\u201cIt\u2019s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a person\u201d Matthew 15:11 CSB
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Jesus knew what psychologists have learned: \u201cPeople spend 60% of their conversations talking about themselves<\/a>, 80% when chatting on social media\u201d (Dishman, 2015).\u00a0 We love to talk about ourselves, all of us. Until I was researching for this devotional, I didn\u2019t realize how much.\u00a0 But it does make sense. One scroll through our social media pages will confirm we love to talk about ourselves. Researchers found the reason we talk so much, especially about ourselves, is because it helps us survive and thrive. In other words, we\u2019re wired that way. Talking about ourselves makes us feel good. The problem is we talk too much. When we talk too much we don\u2019t hear what the other person is saying, simply because we\u2019re not even giving them a chance to speak.\u00a0 When you study the life of Jesus, you realize He was a good listener. He didn\u2019t spend His days talking about Himself. We find an example of this in Luke. Jesus is replying to a mother who has just called out a blessing on Him and His mom (Luke 11:27 NIV).\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 reply is telling: \u201cBlessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it\u201d (Luke 11:28 NIV). Jesus immediately deferred the attention away from Him and centered it on God.\u00a0 He did it with very little words. When we are spending over half of our time talking about ourselves, we aren\u2019t listening to God. If we aren\u2019t listening to God, how can we obey Him? The other problem with talking too much is we don\u2019t get anything done. We spend all day talking about it and no time doing it. James tells us we\u2019re to do more than listen, we\u2019re to do as well (James 1:22 NIV). If we\u2019re doing all the talking, we\u2019re not listening. If we\u2019re not listening, we\u2019re not hearing what we\u2019re supposed to do and doing it. When we\u2019re doing, we don\u2019t have time to talk about it, because we\u2019re too busy doing. Last week I had a friend stop over unexpectedly. In our conversation I learned she had hurt her back, and she had an outdoor project she wanted to get done. I had a few hours free, so I offered to help her. Instead of sitting around talking about it, we got up, went to her house and did the project. It took us less than an hour working together to accomplish it. She didn\u2019t hurt her back anymore and we had a wonderful afternoon together doing, not talking. If we want to grow in the Lord we need to learn to talk less, listen more and ask questions. When we do, we\u2019ll find unexpected blessings we otherwise would have missed. We\u2019ll hear what God wants us to hear, we\u2019ll do what God wants us to do. But not until we stop talking. \u201cIt\u2019s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a person\u201d Matthew 15:11 CSB Jesus knew what psychologists have learned: \u201cPeople spend 60% of their conversations talking about themselves, 80% when chatting on social media\u201d (Dishman, 2015).\u00a0 We love to talk about ourselves, all… Continue reading DON\u2019T TALK TOO MUCH<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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