Bread Bite: Speak With Grace

Continuing our weekly series of encouraging words, here is your Southern Cancer Center Friday “Bread Bite”, this week from Pastor Brock Bruce of Christian Life Church in Mobile, Alabama.

Pastor Brock-
Truth matters. Speaking the truth matters. But how we communicate is as important as what we communicate. Ravi Zacharias, famed apologist and Christian philosopher, said this about how we communicate the truth, “If truth isn’t undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the truth repulsive”. Now, Zacharias was making an application about the truth of scripture and those who preach it, but the wisdom of the statement isn’t bound only to the proclamation of the gospel. His statement is true. Our conversation should be full of grace. It’s not enough to have the truth if no one listens to the one speaking it.

There was an opinion news show that was very successful for many years (the show is no longer on the air) where the host would berate his guests (I know, sounds like every news show). I could not enjoy the show because he yelled so much I couldn’t hear what he said. He yelled. He belittled. He mocked. He name-called. He may have had valid points, but I never heard them because his truth was repulsive and he was obnoxious.

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” Colossians 4:6 (NIV).

The Apostle Paul is reminding the Colossian Church, and thru scripture, us today, that how we say what we say is important. Respectful conversation, even in disagreement, is important. Our speech should be seasoned with salt. It should make the hearer want to listen and not turn the hearer away. Let me encourage you today to season your speech with salt. Communicate with grace. Your hearers will thank you, and they just may listen better.