Keep Your Promises
Matthew 5:37 Say only ‘yes’ if you mean ‘yes,’ and say only ‘no’ if you mean ‘no.’ If you say more than that, it is from the Evil One.
For most of us, our default position in life is that we really, really want to trust you. But … can we trust you? Are you trustworthy? Well, that depends. Is what we see and hear from you what we’re actually going to get?
One-on-one, interpersonal communication takes place billions of times every day around the globe – verbal, written, body language – in many nuanced ways that vary from one culture to the next.
But whatever the intricacies of effective communication may be in your context, we each value clarity and reliability. We want to be able to depend on a person’s word. We want them to keep their promises.
So, are you a person who keeps their word? Are you someone whose promises can be trusted?
Jesus has an amazing way of boiling complexity down into something simple and profound so that we can’t mistake what He means:
Matthew 5:37 Say only ‘yes’ if you mean ‘yes,’ and say only ‘no’ if you mean ‘no.’ If you say more than that, it is from the Evil One.
Simple, isn’t it? Let your yes mean ‘yes’, and your no mean ‘no’. In other words, be a man or a woman of your word. Don’t embellish it. Don’t make it complicated. Just communicate your intent and your promise clearly and simply.
Sure, there are different communication nuances from one culture to the next. Expressing your intent in an Asian culture for instance is quite different to expressing it in many a Western culture. But at the end of the day, it’s really simple:
Say only ‘yes’ if you mean ‘yes,’ and say only ‘no’ if you mean ‘no.’ If you say more than that, it is from the Evil One.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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