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How God’s Word Helps Us Use Our Words Without Regret (& a GIVEAWAY of Zip It!)

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Giveaway winner: Congrats Jamie (comment left 1/23 at 9:45 a.m.) – check your email!

Welcome to those who have clicked your way over after reading my Proverbs 31 Ministries devotion Quick! Bring Out the Best.  To read the devotion, click here, but be sure to come back for our discussion on how God’s word helps us to use our words without regret and to learn how you can get a printable PDF of designed Scripture memory cards called Deeper by the Dozen: 12 Bible Passages to Deepen Your Walk with Christ.
How God's word helps us to use our words without regret & a GIVEAWAY of Karen Ehman's new devotional book Zip It!
Have you ever said something you regret? I don’t mean just a slight slip of the lip. You know, where you used the wrong word to describe something or messed up trying to give an answer or make a point. I mean where you really blew it. You spewed out angry words at a child or spouse. You gossiped about a coworker or person from church. Or maybe you were in insensitive when conversing with a friend, and now you wish you could take it all back, but it’s too late.

Yeah. Me too.

My words have landed me in a heap of trouble on many occasions throughout my life. They still do sometimes. However, I have found a wonderful remedy for using my words in a way that causes me less regret. It’s when I make God’s word more important in my life then my own words. And I don’t mean just listening to the preacher preach God’s word on Sunday or hearing it through my earphones as I catch a quick podcast from a Bible teacher. Or looking at lovely images on Instagram that have a Bible verses gorgeously lettered over top. I don’t even mean studying the Bible verse by verse alone or with a group of friends. I mean internalizing them so much that you commit them to memory.
Psalm 119:11 makes a bold assertion that paints for us a picture of how we can behave without sinning with our words:

“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

Sound too simple? Too antiquated? Too difficult? Nope. It isn’t any of those things. When we commit God’s word to memory, it can help us to use our words in a way we won’t regret. To use them to build, not to break; to bless, not to badger; to encourage, not to embitter; to praise, not to pounce.

When we are about to hurl a little harshness at a child who has just ticked us off royally by asking us the same question for the forth time that day, we can pause and in our minds recite Psalm 15:1:

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

When you are in the midst of a group of people two are tearing it to someone, gossiping behind their back, in your mind you can rehearse the words of Ecclesiastes 5:6 over and over again, and then chose to keep your lips zipped:

Do not let your mouth lead you into sin.

Get the picture?

Now, if you’d like a little support in this endeavor,  I have a devotional releasing next monthentitled Zip It, that is a follow up to my book Keep It Shut: What to Say, How to Say It, and When to Say Nothing at All. 

Announcing Zip It! the Keep It Shut 40 Day Challenge from New York TImes bestselling author Karen EhmanZip It is a 40-day walk through the Bible and what it says about how we are—and are not—to use our words! Keep It Shut covered many topics, including anger, truth-telling, people-pleasing, our digital tongues online, and gossip. Because there are countless verses in the Bible that relate to our words and our silence, Keep It Shut only scratched the surface of these issues. My new book Zip It! now takes a deeper look and offers practical how-to’s that will inspire you to use your words without regret.

Each of the forty interactive entries includes a Scripture verse focus for the day, a story or teaching point, and reflection questions with space for readers to write their answers and thoughts. Each entry ends with both a challenge that will help you carry out the directive in the verse and a prayer prompt.

AND…..STAY TUNED!! Because this book contains 40 days of devotions……and Lent is coming…….

Please join us for Doing Lent Together in 2018 HERE.

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105 Comments

  1. Hope you don’t mind a man joining in. I’ve been looking for the church to address the sin of gossip for years. My own youth group was literally destroyed by the gossip of the mothers – went from 18-20 in attendance to 3. This was 45 years ago. It continues to destroy the unity and harmony of the church. I’ve been searching the internet for years for the story of a woman who realizes she is sinning and struggles to overcome gossip the same way I struggled long but eventually brought to victory over pornography.

  2. One night my son asked a question about a social situation at school. I replied with a paraphrased Bible verse that applied. He asked another “what if” question and I had another verse. This elicited a wry smile from him and the exasperated comment, “So basically the Bible just has something to say about every situation in life?!” I smiled, winked and said, “Yep, that’s kinda the point!”

  3. This sounds perfect for me! Unfortunately I do not have a Facebook so I can’t participate. I will buy the book however, and look forward to implementing it into my own life.

  4. I’m getting better at hiding God’s word in my heart. I have started using an app called Remember Me. I put my verses to learn and it has different ways to help memorize. I also have found that the verse I have chosen seem to come up in different places so it seems like it’s an endorsement of my choice. Now I need to get better at applying the principles of these verses to my life and my mouth.

  5. I literally just got in a huge fight with my mom over politics (seems like the whole country is in a combat of words lately) and I went on Pinterest to take my mind off the fight and this was the first thing in my Pinterest feed. God was certainly leading me to this challenge.

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