27 Quotes by Karen Ehman

Listening requires attending to the other person’s heart.

God created us with emotions, and anger is one of them. Feeling the emotion of anger is not the problem. The problem is when we let our anger trigger actions that result in wrongdoing.

Remember, possessing feelings of anger isn’t wrong. What is wrong is when we allow them to fester and then we choose to fight.

When a family member’s behavior threatens to knock the nice right out of us, we can pause. Recalculate. Punch in a different destination for the words now downloading from our brains onto our tongues. We can program them to first stop at gentleness, swing by to pick up respect, and finally – arrive with grace. Then our mouths can utter pleasant words rather than those that are caustic, cutting, and unkind.

When showering life-giving words on another human, don’t just pick the people you know well. Notice the one who least expects to be noticed.

My words, sometimes even my lack of words, have caused me much pain over the years. It hasn’t always been that I have gossiped or lied. Sometimes I just talk too much. Or I repeated the words of others, which I should not have. Other times I have tried to say the right thing, but it came out the wrong way. Or I have said the right thing but in the presence of the wrong people or at the wrong time. There was just no shortage to the ways I could misuse my mouth.

When we read the Bible, we learn. However, when we write out biblical commands in a way that is personal to us, we allow the Word to take root deep within our hearts. This will help us the next time we are faced with a challenging situation and need to use words wisely. When we have trained our brain to recall and apply biblical nonnegotiables, we are equipped to speak, act, and react in ways that honor God.

Repentance is simply agreeing with God about our wrong and then doing an about-face and walking in the other direction, committing the sin no more.

The best way I have learned over the years to be still is to dive into the pages of my Bible. Immersing myself in God’s Word provides protection. It snaps my heart back to attention and helps me to run to him for rescue rather than try to fix things on my own. Psalm.