Hold Your Tongue
Proverbs 21:23 Watch your words and hold your tongue; you'll save yourself a lot of grief.
Recent research has revealed that angry outbursts can do an enormous amount of damage to your body, especially to your heart. We know intuitively that our emotions and our physiology are intrinsically linked, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that anger can be incredibly damaging.
Yet, anger is an emotion that we all experience from time to time. And as well as damaging our health … man, it can also get us into all sorts of hot water. Once you blurt out an angry word or lash out in an act of revenge, you can’t take it back.
Countless relationships and lives are ruined every day through outbursts of anger.
Perhaps you’ve heard that sage old saying that when you’re angry, you should count to ten before reacting. It turns out that that’s not such a bad piece of advice.
Proverbs 21:23 Watch your words and hold your tongue; you’ll save yourself a lot of grief. (MSG)
Grief is a good word for what happens when we thoughtlessly lash out in anger. Think about it. How do you feel when someone speaks an angry word to you? Come on, how does it make you feel?
Hurt, diminished, under-valued perhaps? It certainly changes how you feel about that person. It may undermine your relationship going forward. And it may even cause you to respond in anger, only escalating the situation. That’s what happens when an angry word is spoken.
If the truth be known, sometimes the most spiritual thing you and I can do is to shut our mouths and be quiet.
Watch your words and hold your tongue; you’ll save yourself a lot of grief.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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