Word Replace

You know how they say we should think before we speak?  (Did they think before they said that?)  Sounds like good advice.  I think some of us do more thinking-before-speaking than others of us.  For some of us, it seems to be a pretty short route from initial thought to mouth with not much contemplation along the way.  For others of us there are several moments of crafting and editing that take place within us before the perfect statement comes forth to bless the world.  How does all that work for you?

Perhaps we could think of it this way; it’s like we have an internal word processor.  Maybe we don’t use it much to change fonts in our thoughts, but we use it to assemble our thoughts, cut-and-paste, delete, bold, and other similar functions.  Here’s one function it would be helpful to put in place in our internal word processor: word replace.  As you roll a thought around in your mind, if it begins with the phrase, “I know” and also contains the word “but”, try replacing that word with the word “so.”  The intended outcome would be that instead of us saying to ourselves or others, “I know… but…” we would say, “I know… so…”.

What gets us into predicaments so often is when we acknowledge we know the right thing, the most helpful thing, to do in a situation, but we consciously choose to do something other than the most helpful thing.  Hence, “I know… but…”  What I’m suggesting is that we listen to ourselves say the truth we know and then choose to follow through accordingly (“so…”).  If an example would be helpful, instead of saying, “I know I shouldn’t interfere in his business, but I think I will anyway” we would do the internal word replace to make it come out, “I know I shouldn’t interfere in his business, so I won’t.”

Stuff about internal word processors is not exactly in the Bible, but all of this goes along well with the wisdom of many of the Proverbs in the Old Testament and with a statement from that little book of wisdom in the New Testament, James, “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin” (James 4:17).  Just something to think, and perhaps speak, about.