Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.
Ephesians 4:29

Dear God, this is one of those great reminder verses. It’s a verse I’ve read many times before. And this is a prayer I’ve prayed many times before. I need to be nothing but uplifting in my words, and when criticism must be delivered it needs to be loving and constructive and not biting and mean.

Why? Because I hurt you, your creation, and myself when I allow myself to sink into the cesspool of making me feel better about myself through the putting down of others. When I stop to think about the insecure part of me that is fed when I choose to not be generous with someone else, I get creeped out. To know that my natural state needs someone else to decrease so that my own ego can increase is disturbing. But you have released my ego from that need to increase. Your sacrifice says I’m good enough and, in fact, I have some room to give if that’s what it takes to build up my sisters and my brothers around me.

Father, it would be nice to have people at my funeral be able to say, “I never heard him say a negative word against anyone.” Of course that would never be said now, and it will take years to change the memories of those who know me, but let this be day one. Let this be the first day of the rest of my life, when my words were good, helpful, and encouraging.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen