James 1:19-20
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
Whenever tragedies happen, many people are quick to speak. There usually isn’t a lot of listening. Then usually what results is a lot of anger. That is to be expected when there are big tragedies. People want answers. They lash out. They want to respond immediately and listening takes a back seat. In other words, people don’t usually follow God’s advice in James 1:19-20.
That doesn’t just happen with tragedies, though. It happens so often in life. We are very quick to interject our thoughts or words into a situation and slow to listen. Boy, has that gotten me into trouble a lot in my life. I can even hear my son saying to me, “You’re not listening to me” as I just talk and talk at him and don’t listen.
And the aftermath of not following James’ advice above? Anger to say the least, if not worse things follow that. In other words, not listening and following James’ words leads us away from being the people God wants.
If you can identify with that, James gives us good, godly advice in chapter 1 verses 19-20. Be slow to speak and quick to listen. Think of how many feet we wouldn’t have to pull out of our mouths if we did that. (lol) Think of how many misunderstandings we would avoid. Think of how much less anger there would be. Think of how many dumb, regrettable things would be avoided because of that anger. Think of how pleasing this is to God, our Savior, our brother, and our example.
James’ words are valuable for so many encounters in life. Instead of assuming, speaking, interjecting, and not listening, stop! God wants you to be quick to listen, to hear what’s going on, and then when the time comes, speak.
