with dad about most of the things that make it godless chatter - and believe me, everything I indulged in with those gentlemen was godless. Also, gossip. All we do at my unit is gossip about each other. That is godless, even if it seems harmless.
But I think the most important thing is to listen to the Holy Spirit instead of getting all caught up in the letter of the law. When I'm sitting around the TV room and we start talking about our cars or our canes or music or whatever, it's not edifying, but I don't feel guilty about it. When I start talking about other people, or allowing my conversation to stray into the crude, I get little conscience flags - and the more often I obey them, the more aware of them I become.
By
Kate Robinson, at 11:12 AM
I don't know if you've seen the movie, "Luther" or not. It's really good. But my favorite line in it is when Martin Luther is on trial and they ask him to recant and he explains that he must do what his conscience says. He says, "to go against conscience is neither right nor safe."
So I'm trying to practice that. Even if something seems really silly to me, I do it if I feel like my conscience is prompting me to. Not always, but I'm trying.
By
Kate Robinson, at 2:03 PM
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