Written by Sue Sanders
No one can gather at Joyce Sanders’s home without being blessed. Recently, as we gathered around her round kitchen table, she shared a devotion that was based on a sermon by Robert Morris entitled “Ten Ways We Sin with Our Words.”
Slander is number four on the list of the deadly sins that we commit with our mouth that produce death in us. Pastor Morris indicates that we slander when we “share a false and malicious report about someone. This includes repeating things we’ve heard when we don’t have personal knowledge that it’s true” (Morris).
My husband shared a story in one of his sermons about a woman who spread “a false and malicious report” about her pastor. This lioness was intent on destroying her prey. She watched; she waited for just the right opportunity to pounce upon her prey, secure him, and tear him to shreds with her vicious words.
She set in motion a catastrophic world wind of words that spread like gangrene and had deadly results. The pastor’s reputation was destroyed, and as a result he was asked to leave his church. God brought a mighty conviction on the rumor barer, and with a repentant spirit she visited the pastor to ask for his forgiveness.
The pastor forgave her; however, before he dismissed her, he wanted her to grasp the deadly path that she had set in motion through her rumor mill. He led her to an upstairs room, opened a window, cut open a feather pillow, and then waved the pillow outside the window spreading the feathers throughout the air.
He then asked her to gather the feathers. She responded, “That’s impossible!”
“Yes,” he explained, just as it is impossible to undo all the damage your words have done.”
“He who hides hatred is of lying lips, and he who utters slander is a [self-confident] fool” (Amplified Bible, Proverbs 10:18).
“But now I write to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of [Christian] brother if he is known to be guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater [whose soul is devoted to any object that usurps the place of God], or is a person with a foul tongue [railing, abusing, reviling, slandering], or is a drunkard or a swindler or a robber. [No] you must not so much as eat with such a person” (I Corinthians 5:11).
The Amplified Bible. Frances E. Siewert, ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965. Revised, The Lockman Foundation, 1987. Print.
Hearts United Women's Ministry 