Before You Say Anything

Think back over the last week and count the conversations that really mattered. Most of us won't need many fingers. A few minutes in a hallway. A text that took longer to write than it should have. A phone call we almost didn't make.

Now think about what you said in them, and how much thought went into it before you said it.

Isaiah describes a Servant of the Lord who talks about His own mouth this way:
The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are instructed to know how to sustain the weary with a word. He awakens me each morning; he awakens my ear to listen like those being instructed, Isaiah 50:4.

Look at what comes right after the gift of the tongue. Isaiah goes back to the early morning, before anyone else is up, when God opens the Servant's ear. He listens to His Father before He says a word to anybody. Every day starts that way.

That Servant is Jesus. Isaiah wrote it centuries before Bethlehem, and the Gospels show us a Lord who lived it.

What we're doing in October

This Sunday begins a four-week series called Words That Build. Our Vision book gives October the theme Building the Body in Love, and Paul describes the body of Christ building itself up in love (Ephesians 4:16). A surprising amount of that building happens through what comes out of our mouths.

September looked outward, to the neighbor and the stranger. Now, October looks at the people sitting in our own pews.
 
What Sunday holds

We'll spend the morning in Isaiah 50 with Colossians 4 open beside it, because Paul teaches the same order the Servant lived. Before he says one word to the Colossians about how to talk, he spends three verses on prayer. Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving, Colossians 4:2. Then he asks them to pray for him, the apostle, that God would give him the words.

From there we'll look closely at Isaiah's word instructed. It's a student's word, and that means gracious speech is something a Christian can learn. Paul tells us what the lesson sounds like: Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person, Colossians 4:6.

Then we'll talk about the weary. Every congregation has them, and most of them are good at hiding it on a Sunday morning.

We'll finish in the upper room on the night before the cross. Jesus had every reason to want comfort that night, and He spent the evening comforting eleven frightened men.

Before Sunday

Read Isaiah 50:4-9 and Colossians 4:2-6 this week. Read them in the morning if you can, before the phone comes on.

Then think about the tired people you already know. Pick one. Before you talk to them again, talk to God about them.

We'll take it from there on Sunday.

(1.) What usually comes first in your day, listening to God or talking to people? What would
it take to change that order this week?
 
(2.) Why is it encouraging that gracious speech can be learned instead of being a personality trait some people are born with? Where has God been teaching you to speak differently?
 
(3.) Think of a time when someone's words to you had both. What made them work? Which way do you lean when you get it wrong?
 
(4.) Who in your life, or in this congregation, seems tired right now? What is one sentence you could say to them before next Sunday?
 
(5.) What does it tell you about Jesus that He spent that night comforting other people? How does remembering the way He has spoken to you change the way you speak to others?