One aspect that strongly defines your character is whether the person you actively are backs up the person you talk yourself up to be.
Another way i have seen that quote above written is like this: What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
And it is completely true. Another area that this touches on is that of consistency. Is the person you speak yourself to be also the person you are in the day to day of life?
So if you are someone who talks big about the disparity between rich and poor and the need for the wealthy to give up their wealth and look after those who are in need and how everyone at your church needs to be involved in the local homeless shelter… but then you live a completely luxurious life and never spend any time with the poor. People are going to take away the lived out message over the spoken one.
LIVING OUT YOUR SPEAK
In the letter of 1 John in the Bible, chapter 3, it says it beautifully like this:
18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
Maybe a good way to do this would be to use our voices when we are talking about stories we have been involved with [and also sharing the stories of other people we know] as opposed to things we think we should do. So if you don’t have a story, go and do a thing that will result in a story [don’t do it to have a story – do it cos it is an amazing thing to do] and then inspire others with the stories of real live transformative events.
A second important truth is to be intentional about updating the stories we tell. If the story of the last amazing thing we did is a ten year old story, maybe it’s time we stepped down from the speaking circuit and went back to living out the stories for a while. i know i am tired of telling the old stories – i am ready to be living some new ones [and am with Common Change which is great, and you can be too!] and so constantly need to be aware of this.
How are you doing in this? Is this an area you maybe need to work on?
[For the next post looking at the words we speak, click here]
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