Actions “Speak” Louder than Words
by Brandy Webb
It is hard not to mention the virus these days in any blog. I guess it is because we find ourselves in a situation that caught the world off guard. However, I don’t want to discuss the virus, but instead, I want to discuss something that has been on my mind for a while that has become magnified during this crisis. The issue is, more words don’t make someone look smarter and wiser.
There are so many scriptures in the Bible about the difference between a wise person and a fool. I am realizing that it doesn’t matter how smart or how successful or how famous someone can be, when it comes to being wise. Today, I see so many people that are in the forefront on all sides behaving so foolishly with their words. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to stand before my Savior and have to answer for a lot of foolish words. He warns us personally that we will have to answer “for every careless word” we speak (Matthew 12:36).
The Bible teaches that a wise person is “slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20). To be slow to speak and slow to become angry requires a lot of humility, which, unfortunately, a lot of people that are very visible at this time seem to lack. Yet, we are not supposed to act like the world. We are supposed to be set apart. We are to “think carefully before speaking” because “[w]hen words are many, sin is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise” (Proverbs 15:28a; 10:19). Proverbs goes on to reinforce this idea of the wisdom of speaking less:
A man of knowledge restrains his words, and a man of understanding maintains a calm spirit. Even a fool is considered wise if he keeps silent, and discerning when he holds his tongue. – Proverbs 17:27-28
The less we speak combined with walking in God’s ways “speak” so much louder than words. We do have a job to give an answer when asked (1 Peter 3:14). The key here is we speak when asked. What are we being asked about? The reason for our hope (1 Peter 3: 15). Why would they ask this question? Not because of many words proclaiming it but because of our actions revealing it, making them curious as to why we have hope. Remember, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?.... [F]aith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:14, 17).
The truth is, and I am sure everyone who reads my blogs knows, that one way to “come out of the world” is to speak less and walk in God’s ways more. There has only been one human that has walked the earth that was wise enough to have been out there speaking boldly, and that is Jesus our Savior. Yet, when He was brought before His conspirators and falsely accused, He was silent (Matthew 26:63; Mark 14:61; Isaiah 53:7). Sometimes even when we may “know” we are in the right, the best thing to do is to say nothing at all. Instead, live a life “having good behavior among the nations, so in that of which they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they see, glorify God in the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12).
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. – 1 John 3:18