"Chew on this"

Not so long ago, while I was away for a couple of hours, my furry kids (Gracie and Samuel) turned my leather sofa into a very expensive rawhide chew. I was not a little upset, but this event only helped prepare me for when they chewed up the cushions of my outdoor swing. I am a firm believer that every instance in life is a chance for Jesus to teach me a spiritual lesson using a natural circumstance so I closely examined the situation.

I realized that my dogs aren’t concerned about my possessions, and obviously can’t appreciate a leather couch or an outdoor swing, because they didn’t have to do anything to get them. But to me, these things have value because I had to work for them. So, I patched up the fist-sized holes in my sofa with a needle and thread and took some precautions to protect my possessions from future Jack Russell “Terror” threats by using bitter “no chew spray”. Even though I could repair some of what my dogs marred, the damages were permanent.

Just when I thought the message was all about the dogs I found myself doing a little “chewing” myself, not on the furniture, but rather with my words to my friend. I was talking with a good friend when before I knew it I was giving her a “piece of my mind.” I thought she needed to hear what I had to say, but really I was out of line and just plain rude. Within minutes the Holy Spirit convicted me that I had just acted like my dogs!

How many times do we do this to each other? Just as my dogs had torn up their master’s possessions, I myself had “torn up” my Master’s possession--my friend. When we speak harshly to one another in order to make our opinions known we are basically tearing them down so that we might be “right.” However, we are not called to tear each other down, but only to build each other up. In Ephesians 4:29, it says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

I was reminded of one of my favorite stories about a father who instructed his son to hammer a nail into a fence post every time he was angry with someone. After the son calmed down, and maybe even realized he had said some things he shouldn’t have, the father instructed his son to pull each of the nails out of the fence post. In doing so, the son realized that each nail had left a hole in the fence post. The lesson—every time we speak a harsh word to another person, even if we apologize, we still leave a scar. Proverbs12:18 says, “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

Right now the Heavenly Master is away and He is entrusting us with His possessions—each other. By the way we treat each other we show that we don’t appreciate each other like God does. His actions of sending His only Son to die for us, paying the highest price so that we might be called children of God, shows He has great value in His creation. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

When we start tearing each other down, the Master is the One who has to repair us and even then, like my leather sofa, we still carry the scars with us. In the book of James 3, it is said, “9With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. 10Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.”

If you are tempted to tear someone apart with words, look to the Word of God, which is like bitter spray, hard to swallow at times but ultimately able to keep you from chewing on the Master’s possessions.