Tongue 3: Gossip

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Audio: https://youtube.com/shorts/NFGTFA7dR20?si=oIc95Cm2PNIX-6c3


Veiled Gossip or Genuine Concern?

“But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.”  1 Peter 4:15

If you are a woman, chances are you have done it too. You have brought someone up in conversation, asking, “How is she doing?” or “Have you heard from so-and-so lately?” On the surface, it sounds like concern. But if we are honest, truly honest, it was veiled gossip. We were not asking so we could pray. We were not seeking how to serve. We were simply curious. And the Bible has a word for that: busybody.

It is sobering that in 1 Peter 4:15, the busybody is mentioned alongside the murderer, the thief, and the evildoer. That should make us pause. What we often brush off as small talk or just wondering is, in God’s eyes, meddling in matters that are not ours. It reveals a heart more interested in information than in intercession. 

Love thinketh no evil (1 Corinthians 13:5). Love does not pry, it prays. Love does not spread details, it bears burdens.

So the next time we are tempted to ask, “How is she?” let us ask ourselves why we want to know. And may the Spirit of God help us to turn curiosity into compassion, and loose lips into lips that lift up in prayer.

Before meeting with friends, I ask God to let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in His sight.

Our tongue can never be tamed, as James 3:8 says, ‘But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.’ 

The only solution is meditating on God’s Word day and night, because as Luke 6:45 reminds us, ‘Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.’   What fills our heart will eventually come out of our mouths, so we must fill it with truth.



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