God has given our tongues as a good gift—not for death, but for life. Yet it’s easy for all of us to fall prey to bad speech habits that hurt others. In this podcast, Scott Brown gives harmful patterns of communication to avoid, such as name-calling and giving the cold shoulder, followed by good behaviors to sweeten conversations such as carefully listening, monitoring your tone, asking questions, and more. His charge—be on a mission to bless others when you speak! 

The Bible says the tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly. So it really matters that we learn how to talk. And there are lots of harmful communication patterns that people have. And you find this between friends. You find this between husbands and wives.

And you find it even between parents and their children, especially as they have different opinions about things. Here's some of the really harmful communication patterns. Interrupting the other person mid-sentence. Next, abruptly contradicting them. Next, presuming you understand what they're saying.

Next, focus on winning. And by the way, when you're focused on winning a conversation, you've already lost the conversation. Next, make threats. Next, name call. Next, discredit rather than evaluate what they're actually saying.

Next, blame rather than take personal responsibility. Next, withdraw and give the silent treatment. Next, act with aggression. Next, hurl insults. Next, exaggerate the issues.

Next, overshare instead of speaking with discretion. Next, walk out in the middle of a conversation. And finally, the great one, lie. Just lie. Well, those are really harmful communication patterns, but the Bible gives us wonderful, life-giving communication patterns, and Scripture tells us what they are.

So here they are. Number one, prepare your heart. Matthew 12, 34 through 37 says that our conversation comes out of our hearts. So the first thing we should do when we enter into a difficult conversation, tough conversation, consequential conversation, is to really examine our own hearts. The second thing is to be on a mission to bless.

That's 1 Peter 3, 8 through 9. God says that our tongues are designed to be life-giving and so we should understand what is our mission. If you're going into battle you need to understand what your mission is. And of course, the mission is truth and reconciliation and things like that. But be on a mission to bless, not just to nail the other person.

Third, be judicious with your words. We live in a culture where people think that you should just let it all hang out and say everything that you want to say. Well, the Bible actually says no, guard your tongue. It says that same thing in various places. So, you know, don't vent everything.

That's Proverbs 15 verse 2. Next, prepare to listen. James 1.19 makes that very clear. Be slow to speak and slow to act. Listen and understand what's really going on.

Next, don't interrupt. Proverbs 18-13, you know, the person who's wise in his own eyes just jumps in whenever he wants. Next, ask questions. This is one of the most common failures in conversations. A lot of times we get hot under the collar at a conversation because we don't really understand what's being said, so you need to ask questions.

What did you mean by that? Can you tell me more? Play that out some more give me some examples, you know Next monitor your tone tone communicates often more powerfully than words. Everybody knows that. You know, this happens all the time in conversations where you're talking with somebody and you really can't hear them because they're so harsh in their tone.

And so tone really, really matters. That's why Proverbs 15, one says, a soft answer turns away wrath. That has everything to do with tone. Next, control your body language. The look on your face, the crossing of the arms, you know, the shrugging of the shoulders, all these things, you know, they communicate.

And sometimes they communicate even more powerfully than words. Ecclesiastes 8.1 addresses this. And then next, don't harp. Don't just keep going on like a broken record, repeating the same old thing over and over again. Nobody enjoys that.

That just shuts people down. And sometimes it just turns them off. And then finally don't use inflammatory default expressions. You know things that you're just used to saying, oh give me a break, oh come on, are you serious? What?

You know, we have these pet phrases that we've learned to respond with and they're just absolutely not helpful. Well, God has given us our tongues as a good gift, not for death, but for life. The Bible says that the power of the tongue is for death or life, but God has given us tongues to be a wellspring of life, to be an outward expression of the grace of God through the gospel. And when a person is converted, they start talking differently. And part of that is that they learn how to govern their tongues according to the word of God.

And their speech is sweetened year after year. It's the power of the gospel when someone makes Jesus Christ preeminent over all things, including their words. Thanks for watching!