A Time to Shut Up

Several times in scripture God basically told people to shut up. Ecclesiastes 4:7 says there is a time to speak and a time to keep silent. James tells us that words can be set on fire by hell itself. The sad but terrible truth is that some hell sent words come from us. Lest you think you are exempt, remember,  Jesus told Peter, shut up. (Get thee behind me, satan.) God told Joshua to shut up, when he was belly aching that God had let him down, when in fact the source of the Jews problem was not a failure of God, but a moral failure of their own. (Joshua 7:7-12)

Listen, no one is better at cutting you down, than you are yourself. Ephesians talks about the fiery darts of the enemy, often in life, the enemy uses people to attack themselves! Don't cut yourself down, encourage yourself in the Lord. Don't cut your loved ones down, that is the devil's job, and he can do just fine without you. We need to build each other up. I have a precious woman in our church, who often ends her online day by saying, "good night facebook." Sometimes we need to learn how to cut off communication. We need to be able to get a little Fred Sanford with ourselves and say, "shut up, dummy," when we find ourselves slipping into a negative funk. It is pretty dumb to knock holes in the very ship you are floating in. Look at the comparison between the wise and the foolish in this verse: Pr 14:1 The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish tears it down with her own hands. Speaking negatively to yourself or family is tearing down your own house. Remember the old saying, if you can't say anything good at all, then don't say a thing. That's good advice to help keep your fire burning.