354 – Good People Speak Their Minds

When you have something to say, say it. Whether in times of harassment, nuisance, abuse, or someone just being more friendly than feels comfortable, if you don’t like how things are going, you need to say something about it. Addressing your concerns is on one’s responsibility but your own.

God puts concerns in our hearts so that we can deal with them. You might be wrong about your concerns, but bringing up those wrong concerns for discussion will help others to understand how they are perceived and help you to learn what things to not worry about. Then again, your concern just might be legitimate. Either way, the concern God puts in your heart is a responsibility, a stewardship, a job, a duty, an essential task that only you can perform, and if you don’t, others will suffer because of your negligence.

Don’t be rude or abusive, just speak your mind clearly enough to be heard.

Like an task, speaking one’s mind is a skill that gets better with time. If you never learned the skill, you will do it wrong the first time. It’s like learning to ride a bike. The way to learn how to speak your mind is to speak it, even if you speak it the wrong way at first. The worst way to do any necessary thing is to not do it at all.

If you don’t speak your mind when you have a mind to speak, your problems will swell and mount and it will be no one’s fault but your darned own. This is also part of God’s design in nature, that whatever problems we ignore grow and grow until they overwhelm us into doing what should have been done from the start.

If someone else happens to say what you were thinking, an applause is sufficient. But, don’t ask someone else speak your mind. And, don’t ever tell someone who doesn’t have the courage to speak up that you can speak instead. Some things are matters of “order”, such as the right to make a motion before a committee, but even a sitting committee member can invite a guest to speak or at least give an introduction.