Victory247

“… a gossip separates close friends”  Proverbs 16:28 (NIV)

I have learned to NOT believe everything that people tell me. I have found that we all tend to bend the truth to our own advantage. Sometimes we can damage someone else’s image to uplift our own. My favorite form of slander is via the prayer request; “Marge, we really need to pray for Bill. He is struggling with his marriage, and that large mortgage is causing them a lot of stress. I can just tell”.

I have worked in schools for many years, and ‘deflection slander’ is commonplace amongst students to get themselves out of trouble. “Mom, I know I got a detention for constantly disrupting class, but the teacher is out of touch, mean, hard to understand, and most of all, gets confused about names and accidentally gives detentions to the wrong students…just like the one I got”. Sounds silly, but parents fall for it and then pass on the harsh comments to others. Before you know it, teachers, coaches and administrators are falsely labeled.

This is why we need to watch the information that we pass on secondhand. We need to watch how we paint the truth to others. We need to watch how we receive information from others; take it with a “grain of salt” and consider the bias of the source. A lot of relationships are damaged and even severed if we don’t heed the warning of today’s verse.

PRAYER FOR TODAY

Heavenly Father, open my ears to the words I speak and the words of others. Give me the wisdom to know how the “true truth” that is spoken. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.