11/16 Strength for Today

Speak Openly

John 18:20
“Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.”

When Jesus was being tried by the religious leaders of His day, one of the questions they asked Him was about His doctrine. Jesus responded to their question in the verse above by reminding them that they heard Him speak. Jesus continued by telling them that when He taught, He spoke “...openly to the world...” Jesus drove the nail in deeper by saying that when He spoke He never spoke in secret. In other words, what Jesus was telling these men was that He never said one thing in public and another in private. Everything that He spoke was the same whether it was in public or private. He wanted them to understand that He said what He meant.

This mentality seems to be lacking in our society. When you look at our political leaders, they are always trying to explain away something they said off the cuff or years ago. What happened is they said something that was not politically correct and later on, for the sake of appearing politically correct, they try to change what they said. We need to be careful that we don't become like the politicians who say one thing to one crowd and another thing to another crowd in order to make everyone happy.

In order to be like our Saviour, we should learn to speak openly all the time. One of the benefits of speaking openly is you never have to second-guess what you said. If you mean what you say all the time then you never have to remember what you said.

If we are going to live this way where we speak openly all the time then we better be careful what we say. Before you jump out and say something, you better think about what you are going to say realizing that later on it could come back to bite you. Remember, everything that we say will eventually be held against us.

This is why parents need to be careful what they tell their children. Children keep a mental record of all that we say and will use it against us if we start double speaking. Even followers will do the same to their leaders. People expect us to follow through with what we say.

I encourage you to be open when you speak. Don't speak with subliminal messages; speak openly. Know what you believe, and if you are careful when you speak, then you will find yourself not having to explain away what you really said. We normally speak what our heart believes, so if you know what you believe and don't change, then you will have no problem speaking openly. If you speak openly all the time then you will have fewer questions to answer for people will know what you believe.