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Guard Your Words and Be Tactful as You Witness, September 7
Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your
speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you
ought to answer each one.
Colossians 4:5, 6
, NKJV.
It is true that we are commanded to “cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a
trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins”
(
Isaiah 58:1
). This message must be given; but while it must be given, we should
be careful not to thrust and crowd and condemn those who have not the light that
we have....
Those who have had great privileges and opportunities, and who have failed
to improve their physical, mental, and moral powers, but who have lived to please
themselves and have refused to bear their responsibility, are in greater danger and
in greater condemnation before God than those who are in error upon doctrinal
points, yet who seek to live to do good to others. Do not censure others; do not
condemn them.
If we allow selfish considerations, false reasoning, and false excuses to bring
us into a perverse state of mind and heart, so that we shall not know the ways and
will of God, we shall be far more guilty than the open sinner. We need to be very
cautious in order that we may not condemn those who, before God, are less guilty
than ourselves.
Let everyone bear in mind that we are in no case to invite persecution. We are
not to use harsh and cutting words. Keep them out of every article written, drop
them out of every address given. Let the Word of God do the cutting, the rebuking;
let finite men and women hide and abide in Jesus Christ. Let the spirit of Christ
appear. Let all be guarded in their words, lest they place those not of our faith in
deadly opposition against us and give Satan an opportunity to use the unadvised
words to hedge up our way.
There is to be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation. Our
work is to study to weed out of all our discourses everything that savors of retaliation
and defiance and making a drive against churches and individuals, because this is
not Christ’s way and method.
The fact that God’s people, who know the truth, have failed to do their duty
according to the light given in the Word of God makes it a necessity for us to be the
more guarded, lest we offend unbelievers before they have heard the reasons for our
faith in regard to the Sabbath and Sunday.—
Testimonies for the Church 9:243, 244
.
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