Good morning everyone,

Colossians 4:6-Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

I believe we all have had encounters with people who have shared their failure to do something they know they are supposed to do. But our response was simply to sympathize either by experiencing the same struggle, or at least that same temptation they’ve failed in. But is that alone helpful?

Many times I believe we are fearful to encourage people in what is right because we may have some unresolved guilt ourselves with our own failures. So sympathy can just turn into a "pity party", trying to make someone feel better because we struggle too! But that leaves us and our failures as the standard of comfort and peace, and not God’s truth and grace. So I may think, "I should feel better because so and so failed too", but that doesn’t lead us to Christ for forgiveness and restoration.

When we are correcting or confronting anyone, we should always do it in a spirit that realizes that we are not correcting people because we are perfect performers of what is right. But because we know it is God’s grace that enables anyone who knows Christ to do what they should. This makes us have something truly helpful to say when we sympathize, and not leave us feeling like we can’t challenge them in grace because we fail too!

In His Love, Ld