Mastering Your Mouth

Tom Shrader begins a four-week series called 'Person to Person' by examining Ephesians 4:29 and the power of speech in relationships. He teaches that Christian speech should be positive, constructive, perceptive to others' needs, and effective in building people up rather than tearing them down. Using personal examples and practical applications, he challenges believers to use their words as instruments of grace that leave others feeling better after every conversation.

“When we sin, we were separated from God, really important, but separated from each other.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Person to Person

Recorded: January 26, 2017

Duration: 38 min

Themes: speech, words, relationships, grace, encouragement, edification, communication, tongue, struggling with harsh words, wanting better relationships, married couples, parent, mentor, workplace relationships, new believer, church member

Scripture: Ephesians 4:29, Ephesians 4:30, Ephesians 4:31, Ephesians 4:32, Ephesians 1:1, Ephesians 2, Romans 12, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 2 Corinthians 13:10, James 3

Theological Themes: sanctification, holy living, spiritual growth, christian maturity, biblical speech, gracious words, spirit filled living, practical theology

Full Transcript

Good morning! If you have Bibles, will you open them to the book of Ephesians, chapter 4. I'm really excited about this series and the next one, and maybe all the way through summer. But for sure, these next two I have figured out. Both of them are strategic in their nature.

This series is titled Person to Person. I'm going to take you through Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29. The series is a verse a week. So four-week series: verse 29, 30, 31, 32.

Series Overview

Let me give you a quick overview, then come back and fill it in. Verse 29 is called "Mastering Your Mouth." It reads: "Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so it will give grace to the one who hears." We're talking about relationship; we're talking about mastering your mouth.

Verse 30, and I'll be really honest, this was the verse that drove me to the series. Verse 30 reads: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." The title of that, and on the surface you may go "really?" But you'll see it when we get there next week, is called "Accepting Authority." I'm responding really to the presidential stuff that I'm hearing over and over again. We've got to respect the office if we don't respect the guy. Well, I heard this in 68 with Nixon, I heard it in 76 with Carter, I heard it by some in 80 with Reagan, nobody said much with the old Bush. I heard it all through Clinton's stuff, I heard it through W's stuff. I'm getting tired of "accepting authority," but it's a spiritual issue.

Verse 31: "That all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put aside or put away from you along with malice." The third week is "Taming Your Temper"—bitterness, rage, anger, getting control of your temper. All you—my least favorite personality types are passive aggressive. I can't stand passive aggressive, and it seems like there's a lot of them. That's that guy or gal that doesn't have the courage to be an angry nut. They're passive aggressive; they're hard to deal with. If you're one of those, we want to see you that week.

Then verse 32: "Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you." It's the fourth week, and it's called "Freeing Your Forgiveness."

Personal Assessment

I've been doing a lot of self-assessment, and this is my assessment. I graded myself on these four areas. At freeing forgiveness, I put down I'm very good. At taming my temper, I put down I'm very good. At accepting authority, I wrote "getting better." What I've noticed—I really do accept authority well when I'm the one in authority. It seems to be easy. But by mastering your mouth, I just wrote "hypocrite."

I think I'm a lot better than I used to be, but I at least fancy myself not as smart, but fairly clever, fairly quick, and without any sort of governor on it. This is a perfect example of how I would end up in trouble. I'm walking into church one day, and this was some of you were with me through this, with my long hair phase, so my hair was—I saw a picture of it the other day, I don't know what I was thinking about, but it was really long. It was down to about the middle of my back at this point. It was stupid.

I'm walking into church, and there's a guy by the door that I've never seen before. So I'm trying to be nice, so I go over, and I'm going to give you this in real time. I go over, I said, "Hi." He said to me, "If I give you 20 bucks, will you cut your hair?"

So this is how it goes. "If I give you 20 bucks, will you cut your hair?" I looked at him head to toe and said, "If I give you 20 bucks, will you join a gym?" Dumb. I never saw the guy again.

The Context of Ephesians

This session today is absolutely more for me than anybody in the room, but my suspicion is everybody can really benefit from this. Now we're in the book of Ephesians, and I'm going to take maybe more time than I should just to tee this up for you.

If you go back to Ephesians chapter 1, verse 1, Paul identifies—and this context is important, and it's a pattern that Paul uses frequently. Paul's opus, Paul's defining work, if you said "here's the supreme work," would be the book of Romans. Cut me a little slack, but the book of Ephesians is kind of a condensed version of the book of Romans. The pattern's the same. In this case, Paul gives us three chapters of pretty heavy doctrine, and then three chapters of application.

In chapter 1, verse 1, Paul identifies himself—and that's always indicative of the way he does it—as an apostle. Therefore He's going to speak with some authority, and He's writing to the saints at Ephesus. So as we look at the letter, it's a specific audience—it's the church at Ephesus—but the application really clearly for us today.

Our Position in Christ

He talks about some magnificent truths, about us being predestined and chosen and declared. Chapter 2, and it's a wonderful section of scripture, Paul writes this: if you're here today as a Christian, follower of Christ, Paul's talking to you. "You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked." He says at the end of verse 2, you walked "as a son or daughter of disobedience." Verse 3: "You were by nature children of wrath."

That's the universal description of mankind. That's everyone who comes into the world. Last night, my son-in-law Tyler yesterday got a kidney stone, and my immediate reaction was to smile, and I wanted to say, "Buddy, let me help you out here. This is the beginning. This is how this goes from here, and if you..."

get one, you tend to get more, but I didn't think that was encouraging. So the boys had baseball practice with Coach Berger last night, and yesterday I'm on this new campaign to not take my phone with me into meetings. I'm sick of sitting in meetings where everybody's on their phone—either we're in the meeting or we're on the phone. I'm sick of this, but trust me, I'm not going to change it. But yesterday, I just forgot my phone. So I didn't know all this. He's in the ER, it's all over. I doesn't know what's going on until I get home, and I got all these messages.

So Haley said, can you pick up the boys from practice and then take them either home—Tyler will be there—or we're at gymnastics. So I go to gymnastics, and all of these six-year-old girls now think they're Simone Biles. I mean, somebody's making a fortune on this deal. And here are a room full of girls—they're young, they're cute, they're bouncy, they're lively, they're disciplined. But you have to be reminded that they are children of disobedience and children of wrath by nature. And what Paul's saying is, you were too, verse 4, but God, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us.

Seeing the Love of God Everywhere

Now, I want to make a point. Sandy and I are having a conversation the other night. We're talking a lot—it feels like a lot to me anyway. We're talking a lot, and I'm explaining something, and she's trying to, I would say, lovingly redirect my thought process. And she said, I just think you're not looking at the bright side. Oh, that's never been my strength.

She said, I was just reading an article the other day of this therapist who was challenging this guy, and he ended the session, and he said, I want you tomorrow to all day look for green cars, and then call me tomorrow night. The guy thought he was nuts. He looks all day for green cars. He calls him that night. He said, what did you see? And he said, I didn't even know they made green cars. I never even saw green cars, and all I saw today were green cars. He said, well, we're going to do this for a week, and by the end of the week, he said, I'm convinced there's nothing but green cars. There's green cars everywhere.

Here's the point. Verse four: When you see the love of God, and you see it spelled out, it becomes that green car. You're going to see it on every page. In its simplest form: For God so loved the world. I mean, it's right there all over. 2 Corinthians 5:14 maybe. The love of Christ controls us. That's what compels us. It's beyond just saying God loves you, and you go, I know it. You now get to see that it's at everything. It's the motivation.

Why did God save you? Well, at its core, His motivation was He loved you. Now, let's put it in context, and we've got to move on. He loved you while you were a child of disobedience and a child of wrath. He loved you in spite of you, not because of you. And He still loves you today. Even when you mess up. Even when you sin. Even when you're disobedient. Even when you're rebellious. He still loves you. Which is not a license to sin, but a motivation to love Him even more.

The Therefore: Walking Worthy of Your Calling

And then in verse eight, I'm saved by grace through faith, that not of ourselves, the work of God. He puts a stake in the heart of religion. He goes on, and He gets to chapter four, verse one, and look at that. The first word, I got a little box around so I'd see it. It's therefore. Therefore. So my old friend Larry Wright would say, whenever you see the therefore, you ask what the therefore's there for.

Therefore. Because all this stuff is true, you do something. What? You walk in a manner worthy of the calling. So here you go. Here's the point. And I spent way too much time on that. What, 20 minutes? Because you're a Christian, I ought to see it. Because you're a Christian, it affects the way you live.

One of the things that's so obvious, but it was one of those Christmas things I was thinking about, is that when we sinned—really important, again, I'll sound presidential—this is huge. When we sin, we were separated from God, really important, but separated from each other. It affected our ability to relate. Adam begins to hide. There's suspicion. By the next chapter of the Bible, there's murder and lying and all this stuff.

Well, how do we put this back together again? How do I find peace in relationships and harmony in life? Well, it's as I live as an instrument—Paul tells us in Romans 12—and I live, as far as it depends on me, I live at peace with each other. How? Well, I'm a new creature. And one of the great indicators of this is my mouth.

Examining Ephesians 4:29

So Paul says this. Look at verse 29. Take a second and see if you can grab a word in there, just as you're reading through, a word that maybe jumps off the page at you, that if you were going to kind of break it apart and take a look at it, is there a word in there that you'd go, huh? And there's no wrong answer here.

Encourage? Well, I was wrong. There's at least one wrong answer. But just as a—and that's not fair. I did that because I knew that would happen. But there's words like grace and encouragement and build. But for me, the key word in there is but. Because now as I start to look at it, I'm going, oh, He's given me a contrast.

Here's what He says: Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth. So stop that. But it's the second part of it. I want you to speak in a way that's helpful, building, encouraging. So my speech is to be, and I'm going to give you four things here. My speech is to be positive and constructive and perceptive and effective.

Four Characteristics of Christian Speech: Positive

First of all is to be positive. Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth. The idea of unwholesome here is useful building up. It's not—put it in language we get—it's not stop cussing. It's not that. It's that. I remember—this will be hard for you to imagine—but I had a foul mouth. And I had one word in particular that was my

favorite word. It was particularly offensive to many people. God saved me. And one of the things that started to happen is I quit talking that way. Not exclusively. I'd still get in the heart of a deal or something and something had happened.

One day I'm sitting in a meeting and we're at my favorite part of the deal, we're at the end. We're either going to make it or not make it. So this is where we've talked and we've talked and we got the lawyers, we had all this stuff going on. And one of the things I think I did really well is understand here's the things we got to fix.

So I said, "Listen, we got to do this. If you're not going to do this, my client's not going to make the deal. We're not going to make the deal. There's other things we can talk about, but you got to do this." Well the guy on the other side, unbeknownst to me, my old favorite word was his favorite word. And while I was somewhat of a rank amateur at using it, he was the Dr. Seuss of using it. He was Shakespeare with it. I mean, he could use it.

So he lets it fly. And that's what you do when you get there. I mean, it just kind of happened. And then he said, it's like he caught himself, he said, "Tom, excuse my French." Well apparently I'm bilingual because I didn't know it, but I spoke French and I understood every word.

What Paul Really Means by Unwholesome Talk

Well Paul's saying, stop that. But that's not what he's talking about in his essence. He's talking about this petty, chippy, unproductive talk. This idea of unwholesome would describe fruit that's rotting. Stop it. And don't do it anymore.

One of the things when you talk to people, and you talk about your faith, you'll hear them say, "Your faith is just a bunch of stop doing this." And then we get all defensive, we go, "Oh no it isn't." Well, you know what, yes it is. There's a whole bunch of stops. Stop doing that, don't do this, don't do that.

But it's not just stop it, it's start it as well. So if you look up at verse 25, "Therefore lay aside all falsehood," stop it, that moves me to neutral, "but instead speak the truth." So Paul's phrase is put off the old, put on the new.

The Constructive Alternative

Well here's what he says in this speech, stop it, but here's what I want you to do. Constructive, but speak only what is helpful to build the other person up. When I talk to somebody, at the end of the conversation, they ought to, cut me a ton of slack here, they ought to feel better. Not blowing smoke at them, but they walk away and they're nurtured. You're speaking the truth to them. You may be even telling them some very hard things, but you're doing it in such a way that when they walk away they go, "I'm really glad we had this conversation."

So I have kind of a subset that my speech ought to be building people up, not demolishing them. Second Corinthians 13:10, "The authority the Lord gave me is to build you up, not tear you down." So when I'm in this conversation, I have to ask myself, does this person really need to hear this? Is this helpful?

Am I saying this, you know, we're into this phase where somebody talks and he's just a straight shooter and tells it like it is. But is that right? Why are you telling it like it is? At the end of the day, am I saying something? Why did I say that? What's my motivation?

Examining Our Motivations

If you start really looking at that, you're going to look into your heart and you're going to see some very dark stuff. You're going to see, you're saying a lot of things, not to build the other person up, but to build yourself up, even if it means tearing them down.

There are, and I may just be in a weird place, there are so many hurting people around us. And they don't, you don't even need to know them. All you got to do is look at them.

This is a sign that you're really old. I've started going to Fry's to drink my coffee. This is a sign you're old. And the Fry's market by us has this great area with all these tables and nobody goes there. And I go in there and I get my coffee and nobody bugs me. I don't feel cool and hip, but I'm pretty cool and hip for Fry's, but I'm there.

The Power to Build Others Up

So I walk in there the other day and there's three people sitting at three different tables and they all look like they got the weight of the world on their shoulders. So sad. And I'm telling you, you got to, a hello changes their life to go, "Hey, that's really a cool shirt. Where'd you get that?" You got the power to build up.

It requires tools and your tool is the word of God, the truth of God. You've got these, this Bible that's filled with truth. I spoke Monday night at ASU. There's a gentleman who teaches a class on leadership and every class they have a petting zoo at the end where they bring somebody in and you're the expert. And it's usually somebody who's done something, but once a semester they bring me in.

And so I'm in there and I have the same experience every time. It's the most de-energizing environment on the planet. It's a bunch of guys like this. There's usually, there's always one little kid who's got on his, "Fear the Fork." And the ladies are by far the sharpest people in the room every time.

Leadership and Serving Others

And so I'm getting up to do my thing and I have my standard introduction, which is, "I know it's a business leadership class, so I want to give you this. Stephen Covey says, start with the end in mind." And they'll all go, "Yeah, we know that." And I'll go, "Okay, here's the end. You're going to get fat and old like me and die. That's the end. And that'll transform your leadership style."

If there's another Steve Jobs running around, he's not in this class. I'm positive. I don't even know if you guys are ever going to get a job, let alone be Steve Jobs. And you start to talk about love and you go, there's an old MLK quote that really was, and I don't know if it was me, but it was like everywhere on MLK day this year where Martin Luther King says, "Everybody can be great because anybody can serve." That's a great quote because it puts greatness in perspective.

So the business term is servant leader. We flip that around because even then they're still leader. No, no,

The Power of Constructive Speech

You don't want to be a servant leader. You're the lead servant. And you start to unpack this Bible truth. And these kids who've never heard are going, "Where did you get that stuff?" That's the tool you have to build people up. And the purpose is to build them up in love. Love bears all things and believes all things and endures all things. So in any relationship, you can be the one who's bringing love to the equation, whether it's with a spouse or somebody you're dating or your kids or the marketplace. So your speech is positive and constructive.

Speech Must Be Perceptive

Here's the third thing. We miss this. It's perceptive. It's perceptive. Building them up according to their needs. If I'm going to build you up according to your needs, I got to know what you need. Not what I think you need. That's what we do. Here's what I think. I have a phrase and I use it too, but I apologize before I use it. When somebody will say to me, "You ought to." I hate that. "You ought to." Well, I don't know if I ought to. You don't even know me. See that? Think about this. Build them up according to their needs.

Now, what that means is you're going to have to listen. Sandy gave me three books for Christmas, and one of them was this. It's called The Listening Life. I don't know if she was trying to tell me something. The opening paragraph in the introduction says this: "Listening comes first. In this life, you listen even before you're aware of it. From within the womb, an unborn child is already listening to the voice of her parents. After birth, she will spend the next month hearing the words they speak and whisper and sing to her until one day she'll start echoing those words. One imperfect syllable at a time." The author writes, "But somewhere along the way, we started to violate the natural order of things, speaking our mind and asserting ourselves, taking the priority of speaking over listening."

The Lost Art of Listening

Sandy and I were talking one night, and she observed that we, not her and I, but as a culture, we do not have conversations anymore. We have serial monologues. I talk. You're listening on the surface, but you're waiting for me to take a deep breath so you can jump in. I'm waiting for you to breathe so I can jump in. How am I ever going to build you up according to your needs if I don't take the time to listen to you?

Now, I'm going to give you something that I think is true. The better you know the person, the more likely you are to not listen to them. They start the sentence, and you're assuming you already know where it's going to go. Don't you start to hear that? "Oh, they've been married so long, they finish each other's sentences." Well, maybe it would be a good idea to see where that sentence is going to go.

Sandy, the other night, was trying to ask me if I'd read this article. Well, she sends me a lot of stuff. And I said, "Was it the article from..." and she started, and I said, "Was it the one from..." and I was trying to figure out which article it was. She was trying to get at the content, and I had prepared this lesson that day. She said to me, "Will you just listen to me?" And I wanted to say, "I've got a tape on that. I've got a series on listening. I could tell you how to listen."

Knowing What People Need

But this is really true. If I want, and I'm focusing on Sandy. If I want Sandy to be a better person and built up for her contact and her dialogue with me, and I want, and this sounds, I mean this in the deep sense, not a surface sense. And if I want her to be happy, I got to know what she needs. I think I know. We've been married, what, like 50 months now. So I got her pretty figured out. And we were married 50 minutes, and she had me figured out. I'm not very hard to figure out. If there's television and food, I'm happy. I mean, I don't need much. I got to listen. That's what Paul said. Look how practical that is.

And I saw several heads bob up and down. So I'm pretty sure it's true. The closer you are to somebody, the less likely you are to work at listening to them. The more likely you are to go, "I don't know how they're going to know."

Effective Speech That Benefits Others

So my speech is positive, constructive, perceptive, and we don't need to spend much time on this, it's effective. That it may benefit those who listen. That it builds them up.

I've been thinking a lot about Larry Wright. And I always think of that in speech. I would call Larry. Larry died in 2001, so I haven't talked to Him in 16 years. I'd call, He'd pick up that phone. Now you got to remember, it's 2001. There's no caller ID. He doesn't know who the person is. And He'd pick it up, He'd go, "Hello." And I would immediately feel good. And it didn't matter what I did. Every time when we were done, we'd hang up. I'd feel better.

I've got this phone, and when it buzzes, it tells me, if it's unknown, then I just ignore it. I want to cruise to the Bahamas. So I ignore it. If it gives me a name, it gives me a choice at the bottom. Accept or decline. And there are certain people that the minute I see their name, I'm going, "Decline, decline, decline." I want to make sure I hit that button just square. I line it up, decline.

Well, the question is, when people see your name pop up on caller ID, do they hit accept or decline? And if you're getting a lot of voicemails, it may be a decline. And then you got to ask yourself why. Because in this world, there are not many people who when you're done with them, you feel their speech was positive and constructive and perceptive and effective. That ought to be how we live.

The Amazing Power of the Tongue

You have an amazing power in the tongue. We don't have time. We've got like three minutes, two minutes. But if you go to James chapter three, it's the longest contiguous passage in the scripture on the tongue. And what James says is you have power in the tongue.

I do this physical strength therapy class. My instructor's name is Shelly. The other day we were doing bird dog - I don't know if you know what that is, but you're on all fours with your left arm out and your right leg back. We're doing this exercise and she said, "Tom, you're doing that perfect."

I thought I was Michael Phelps. I wanted to go, "Everybody stop and look at this because this is how you do this." Now I'm guessing I look more like a dog at a fire hydrant than bird dog. But I did it and I thought, isn't that interesting? She didn't spend any energy saying "Tom, that's perfect."

I don't care who you are, how successful you are, how old you are - you need that. And the people that you love need it most. If you have a kid and you're telling that kid they're big and fat and dumb and stupid, it's not going to be long before that kid thinks they're big and fat and dumb and stupid. You have the power to build them up.

I'm not saying blow smoke at them. I'm saying even say the hard things in a way where at the end of the day, they know she's right - I need that. He's right - I need that.

What's Coming Next

So first week on person to person is mastering your mouth. Next week, something that needs work, not just in a presidential sense, but in authority. No matter where you are in this world, it's likely that in some realm, you're the boss and in others, you're the worker. We look at family and government and church and work. We talk about how do I deal with authority and all that? We'll talk about it next week.

Father, thank You for that awesome and amazing and practical truth. Let us make it real, put it in our life and God transform the way we live. Use us as instruments of grace to the people around us. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.