The Bible and Life: gossip

Friday, August 30, 2024

The Sin Of Gossip

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is a cute story about the sin of Gossip.

Text: Leviticus 19:16; James 1:26.

Tom recently told me a story about a man who went to a priest and confessed that the Lord had recently convicted him of gossip. He wanted to know what he could do to make it right. The priest told him to go to the top of a mountain, rip open a feather pillow, turn the feathers loose in the wind, and then come back the next day.

So the man did like he was told. He went to the top of a mountain, tore open a feather pillow, and scattered the feathers to the wind. The next day he went back to the priest and asked what he was to do next. The priest told him to go back and collect all of the feathers.

The man complained that it would be impossible to collect all of those feathers. They were scattered everywhere. That, my friend, was the point. Once you begin to gossip, the words to spread scatter to the wind and can never be retrieved. You don’t know where they are going to go, where they will land, or whom they will hurt.

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Books by William Roop

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

The Sower of Gossip

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is something that I found and wanted to share.

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The parable of the sower depicts both the unlimited potential of the seed and the ever importance of the soil! My attention was drawn early this morning in prayer to the sower himself. Every gospel that records this parable states the sower went out to sow and seeds "fell" into every soil type. One translation says the sower scattered the seeds and the results were the variable soils the seeds landed in and later it describes the outcomes of his sowing. I've never thought of this until today but the carelessness the sower showed in handling of the seed was evident in the Harvest!

After this parable Jesus immediately goes into another parable about seeds and those planted by the sower but He says during the night an enemy came while the workers were away and sowed tares among the wheat. The enemy was purposeful in his planting, where the sower in the previous parable just scattered the seeds!! God help us to be purposeful in what we sow and not careless! Wasted seed, wasted potential and wasted Harvest are the results of careless sowing! If the enemy is purposeful in his planting, shouldn't we, the Church, be even more purposeful?

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The enemy is purposeful to sow discord! Sowing discord always involves an enemy planting something foreign in someone else's field! That's what gossip is, that's what backbiting is, it's sowing discord in the "field" of someone else's mind about another sower! Mark those the scripture says that cause division! Refuse to allow the enemy to "sow in your field" and counter that attempt by purposefully planting the good seed into good ground!

The seed has never been the issue, how we handle it is! Jesus said the sower refused to cut out the tares in fear of damaging the wheat, instead he insisted they grow together, because at Harvest time the difference is evident! When things are allowed to grow, things are revealed, good or bad! What you plant is identified at Harvest time! So be purposeful in your planting, don't carelessly toss your seed! That seed is precious, powerful and life changing!! Sow with purpose!