Man2Man Recap: Be Mindful of the ABC's of Man

Brothers, what a blessing once again it was to come together as men of God and break the bread of life together - which is the Word of God. Today's speaker was Minister Mark S. Lewis and he introduced a powerful concept that he called "The ABCs of Man". Basically, if you go through the alphabet, what truths about the Bible and what it says about you does the Holy Spirit bring to mind?
He began with the powerful letter 'R':
We must REPENT, so we can be REAL, and then we will be RELEVANT.

Brother Stansbury shared how it is important to be VIGILANT, so that we are VIABLE and then we as men will have a VOICE.

Going in this same vein of thought, we turned to James 1:19-22 and this took us to the letter 'S':
Be SWIFT to hear, SLOW to speak, and SLOW to wrath - this is where we spent the majority of our lesson because there were some powerful revelations from that scripture.

Minister Lewis shared a recent experience where he asked a person a simple question and they began to give him a lot of details that (in his flesh) he really did not need to know. What he really wanted was the answer to his question and he could have easily cut the person off and asked for 'the abbreviated version'. However, he was SLOW to speak and SWIFT to listen, allowing the person to finish everything they had to share, and after it all, he thanked them and hung up the phone.

After getting off the phone, his wife shared with him that she was so proud that he had not cut the person off, because the person needed to share their heart - cutting them off may have hurt their feelings and ultimately weakened the power of Minister Lewis' witness and ministry.

Such a simple example illuminated to each of us how easy it is to hurt our witness, just because we want to speak, before we have listened to the person speaking with us. The last part of the S's is SLOW to wrath - often when we speak too quick, we stir up wrath in the other person, or if we misinterpret what they are saying, anger is stirred up in us. This leads to conflict that advances the enemy's agenda but does nothing to glorify God. SWIFT to hear gives us an opportunity to be true vessels of God's love and when we are SLOW to speak, our words are peppered with love rather than the wrath that might have otherwise been festered in the moment.