I have a teacher friend who reminds her students coming in from recess
of the need to tone down their volume and use their inside voice. Now I know as
mature adults we can’t (or won’t) use that tactic on one another, but I think
the idea has merit. All too often what is in our heads comes right out our
mouth. Because we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, imagine how much
better off we would be if we were reminded to use our Inside Voice.
3 comments:
I know it is not what you are talking about but I am reading Wesley's Journals and he repeatedly tells people to leave the service without talking. It seems that the gentry especially liked to come and talk with loud voices through the worship service.
Again, not your point, but it brought it to mind.
Grace and peace.
Gail;
-----Talking is a very special thing. Thought rises up in us from inklings and passes through building and validation processes until it is either rejected as superfluous, erroneous, or dangerous, or until it is accepted as true. Once accepted, it begins working itself into place amongst other thoughts and feelings and tidbits of the mind. Hopefully by this stage it has not been spoken, because something amazing happens when an idea is spoken.
-----Everyone lives in two rather distinct worlds. One is where things are precisely what they are, but are much less known by any particular individual. We more physically, but less mentally, live in this real world. The other is where our mind and emotions only have perceptions of that real world. These are functionally two realities for each individual, though to him there seems only to be one (mistaking perceptions for actual reality.) The only true reality exists as it exists regardless of anybody’s perception. If the mind represented actual reality with exacting precision, both particularly and generally, then everyone would face only one reality through his perceptions perfectly reflecting what is. As it is, we know only our dim perceptions, and occasionally some bit of truth from reality blindsides what we thought we knew.
-----When a person speaks he turns what has only been theretofore a perception into an actual reality, a physical communication. He has added what will cause a ripple of effects to that which can not be undone. Those effects can be drastic. You’ve seen them often. But speaking an idea causes effects in the speaker's mind, too. An idea spoken or written enters a different dimension in the mind, even if no one heard or read it. To speak or write requires the movement of muscles which involves different areas of the brain - physical experiences of the communication being made. So what? The comparing, matching, and sorting of thoughts and feelings is done in the subconscious where the additional sensations of having communicated are tremendously noticeable. They are perceived as more real and substantive because they have been processed through that part of your body which is in direct contact with the vast, little-known, physical world. Moreover, your own eyes saw what you wrote, your own ears heard, and your own mind reprocessed it, adding even another dimension to the now communicated idea. Communicated thoughts have a more direct effect on further thinking than non-communicated thoughts and feelings because of these extra dimensions which come only by communication.
-----The instances of the Holy Spirit’s direct speaking and writing through people is a scant part of human history, even a scant part of Christian history. It is certainly there, but not often. The common role of the Holy Spirit is in comparing pieces of the individual’s perceived reality to pieces of God's actually made reality using the Word of God as the standard. How well you allow Him this role and how sensitive your thoughts become to the Word’s correction will effect His presence in your communications. So He is only indirectly part of the believer’s common communication, because He knows the believer’s own speaking the truth in love sinks the truth into the believer‘s own love. And that process is as important as was the communication in the first place, and maybe more so.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Pumice,
Interesting way to deal with the situation and get folks to refocus.
Gail
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