Our ladies Bible study has been using the book
Conversation Peace by Mary Kassian. What a powerful study this had turned out to be. It's all about transforming your speech. When I began this class, I assumed we would study the 4th chapter of James like all Bible studies about the tongue do. But my goodness - I had absolutely no idea that there was so much in scripture that talks to us about our speech. No idea at all.
Last night we discussed in depth how our difficulties with our conversations, words, and speech don't have anything at all to do with the words themselves that we choose. It's all about our heart gals - it's all about our heart. What is in our hearts comes out in our speech - whether we plan for it to our not - because it is just a natural overflow of who we are. We all thought about our hearts and divided them up into sections called hard, rocky, thorny, and good. We gave percentages to each of those areas. This became very eye opening to me and I'm sure to many others in the class. We suddenly could see the areas that need the most cultivating.
We read scripture in Mark chapter 7 when Jesus was
sharing with talking with chastising the religious/political leaders of the day for focusing on their outward actions instead of the condition of their hearts. He asked them -
are you dull? I love it - Jesus asked them that! Can you imagine how it felt to be asked that by Jesus? So often we think of Jesus as only a meek and gentle person - as though He didn't have the fire of God in His belly! And He told them that they needed to quit focusing on their outward behaviour because it wasn't changing them. They could only be changed from the inside out - not the other way around. When we are changed on the inside - our outward behavior can't help but change - it's just the way it is.
So if we ask Jesus to help us clean up our hearts, fill it up with good soil that will produce good things, not only will our hearts be transformed, but our speech will too. And then Jesus won't have to be asking us if we are dull. Because I really don't want Him to have to be asking me that - do you?
3 comments:
That is a great study. We had teaching about the hear last night at church. And believe it or not I listened to Andy Stanley on my iPod yesterday during my walk, and he was teaching on the same topic. Perhaps God is trying to tell me something??
From the ridiculous, though fun, to the sublime. You nailed the AI result -
Now you have nailed me right where I live!
We did Conversation Peace about a year or so ago in my group...it does have some really good info in it!
I love the tulips at the top!
And you got the AI results right on.
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