Un-send

There – I said it and she deserved it. I hung up the phone feeling totally justified.

But then a few minutes later, the wave of nausea came over me. What had I done? What had I said? Would I be able to undo the hot mess I just caused. Can I please just un-send everything I just said?

Have you ever had this experience of letting your tongue run way ahead of your brain? Or maybe it was an angry text or email that you zipped off before engaging the gears “think before you speak”.

In the early days of  AOL email, circa mid 90’s, you could actually un-send an email if you got to it before the recipient. Man, I wish we had that technology with our mouths.

The Bible has so much to say about our words and using our tongue for destruction. I am not sure I could ever write anything that hasn’t already been written about the topic.

However, my heart, my eyes, and my mind have been drawn to Ephesians 4 over the past week in ways only the Holy Spirit could orchestrate.

Here is the passage that has grabbed me recently:

²⁹ Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. ³⁰ Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³² Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4

The Greek word for “unwholesome” (or corrupt) is sapros. It literally means putrefied. You know that smell when you have let a potato sit down in the bottom of your cabinet for a bit too long? You reach in and search for the source of the odor and you sink your hand into a rotten, putrefied spud – GROSS.

Ok, imagine that kind of rottenness spewing out of your mouth. And you know if one potato is rotten, it leads to a bunch of other potatoes being rotten – it spreads like kudzu in Alabama.

Rather, Paul says to speak a word “as is good for edification according to the need of the moment…” I love how this is phrased. You know, there are a lot of things we could say…a lot of knowledge we may have about certain situations. But it doesn’t give us the right to go out and share it. We need to leave some things unsaid.

Here is a litmus test for our words: “What is the need of the moment and what words would edify and encourage the hearer?”

Imagine the difference you would make in someone’s day  if your words, even the words of a hard conversation, were touched with grace as they poured out of your mouth.

We can grieve the Holy Spirit (v. 30) and we can give the devil an opportunity to gain a foothold (v. 27) by using our words inappropriately.

We cannot un-send our words…we cannot un-send the hurt or damage we can cause with them. So lets choose them carefully – they carry the power of life and death in them.