You Sound Just Like . . .

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

I recently sat and chatted with someone at a church function. As she and I talked, I kept having to remind myself that I was not talking to her mom because their voices, expressions, and mannerisms are so much alike.

On many occasions, my own mother takes on the voice of her sister. There's a sweet comfort to hearing that as her sister is now living with Jesus.

You might often hear someone compare your appearance to a family member or possibly even a celebrity, but has anyone ever said that your voice sounded like someone else's?

One of my goals as a Christian is for people to get my voice confused with Christ's. I want them to walk away from a conversation with me and say, "Her words are genuinely loving and gentle. She sounds just like what I would imagine Christ to sound like!"

So, ask me . . . has that ever happened to me?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I've been listening to my voice lately. What I've noticed is that there are many instances where my voice is the furthest thing from loving and gentle. Unfortunately, what I have noticed is a lot of sarcasm and frustration in my voice.

Paul letter to the Colossians instructs them to speak with grace and to strive for wholesome conversation. When you and I choose to allow frustrations to come out in our voice, we are sounding nothing like Christ. The only time in all of Scripture where we see Jesus raise His voice is due to the righteous anger He felt whenever the Temple was being used as a marketplace.

Christ never spoke in a condescending or sarcastic tone. Even when speaking to the Pharisees, He spoke in a manner that would make them think, not in a way that would crush their spirit.

I challenge you today to listen to your voice. Listen for tones that aren't pleasing to the person you are speaking to, and definitely not pleasing to the Lord. Make a commitment to strive to speak with love and grace, and not out of frustration or with sarcasm. Our words and our tone are crucial elements to showing the love of Christ to a lost world. If our voice sounds like the world's voice, then it definitely doesn't sound like Christ's.

Can someone mistake your voice for that of Christ's?

Comments

Heartfelt Reflections of a Country Church

The smells, sounds, and people of country churches stir an emotion within me that is deep and powerful. For those who have never had the opportunity to experience this blessed experience, let me explain. From the moment you step into the vestibule (never called a foyer in a rural church), you instantly smell the footsteps of every person who has crossed that threshold - the mother with a load of kids in tow, the farmer, the truck driver, the wayward child. If those paneled walls could talk, they would tell of grace and guilt and sorrow and joy that couldn’t be hidden on the faces of the souls that dared to cross that doorway. Those walls would write books of clinched fists, tears on the altar, and singing from the saints. The smell of the aged carpet, whose color may have caused an outright quarrel in a business meeting, the creak of the floor, and the golden memorial tags lead you to a nostalgic thing of days gone by - a pew, padded if you’re lucky. As you wait for the ob...

I love my kids, BUT. . . .

"Schoolhouse Rock" was one of mine and my husband's favorite educational past times. Bob Dorough, writer for "Schoolhosue Rock," was a genius when he put educational factoids to quirky music and cute cartoons. From the preamble to the Constitution, to parts of speech, multiplication facts, how electricity works, and much more, Mr. Dorough slyly disguised learning and actually made it fun! Like all good parents, we passed this educational relic on to our kids. One of our favorite songs from "Schoolhouse Rock" is without a doubt " Conjunction Junction ." Its jazzy rhythm easily gets stuck in your head for the rest of your day ( sorry in advance! ). This song teaches how conjunctions mechanically work in a sentence and what their purpose is. The conjunction 'BUT' is one that we use all the time to connect two sentences or a clause to a sentence. "I like pizza, BUT I don't like olives on it." "I want to...

Taking the Mask Off

If I’ve learned anything over the last few weeks of wearing masks when going out in public, it’s that wearing a mask makes it hard to breathe. The trapped air recirculating in and out gets thick and burdensome. The same is true for the invisible mask I wear on the days that I’m trying to hide the reality of what’s going on below the surface. There comes a point when the air that has gotten trapped between my invisible mask and my unfortunate reality gets so heavy that ripping it off and gasping for a dose of fresh, life-giving oxygen is the only remedy. ( Cue the proverbial mask selfie that everyone has had to take during quarantine. ) I think many of us frequently wear a mask, intentionally or unintentionally, to hide the reality of what’s underneath. We mask up to present a façade. A watered-down version of the true us. A suffocating misrepresentation of our current existence. We’re all guilty. One of my favorite person...

Whole Heart Devotion

Search This Blog