Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak, Slow to Anger

``God desires a righteous life. Scripture does not doesn't tell us not to be angry. It doesn't tell us that anger is not part of who we are. We're human But it says, slow to become angry. It says, don't jump on being angry all the time. Don't quickly jump into that role of letting anger dominate your conversation and your personality because when it does, it harms the witness that we have for Jesus Christ. [00:42:28] (35 seconds)  #slowToAnger

Now he says as the part of that verse, to get rid of things, moral filth and evil that is so strong, so prevalent to get rid of it so that the word of God can grow. And if I could keep my my planting illustration, we're gonna plant in the spring and we're gonna weed get rid of the weeds in it. He's saying the same thing. That we get rid of stuff that is not healthy and not good in our lives so that the word of God can plant and grow. [00:35:34] (36 seconds)  #weedOutForGrowth

Now, there there there's a there's another part to just allowing that his word to grow within us. He says to humbly accept the word that has been planted in us. King James says, to meekly accept it, to humbly accept what God has done, to accept that he is part of our life, that he rules our life, that he is in charge, he controls, and to accept this word that has been planted to allow it to grow. [00:35:01] (33 seconds)  #humblyAcceptTheWord

I know springtime, it today, we don't think about springtime. It seems like it's a long way away, but before long, we'll be planting. We'll be planting flowers. We'll be planting our crops. It won't be long. We're gonna plant something that will allow it to grow and god wants that word of god, his word to grow in us. [00:34:37] (23 seconds)  #plantSeedsOfFaith

What's on my mind? Well, it's the same thing that was on my mind last week, and that is that so many places I look, places I I I see, places I I watch, I see anger. Anger that is just rooting out in in so many different ways. I see it locally. I see it nationally. I see it internationally. We we see it everywhere. It seems like every place we encounter today, we we see anger at pretty high levels. And I thought, again, what does scripture say to us about how we deal with our anger? [00:31:44] (41 seconds)  #angerEverywhere

That listen listening should dominate our conversations. Listening. Well, we I don't think we do that very well. We have a lot of silos in our world today and and and we just shout in our silos and we try to shout louder and louder so people will hear us. We try to be louder and louder so people can react to us. Whatever way we can do that, the Bible tells us to do something different. [00:36:40] (30 seconds)  #listenOverSilos

Three parts today. Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It is a model for us today in how we can effectively impact our lives for Christ as we share his word in our world today. [00:43:03] (31 seconds)  #quickToListenSlowToSpeak

The third level of communication beyond ignoring, beyond pretending is the selective listening. Selective listening. We catch keywords. We catch phrases. And all of a sudden, we jump into a conversation because we can identify with a word or a phrase, and we jump right in, and we walk all over the person who's talking. We have selective hearing and jump in where we think is appropriate. [00:39:06] (36 seconds)  #selectiveListening