Together in Christ: 'Keeping Our Mouths Shut' — Proverbs 17:27-28

Ouch! I'm a talker. Talking too much is one of my weaknesses. I have spent much of my spiritual life learning to listen. Listening instead of responding, thinking before reacting, and praying in advance of speaking are three related skills the Holy Spirit wants us to acquire and develop. ^[1] James, the half-brother of Jesus, ^[2] says it this way:

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. ^[3]

Mark Twain captured the essence of our verses when he said, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it." Keeping our mouth shut as we listen, think, and pray before speaking requires us to be "even-tempered"! Our emotions, especially our anger, must be under control. Reacting rashly out of anger or quickly out of defensiveness nearly always gets us into unnecessary conflict. Let's encourage each other and pray for one another, to be slower to speak and quicker to listen and much slower to anger. We don't want to prove our foolishness by our rash behaviors and words.