Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Have Better Conversations | Jason Woodruff | James 1:19-20

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. On today's episode, we have a guest, Jason Woodruff. He is the CEO of The Poorover, which is a weekly newsletter, podcast, and a lot more than that. It's a great place if you're a Christian, to go hear what's happening on the news and get a little bit of a biblical thought on how you can interpret that and think about it. So make sure to check out what he's doing, and I hope you enjoy today's.

Starting point is 00:00:34 talk. Today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite verses. Now, there are other verses that are more profound, more beautiful, but what I love about this verse is that it's so practical. It applies to my life almost every day, oftentimes multiple times a day. It's James 1 19 through 20, and it says this, my dear brothers and sisters, understand this. Everyone should be quick, to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Now, the beauty of these two verses is that James explains what to do or what we should do, and why to do it. He says, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. And then he gives us a reason, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Starting point is 00:01:37 So if producing God's righteousness, if being someone who overflows with the righteousness of God is something that you desire, then we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Now, in my experience, these are not three distinct individual pieces of advice. They flow together. If you are being quick to listen, that means that you have a different posture with how you're engaging in a conversation that will also make you slow to speak and slow to become angry. If you're quick to listen, you're others focused. You're genuinely interested in what they have to say and not just what they have to say, but why they believe that and feel that. And like I said, that then kind of prohibits you from being quick to speak. You're not looking for an extra long pause or breath to hop in and start saying what you feel on the topic.

Starting point is 00:02:47 You're focused on them. And that change in posture, which it's at least a change for me, helps you to be slow to anger. Now, I said that this applies to me multiple times every day. And part of that is just because of who I am. I'm naturally a talker. So I need frequent reminders to be quick to listen and slow to speak. It just makes me a more enjoyable person to be around. But part of it is also because of the industry I'm in. I'm the founder and one of the writers of the pourover. The pourover summarizes current events, politics, economics, other major news stories. while adding reminders of foundational biblical principles. Our goal is to help Christians view what's happening in the world, the biggest new stories of the day, through the lens of their faith, as opposed to through a political ideology. And like I said, we include Bible verses at the end of a lot of our stories. And we include James 1, 19 through 20 at the bottom of a lot of our stories because it's something that we need, reminding of, the writers, the people at the pour over need reminding of often. There are a few

Starting point is 00:04:02 areas where we as humans are worse at applying this verse than when it comes to current events, specifically politically divisive topics. In those scenarios by default, we are not quick to listen. We're quite reluctant to listen. We'll listen just long enough to determine which side you're on, whether or not we agree with you. And then we're not slow to speak. We want to jump in. We either want to agree with you and start talking about how ridiculous it would be to not agree with you or we want to disagree with you, especially if it's online. And these topics tend to raise our blood pressure and fill us with what feels like Jesus flipping tables righteous anger. But what James is warning us about is that when you reach anger, when you become angry after a conversation where you have not been quick. to listen and when you have not been slow to speak, that there's a good chance that that is actually

Starting point is 00:05:02 the anger of man and it is blocking or preventing the righteousness of God. Let me talk about a real life scenario that happens at least weekly for me, depending on how often I check the feedback forms or the email replies for the pour over. People will reach out when they're upset with something that we've written. We're either too conservative or too liberal or got something wrong. Now, in this, my default mode is not to be quick to listen. I read enough to understand what's going on and my mind immediately jumps to why they're wrong, to what they misunderstood. My default mode is to reply and to explain the salt to them. And it is oh so rarely from a place of love and gentleness and caring and much more often from a place of anger.

Starting point is 00:06:04 So instead, I walk through this verse. Step one being quick to listen. So I read through more slowly what they've said and try to understand, okay, is this someone who's shouting into the internet, doesn't expect anyone to read and doesn't have anything to say. Or is this a valid criticism that we need to respond to and address? The second step is being slow to speak. So the old adage, don't send an email when you're angry, that's biblical. That's James speaking. And all that helps me to respond in love and kindness and not anger. And that truly is the beauty in my mind of this verse because all I'm trying to do is follow the steps that James outlines

Starting point is 00:06:54 of being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. But in doing that, we've touched on so many other things that we want to be true of our lives as Christians. By doing nothing more than following James's direction here, of being quick to listen, and slow to speak and slow to become angry, I've inadvertently treated others the way I want to be treated. I wish that when I was angry and sent an angry note, I got a kind and loving reply. It produces in me peace and patience and other aspects of the fruit of the spirit. When, again, all I was doing was focusing on following James' instruction. So often in the Bible there are commands to love one another and to be patient.

Starting point is 00:07:45 And it's hard to know practically what that means. And what I've found is that following James 1 19 through 20, taking a posture of calmness and humility, something as simple as just putting others first in the conversation is a way that we can do that. So if you are someone who wants to produce the righteousness of God, then you need to fight to remove the anger of man. And the way to do that is to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper,

Starting point is 00:08:43 check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Have Better Conversations | Jason Woodruff | James 1:19-20

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