WARNING: TRY NOT TO TALK TOO MUCH

I was leading a prayer with my fellow ushers right before service and one of the things I asked the Lord was to tell us when to speak and when to keep quiet.

That kind of bothered me throughout the day. So I finally asked the Lord why that would come out of my mouth and He said to me:  “I know you love Me, but you talk too much.”  That cut me deep!  I love to share with others what God has done for me and my family.  However, God pointed me to a scripture that helped me to understand what He was getting at.

Proverbs 10:19 says:

In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise.

Okay, Lord. I trust you, but where are we going with this? 

It seems that when we have a zeal for something, we can go on and on about it.  Our love for God is no exception.  I bet that when it comes to the Lord, we can never say enough.  However, if we are not careful, and talk too much, we run the risk of misquoting scriptures and presenting some of God’s ideas very weakly.  That leaves what we say open to an attack which we can not defend. (Let’s say we are talking to someone who does not know the Lord and that happens.  What is the outcome?)

I am not saying that we should talk as little as possible.  God forbid!  We see in the Bible two extremes of witnessing. 

The first one, which was short, comes in Luke 4:16-22 when Jesus stood up in the temple, read some scripture, gave the book back to the attendant and sat back down.  There was such an anointing on His word that the people in the synagogue asked: “Is this not Joseph’s son?”

The next one we see is in Acts 20:7-12, which was very long.  Paul was in the upper room preaching until midnight. (Based on what I’ve researched, he preached for about 6 hours at that point.)  Paul was preaching so long that one of the listeners, Eutychus, went to sleep and fell out the window.  Paul went down, checked on Eutychus, came back up and continued to talk until daybreak! (I won’t complain about long services any more!)

The one thing these two extremes have in common was that the Holy Ghost was involved in their talking. And as such, each spoke as long as necessary for that moment.

When we speak to others about Jesus we do not have to worry about what to say or how long speak because the Holy Ghost will teach us what to say at that time. (See Luke 12:12).

So here is the question:  How can we tell when we are talking too much since the Holy Ghost is with us and teaching us?  I believe the answer is when we have to fish for what to say next.  At that point, the Holy Ghost has stopped talking and we have started talking.

….and with that, I have said enough….