In modern society, there are countless books written about the art of communication. Just about everyone recognizes how powerful words can be. Not only is it powerful when the right words are spoken, but it can be equally powerful when the wrong words are not spoken, but kept to one’s self. God tells us in Proverbs 18:21(NLT) that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” This means that every individual has a choice when it comes to the words they speak. We can speak death, which is to speak words that destroy and kill anything hopeful, or we can speak life that will encourage, uplift, and strengthen through God’s love. It stands to reason that when we choose to speak life, we not only bless the hearer but when we speak the words of the One that created life, we’re putting ourselves in a prime position to be blessed as well.
Speaking life into people and situations is to communicate in harmony with the words that Jesus Christ would say. In other words, he has given us the blessed opportunity to speak to others through him. It’s how we plant seeds and leave a legacy of God’s love on those that we care about most. But what about those relationships of ours that are already on life-support and are in desperate need of oxygen? Whether it’s a family member, old friend, or even a co-worker, all of us have had relationships with individuals that may have caused us pain in our lives; and we may have caused those individuals pain as well. Family dynamics can be especially challenging to work through, and for many of us, we’d rather just avoid the person or as my grandmother would say, feed them from a long-handled spoon. You keep your distance and only speak to them if you have to.
The truth is that there are individuals we know that are very toxic, and our well-being is better served if we keep them at a distance, but as with all things, we need to seek God’s wisdom about it. The more we mature in the Lord Jesus Christ, the more we should realize that we can’t take matters into our own hands. Galatians 5:25(NLT) tells us, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us, and God has placed His Holy Spirit in the inner sanctum of our beings. To walk in the Spirit means that we live in close communion and communication with God through His Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ said in John 16:13 that the Spirit that abides within guides us into all truth, and sometimes, the Spirit will lead and direct us to handle some unfinished business.
It’s very possible that there will be times in our lives when the Spirit will lead us across the path of an individual in our family that we have not contacted or spoken to in a while. This is a person that brings out emotions and feelings in us that we’d rather not experience. We may not like this individual very much and feel that our lives are just fine without encountering them at all. However, it could also be that this person is linked to our destiny in some way. It’s possible that they hold a very important key to our further growth in the love of Christ. We must consider that God is preparing us to open the door to His healing. He is letting us know that we can’t truly leave an enduring legacy of His love without communicating honestly and respectfully with this individual.
Through us, God may be bringing something out of darkness that desperately needs the light of His love. Our first step should be to pray about this and pour out our hearts to Him about the matter. Our second step is to then listen to what He has to say. Communicating effectively is an invaluable skill, and a key component of it is listening. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, everything in our lives is about what God is speaking to us. I’ve come across many individuals that say they pray to God, but He doesn’t answer them back. It is impossible for that to be true. God is always and forever speaking. Our responsibility as His children is to incline our ears to Him. This means that we need to quiet ourselves and quiet all the other noises of the world, and simply listen to the Father attentively, no matter how long it takes. Even if we don’t hear audible words, rest assured, Spirit to spirit communication is occurring.
Jeremiah 17:9(NLT) says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” The human heart is a container. It holds all sorts of things. Some are very good, and some are very bad. Sometimes there are bad things in our hearts, and we are not aware of the damage they are causing to our lives and to the lives of others. They keep us from feeling as good as we should, and they also cause us to be shut down in places. When that happens, love can’t flow as freely as it should. That door has to be opened, so the blessings of God can also freely flow. He will show us how and when to open it if we allow Him.
We should never assume we know best. We don’t belong to ourselves; we belong to God and we are on this earth to accomplish His purpose. We don’t have to know all the details of how to achieve what He wants. Our responsibility is to be willing, and to humble ourselves through prayer and patience. God will reveal the opportune time to talk to this person if this is His plan for us. He will work through the person’s heart to receive us as we move in faith and speak under the Spirit’s guidance. We are not in charge of the healing, God is. He will do miraculous things through our obedience, and He will bless us for being committed to His Will. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“The Blessing of Communication” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!