“The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.” Proverbs 18:8

Have you ever been on the receiving end of searing, wounding words? Maybe you heard about them second or third hand, and the pain of the insult is only compounded by the thought that “who knows how many” people have heard this about me? In these situations, we want to fight back. We want to go on an all-out pursuit, find out how many people heard, go to each one, and straighten it out. We want to wallow in a pity party, and we want to shut out the whole world with a cynical dismissal of people as the words descend into the innermost parts of our being. It is imperative that we avoid using our lips to damage others. It is just as imperative that we deal Biblically with being on the receiving end of damaging words. Satan is a talebearer. He loves nothing more than damaging the psyche and diminishing the faith of God’s sheep, using truth, half-truths, and outright lies. The truth is that chasing every lie and hurtful word spoken against us is futile, exhausting, and will not produce the peace we desire. The Biblical solution is simple yet requires great faith to apply. Peace is found in putting our lives, our reputations, our good name, our everything in the hands of Jesus. This is all that really matters. The hymnwriter expressed it beautifully this way: