I remember when as a very young Christian desiring above all to learn from the Lord, and to do things His way. Since I had done so many things my way and failed, I knew that Jesus had the answers for me in His Word. One of the first personal Bible studies the Lord led me to seek out was on “what He had to say about what people spoke.” This search went on for months, and left me in such a state of the fear of the Lord that I was even fearful to speak well of anyone. It is also one of the reasons that I am committed, to the best of my ability not to gossip, also for the fact that I have seen so many lives affected, or even destroyed because of malicious indiscretions. For example, Jesus says in Matthew 12: 36: “And I say to you, that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account to it in the Day of Judgment.” There are some verses (which sometimes make me want to chuckle), which I read that gave me a whole new meaning of why some Churches should be empty, as in Proverbs 20: 19: “He who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets, therefore do not associate with a gossip. Also in James 1: 26: it says, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.” So you can see by…
