Loose Lips Sink Ships

Loose Lips Sink Ships

During WW II many men were drafted to serve the country. Those who were new to the military didn’t know how to conduct themselves when it came to safeguarding military information. To help them gain a quick understanding the military sent out a notice with the saying “Loose Lips May Sink Ships”. In this notice the soldiers were told the importance of secrecy in written and oral communication:

“SILENCE MEANS SECURITY -- If violation of protective measures is serious within written communications it is disastrous in conversations. Protect your conversation as you do your letters, and be even more careful. A harmful letter can be nullified by censorship; loose talk is direct delivery to the enemy. If you come home during war your lips must remain sealed and your written hand must be guided by self-imposed censorship. This takes guts. Have you got them or do you want your buddies and your country to pay the price for your showing off. You've faced the battle front; it’s little enough to ask you to face the home front.”

This same mindset needs to be in the church. Satan will use any means available to him to destroy God's church and in so doing cripples us from reaching a dying world. I personally do not want to be a tool in Satan’s arsenal to destroy those around me. My careless talk could hurt my brother or sister in the Lord as well as those who we’ve yet to win. It’s up to us to stop our loose lips from sinking God’s ship. 

It’s a sad, sad thing when God’s people turn on each other. It doesn’t even have to be outright hatred for one another, but if you even sow a tiny seed of dislike for one person in someone else’s heart, that is the beginning of the destruction of a family.

Matthew 12:25 KJV “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:” (The Message: “Jesus confronted their slander. “A judge who gives opposite verdicts on the same person cancels himself out; a family that’s in a constant squabble disintegrates;”)

 

It’s human nature to have conflict with others at some time or another. Clashing with someone’s personality isn’t a sin…talking with others about that conflict is. We think gossip is sharing untruths we’ve heard from someone else regarding another person. However, one definition of gossip is: general talk that is damaging to reputation. It could be a truth you are sharing with a friend or family member, for example: Someone said something about my son and it hurt my feelings, because I’m hurt I call someone else and talk to her about it. This other person had nothing to do with the situation, but because she’s my friend she also feels hurt by what was said. What just happened by my talking to this other person? Did it help or hurt her relationship with the one who hurt me? What do you think this other person is going to do now that she is also feeling hurt? Innocently enough, I just sowed a seed of division amongst my church family. Maybe you don’t like how a sister treats her kids, or her spouse, and you express your opinion to only a few people. This has the same affect…division. If you multiply all the “innocent” pieces of gossip we exchange by the number of people in a congregation; how can God's church stand?

Message  James 3:5-6“A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.”

In the medical field, when a body turns on itself it’s called an Autoimmune disease: A disease in which the body attacks its own tissues, leading to the deterioration and in some cases to the destruction of such tissue. This is what gossip does to a church body. Like I mentioned, we may not mean for it to happen, but it is an inevitable outcome of gossip. We must learn to control our tongues!

James 1:26

KJV “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.”

How many of us are turned off by someone who said something foolish? I knew someone who wanted so desperately for her mom to be saved. When we first became friends I was awed by her spirituality and sensitivity to the Spirit. Then one day her mom invited us over to her house for lunch. It was then that I realized why her mom wasn’t interested in coming to our church. My friend’s mom started asking questions about some touchy (and dramatic) situations at church. I couldn’t believe it! My friend wanted her mom saved but bad mouthed God’s people to her mother! Obviously this friend’s mom saw my friend’s religion as vain…and all because my friend couldn’t hold her tongue.

 

We need to be mindful of what comes out of our mouths. We know before we even say anything why we’re saying it. The only reasons to repeat gossip are to 1) get people on your side of a situation; 2) prove to others how knowledgeable you are about someone; 3) prove to someone how much better you are than another. We are by nature a curious people, so we invite useless information about people because we are curious as to what is going on in their lives. I’ve learned long ago, if I’m not directly told by someone about something in their life, I’m better off not knowing! God knows every single detail about each one of us, so if we see something a little off about a brother or sister, we don’t need the details in order to pray for them, and we don’t need the details before we can reach out to them in love. We need to “watch our own bobber” as Pastor Peckham would say. I think we all have enough going on in our own lives to keep us busy, and if we find ourselves with free time we’d be better off using it drawing closer to the Lord than finding and sharing information about one another.

Titus 2:1-5 teaches us what we, as women, should be finding ourselves doing within the family of God. KJV “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

The Message:“Your job is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine…Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior.”

 In other words, we should be busying ourselves with keeping our homes in order, treating elders with respect, seeking to live holy, pure lives so when new ladies come into the church they can see by our examples how a godly woman lives. We all have at least one godly woman we admire; God wants us to become the kind of godly woman someone else can admire…no one admires a gossip.

Here are a few more scriptures on gossip:

            Leviticus 19:16

            Proverbs 11:13
            Proverbs 18:8
            Proverbs 26:20
            Ephesians 4:29-32
             1 Peter 2:1

           

 

 Overcoming Offense 

It’s natural to want to share our pain when someone offends us, and the Bible tells us to share one another’s burdens, but there is a Biblical way of handling an offense that will stop the spread of the autoimmune disease “gossip”, and it isn’t to bury the offense deep in our Spirit, matter of fact, God wants us always to reconcile with our church family(Matthew 5:23-24). Offenses that are not dealt with have a way of rearing their ugly heads at another time. It’s one thing to feel and offense and quickly forgive (Proverbs 10:12; 2 Corinthians 2:10-11), but if the offense is eating at you and making you want to retaliate or share it with another, then it needs to be dealt with biblically.

 
 Matthew 18:15-17 tells us how to handle a situation where a brother or sister has offended us: KJV“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”

The Message “If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.”

 You’re probably thinking “HA!! See! It says I can go to one or two others and tell them about it!” Jesus is not teaching us to go to our best buddies and tell them all about how Sally hurt me so all three of us can go tell her how wrong she was. Jesus is saying, if someone hurt you, go have a private conversation between you and him/her, let them know what was done that caused the offense and give them a chance to make it right. If they say “Too bad, so sad” then you take it to an elder in the church (a board member) because elders are suppose to be unbiased and wise in helping work out the situation. If the person STILL refuses to repent, then the Pastor will take it before the church and explain the situation. Once you take the situation to an elder, you’ve done your part in trying to reconcile with that individual, you need to let go of the hurt, forgive and move on. Sometimes that is the hard part, forgiving and moving on, but God has shown us over and over in scripture the importance of forgiving others…if we don’t forgive, He can’t forgive us.

 

 

In conclusion let me reiterate LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS! Once something leaves our lips it is sure to make its rounds, so let’s keep our conversations pure, holy and loving. We want to win hurting people and we can’t do that when we are hurting each other.

 Psalm 34:12 -14 NIV Reader’s “Do you love life and want to see many good days? Then keep your tongues from speaking evil. Keep your lips from telling lies. Turn away from evil, and do good. Look for peace, and go after it.”

 Philippians 4:8 The Message: “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.