Respond, Don’t React

“Be healing with your words, be tender with your words, be gentle with your words and watch your words bring gentle, tender healing in the hearts of others.”

- Heather Wolf

As Pastor Jared explained this past Sunday, we are process people, not presentation people. Unlike a Christmas tree, which is dead on the inside and strictly for presentation, we are a living people of God being cultivated by Him, the gentle gardener, to bring out His gentleness in us.

Whether you are a follower of Zen habits or Biblical principles, we are taught it is better to respond than to react.

Reaction only elevates the situation and rarely brings about resolution, let alone possible reconciliation. Responding allows us to take the time to consider our words, and even the tone of our words, thus creating opportunity for love, acceptance and understanding to occur.

The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4:2,

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

In 1 Timothy 6:11, the Apostle Paul challenged young Timothy, just as he challenges us,

“But you, man [and woman] of God…pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”

As Pastor Jared explained, if we want to see change in others, we need to approach them the way God approaches us. Only then will we begin to see change in them. Allowing the Holy Spirit to cultivate us and bring about gentleness creates opportunities for us to positively impact the lives of those around us. We, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us, can begin to see changes in others we may have once thought impossible.

Gentleness is much like water; soft as it is, it breaks through rocks and impenetrable surfaces.

- Matshona Dhliwayo

Pastor Ken

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