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Presented by Lauren Stibgen
The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit (Proverbs 15:4).
How should we have grace with our words? I find there are two ways we use our words negatively, especially when it comes to work. The first is self-talk, and the second is gossip. Neither extends grace, and both are rooted in sin apart from Christ.
There are leading movements that promise to help us with positive self-talk. The words we use for ourselves can often be as harmful as the words we speak to and about others. I have found the words working women often use for themselves are borne of discouragement or on the opposite end of the spectrum, pride. Discouragement says “I am not enough, I will never get the promotion, or I won’t find a job.” Pride says, “I am better than, or she can’t.”
Gossip and slander are pervasive in the workplace. More often than not, we find it is easier to remark about what isn’t going right or what someone isn’t doing than it is to celebrate someone’s success. Research shows 75-95% of gossip contains a morsel of truth. 96% of employees admit to engaging in gossip at work. A study about gossip shows more than 40 minutes per week are spent solely in gossip, and, yes, women are worse than men with close to 80% of women admitting to engaging in gossip. Noted consequences of gossip at work are lack of trust, jealousy, alienation, hurt feelings, and low morale.
Being Christian doesn’t exclude us from this 96%. Remember, grace covers a multitude of sins, and maybe like me, you want to be better with your words both to yourself and about others.
Ephesians 4:29 tells us to have no corrupting talk come from our mouths, but only such is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Grace.
What if we spent those 40 minutes building others up? If you work a typical week, that is eight minutes a day. Focused energy on speaking those morsels of truth to a person rather than about a person.
Maybe you don’t gossip but spend time in negative self-talk. Spend those eight minutes with life giving affirmations about what Christ says of you.
The tongue has the power of life and death. Repeatedly, the bible highlights how powerful our tongue is. In fact, in James 3:6, the tongue is described as a fire, and a world of evil among the parts of the body setting the whole course of one’s life on fire. No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil.
Words can give grace. Heavenly father, set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips (Psalm 141:3).