Speak the Truth!

Speaking the truth in love is speaking the truth with no malice in your heart. It is important to speak the truth.

Controlling people will accuse us of "saying it in a mean way merely because they don't like "what" we said. They interpret truth as a personal attack if they are guilty of doing something wrong.

We must speak directly and openly to the sin that is taking place, not stopping to consider if someone will be angry.

The reason we do not consider the response is because often a toxic person will be angry no matter how you say it and will accuse us of things that are not true because they have been exposed.

Also, we live in a culture that thinks all confrontation causes fights therefore we are to avoid any discussion that might upset the one who is toxic.

We must not allow toxic behavior to continue without a challenge because it then grows when unchallenged. Unkind people will keep doing what they do and increase in it if they think they can get away with it.

Our truth must be full of compassion as we confront sin. We must also do it in humility, having the desire to fix something rather than an arrogant mentality of just putting another person beneath us.

Every confrontation ought to be for the purpose of mending what is wrong so that we can all be reconciled to Christ-like thinking.

No one changes or improves without help from those around them to encourage the right thinking and actions. All the corrections and rebukes must be Bible-based, never out of context.

Those who will be concerned about their walk with Christ will be happy to learn of their failings. Those who are arrogant and disinterested in growing in holiness very often are full of anger and rage, resisting any correction.

2 Timothy 4:2-3 "2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires.…"

As we can see from this passage, the end times are full of resistance to correction and instruction. Everyone does what is right in their own eyes and very few will listen to righteous teaching.

Let's not allow those who are resistant to the truth to silence us, we are not under a gag order, in which we are in bondage to the feelings of those who walk disobediently.

Christ is our instructor and the One Who gives us our marching orders. Society, our culture and the family do not dictate to us what we ought to be saying and doing, it is Christ Who does this, God says to keep preaching anyway.