Lies, rumors and half-truths can bring a lot of pain.  We’ve all been caught up in them to varying degrees.  Sometimes we’ve been on the receiving end and sometimes we’ve been on the giving end of the pain.  Sometimes the pain caused can change the direction of a person’s life.  This is true for the apostle Paul.  In fact, the last seven chapters of Acts are all about the results of the rumors, lies and half-truths told about Paul in Acts 21.  When bad things happen to us as a result of lies we have a choice as to how we can respond.  We can choose to become bitter and resentful or we can allow the Lord to use it for good.  This Sunday we will examine Paul’s response to his unfair treatment that landed him in jail for over two years. 

 Our lies, rumors or half-truths may not put someone in jail, as it did Paul, but there is a different kind of prison that we can find ourselves in when they become a part of our lives.  It is a prison that leaves us living in the shadows and always looking over our shoulder.  Our words have the power to destroy or to bring healing.  Why is it so easy for us to use words that can bring pain?  Why is it so easy for us to spread rumors that only hurt or destroy?   Consider the words of James 3:5-6 as it is paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in “The Message“  “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.

Let’s remember the power of our words and use them to bring healing and encouragement.  Let’s use them to put out fires not start them.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7 NIV