Come Again?

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s where our phones were on walls with ten-foot cords that always got tangled up. Telephones were prominent fixtures in homes back then.

I fondly remember my mom talking to my grandmother every day. She told her everything she did, and they would talk for hours about this or that.

What I didn't understand until I became a Christian was that sometimes conversations like these can morph into what Aunt Suzie had done, or did you hear this or that?

In other words gossip.

As believers, we all innately know (or should) that gossip is a sin. It never leads to anything good, and truthfully if what we said behind closed doors got back to those people, most of the time it would hurt them or their reputations.

So why do we do it?

Looking into my own battle's with this it would be easy to blame it on my upbringing. In fact, gossip was so ingrained in my psyche that I did it without even realizing it was wrong.

I remember one night when I was about thirteen years old. I was in one of my mom's friends house babysitting her son when the phone rang. When I picked up the receiver, there was a female voice that I didn't recognize that said, "If you talk about my boyfriend again I will kick your tail." My chest tightened with the threat, and I tentatively answered, "O.K." and quickly hung up the phone. I honestly couldn't tell you if I had ever spoken about the girl's boyfriend or not.

I have always struggled with gossip. Even as a believer. You see I did what all people tend to do and I justified my actions. Here is a great example, "Hey can you pray for Julie, she is struggling with lust and her finances, we need to pray for her."

Yes, my friends, this is gossip. It isn't as blatant as, "Guess what Julie is doing? She is sleeping with her neighbor and her kids are robbing the local gas station." However, it is still gossip.

We also tend to try to justify our actions by saying we are trying to make sense of what we heard about so-and-so or even better yet by asking advice about particular situations.

Case in point. Tonight I was talking to my good friend. Whenever we would get talking about this situation or that her phone would lose service. This happened several times and finally exasperated she came out with it, "Jenny, every time I try to gossip on the phone God makes my service go out!"

I am kind of chuckling about this now because even though we both acknowledged this, we still were tempted to try to talk through situations that were bothering us. Guess what? It was still gossip.

My friend finally said to me, "Let's just pray for..."

We did, and we ended up praying for a lot of people during that next few minutes.

I am reminded of a scripture, "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:6-7 ESV)

In the end, we both agreed that prayer is the answer. After all, what can talking about a situation solve? If you are worried about the path, a friend or relative is taking go to them. Maybe they don't even realize that they are straying.

If you care enough about the person to speak about them, care enough to approach them and speak into their life. I hope this article blesses you!