How's Your Hearing? (Part 2)

James 1:19 says "let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger". The order of these are oh so important and each rely on the previous one in order to work. Before a person can even move to being slow to speak, they must be quick to hear. Do you know anyone that is not quick to hear, but hey are slow to speak? Even the initiator of the conversation has to be quick to hear. First, they must be quick to hear what God is saying. Specifically, how is the Holy Spirit leading us to choose the words that we are speaking. Being quick to hear also involves hearing the non-verbal language of the person that we are speaking to. What is their body language saying or am I ensuring that I have their attention before I speak? These are some questions that we can ask ourselves to remind us to be quick to hear throughout the conversation. This helps us with being slow to speak as well. I heard someone say that, "many times, if we just think before we speak we would be the smartest person in our family". Additionally, I had a previous Pastor say that before we talk we should ask ourselves the following 3 questions. 1) Is what we plan to say necessary? 2) Is what we plan to say kind? And 3) Is what we plan to say true? Asking those three questions can save us from a lot of future apologies for saying something that we can't take back.