Friday, February 18, 2011

Gentle and Quiet?

     Two words that regrettably people would not use to describe me are gentle and quiet. Yet, scripture tells us to be gentle and quiet. Gentleness is one of the characteristics of the fruit of the spirit. We think of gentle as weak, soft, easy, and quiet as the void of words. This can be frustrating to me because I feel that God gives different personalities and though I am responsible for keeping my personality in check, I do talk more than some personalities. Yet, I know that God does not set me up to fail. So, I must not get it. When you don’t understand something from the worlds perspective always go to God’s Word. Let’s look at what those words mean according to the Vine’s dictionary. Gentleness= fair, moderate, patient, not insisting on the letter of the law, nurturing . Quiet= tranquility rising from within. According to these definition having a quiet and gentle spirit is much more attainable for me.
     In seminary, God gave me a woman that was a visual example to me of a quiet and gentle spirit. She loves to talk as much as I do, but she does it with the kindest tone and expression. She has her opinions and are firm on her beliefs but she does not stand on a soap box pushing it on others. She is funny and sweet. She is a magnet for people. She has spoken at three retreats for me and never has any speaker been so loved and admired. It is her spirit that is awesome. She also has an amazing talent. She is a great ventriloquist. She has the ability to make you cry and laugh with her little friends. One time for fun, she got my husband and another pastor friend of ours on stage with her. She told them to open their mouths without talking every time she touched the back of their necks. She is a small woman and they are two tall, big guys. She stood above them on a step and used them for her dummies. She would talk for each of them as she signaled them to open their mouth. It was quite amusing.
     I learned a valuable lesson from this on how we should live out a gentle and quiet spirit. We need to be a dummy and let God be the controller. We should open our mouths on His signal and let Him give us the words. Let Him pull all the strings. If we do this we can’t help but demonstrate to the world a Godly, quiet and gentle spirit.

It should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.
1 Peter 3:4 (NIV)

1 comment:

Steph said...

I am often told my tone and words come out as harsh. I need to let the Lord control that and I won't hurt peoples feelings so much.