To tell the truth

You know if you’re like me you probably heard your mother say if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. Good words to live by I’m sure we can all agree on that. The question becomes is not saying anything nice? Verse 15 says “instead we will speak the truth in love.” I don’t know about you but for me there are many times when I refrain from telling the truth for fear of making someone mad or offending them. The real reason is in fact that I don’t want to cause conflict or have them not like me. I make it all about me instead of being all about Jesus like it should be. I do this to people that I love or at least should love even more than strangers. The truth is by not telling them the truth about Jesus I am actually harming them yet I keep quite anyway.

We should tell people the truth, the question then becomes how. If we run up to someone and tell them if you don’t go to church you will go to Hell does that do them any good, of course not.  Approaching them that way is not telling them the truth in love. To tell the truth in love is more than likely an acquired trait that takes practice, and one that I have more questions than answers. So my advice to you and myself would be to ask God for guidance and go out and try.  You know what they say practice makes perfect.

 Ephesians 4:11-16

 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. ¹² Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. ¹³ This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. ¹⁴ Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. ¹⁵ Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. ¹⁶ He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.