If Paul David Tripp writes it, I will read it. PDT points to Jesus and that’s what I want my life to do as well. His latest work War of Words: Getting to the Heart of Your Communication Struggles is a fantastic read that will challenge you, convict you, and give you courage to handle the next communication better than the last one. In a day and age where people need the gospel more than ever, we have to choose our words and our body language more intentionally than ever.
Philippians 1:27 reminds us…Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- God’s words set boundaries and give freedom. His words create life and bring death. God created talk, and his first words to Adam and Eve demonstrate its significance. Words are not cheap. Words reveal, define, explain, and shape. Location: 180
- Words define, explain, and interpret. Location: 204
- You and I do not respond to the people or circumstances of our lives on the basis of the facts. Our responses are based on the way we interpret those facts. Location: 303
- Many of our problems with words would be solved if we simply paused and asked ourselves how God would evaluate and respond to the present situation. We just let our thoughts run without challenging them. But if our interpretation of events is wrong, our words will not be right. Location: 307
- Word problems are often interpretation problems. We do not say the right thing because we do not believe the right thing. Location: 309
- Since our need runs deeper than technique, we need more than a training course or a new set of skills. We need the rescue that only Jesus, the living Word and our Redeemer, can provide. Location: 520
- We are what is wrong in each situation. We are the common element in all our communication problems. Location: 543
- Reader, ask yourself, “Does my communication flow out of my confidence in the resource-giving work of the Word?” Location: 558
- I’m tired of the minefield of unexpected difficulty. I experience a powerful draw to deal with the situation by beating him with words. Location: 574
- God hasn’t issued us a series of grand and lofty directives and then sat back to see if we would obey them. No, he understands that our sin has rendered us powerless and that we will not know what we need to know and cannot do what we need to do apart from him. So he has unzipped us and gotten inside us by his Spirit. His inconceivable power is within us! And not only is it within us, it is at work! Paul says that we have been given power that can be compared only to the power by which Christ was raised from the dead. Location: 601
- Parent, you deny the gospel when you allow your communication with your child to be ruled by unrestrained emotions and desires. Because the Word has come and has given us his power, we can step forward in courage, believing that we can gain new ground in our world of talk. Location: 615
- The gospel speaks to this struggle as well. Christ calls us to an agenda higher than our own pleasure. Christ rules everything for us, but he has not established that rule so that we would be happy. We are called to submit ourselves to Christ so that we would be holy and so that our holiness would bring him glory. Location: 659
- There is probably no more important perspective on our everyday lives than this: God is at work in every situation to complete the work of salvation he began before the earth was made. This truth is presented all over the New Testament. Paul says God is working in all things for the good as he conforms us “to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). James says we ought to greet trials with joy because God is using them to make us “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” ( James 1:4). Peter says we can view trials as the means by which we obtain the “outcome of [our] faith, the salvation of [our] souls” (1 Peter 1:9). God is sovereign over the circumstances of our lives, but Scripture says more. It tells us that these circumstances are a principal means by which God actually produces what he predestined for our lives before the foundation of the world—that we would be transformed into the likeness of his Son, becoming holy as he is holy. Location: 1,025
- I tend to forget that God is focused not on the “success” of my day but on the godliness of my character. I tend to focus on the results. He is committed to the process of making me holy. In my anger and frustration, I am fighting not just people and situations but God. Location: 1,041
- The bottom line of everything Scripture says about the sovereignty of God is this: He does what he does for his own glory. History is his story. Every moment belongs to him. We are his possessions. All our gifts, graces, and abilities belong to him. They are all from him, all for him, and as Paul says repeatedly in Ephesians 1, all for “the praise of his glory.” Location: 1,100
- The war of words is really a war for sovereignty. Who or what rules your heart? Whoever or whatever it is, it will control your tongue as well. Location: 1,132
- Our entire lives will be determined by which bread we pursue. There are no more dangerous lies than the ones that lead us away from a loving hope in and surrender to the Creator we cannot see and toward a bondage to an endless, unsatisfying pursuit of what is passing away. Location: 1,252
- If your dream crumbled, if there was nothing left, would you rise in the midst of your tears and say, “I am full of joy, because the Lord is my lord, the Lord is my life, the Lord is my strength, and, gloriously, in the midst of all this loss and destruction, I have him”? You can pursue your dream, or you can pursue the Lord’s dream for you. You can ask him to conform you to his image so that more and more your life and your words would bring him praise. Or you can wish that Christ would conform to the scope and focus of your dream. Whose dream are you seeking? Location: 1,361
- Examine your fruit. What is the fruit produced by your communication? Do you leave others feeling encouraged, hopeful, and loved? Do your words lead to forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace? Does your communication impart wisdom and encourage faith? Or do your words lead to discouragement, division, condemnation, bitterness, and foolishness? Location: 1,696
- Uncover your roots. Luke 6:45 records one of the most important things that Christ said about our communication: “Out of the abundance of the heart [our] mouth speaks.” Word problems always point to heart problems. Examining where we have trouble with our talk reveals what is ruling our hearts. Location: 1,704
- We must begin by admitting that people and situations do not cause us to speak as we do. Our hearts control our words. People and situations simply provide the occasion for the heart to express itself. Humbly confessing this opens to you the floodgates of God’s forgiveness and power. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Location: 1,711
- Confrontation is often marred by a judgment of motives. Location: 1,847
- Confrontations are often adversarial rather than lovingly concerned for the person who needs your rebuke. In confrontation, we can forget who we are. We can fail to remember that we would be exactly where the other person is if not for God’s grace. We seem to forget that, really, there is only one enemy—and it is not the person we are confronting! The purpose of confrontation is not to stand against others but to stand alongside them, pointing out the things God wants them to see, confess, and forsake. Location: 1,853
- Even though we have been transported from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of light, as believers we are still citizens in need of help. We do not want to minimize the significance of our rescue from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s Son, but this deliverance is not the end of Christ’s work of salvation; it is the beginning. Once he has broken the dominion of darkness over us, he then begins to remove all the darkness within us so that we may be holy as he is holy. This is the ongoing work of his kingdom rule: our sanctification. Location: 1,909
- An everyday ministry of intervention is not born out of the pride of personal accomplishment, experience, wisdom, or success. Nor is it born out of a subtle belief that the persons giving and receiving ministry are somehow essentially different from each other. Rather, it admits that there is nothing that I can give another that I do not need myself. I may have known the Lord for many years, but I need his grace as much today as I did the first moment I believed. If there is any truth, life, hope, grace, and good in my life, it is because of his work. The only thing I bring to the table is my weakness and my sin. So I do not approach ministry from a position of confidence in my own strength and wisdom, encouraging you to be like me. No, I come in weakness and sin to lead you to the only One who offers strength and deliverance! Location: 2,030
- Scripture says that it is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance (Rom. 2:4). The truths of the gospel—both its challenge and its comfort—must color our confrontation. Location: 2,105
- When we are wronged, the thing of highest importance is not that we feel satisfied or avenged but that we respond according to God’s plan and for his glory. Location: 2,232
- If we respond selfishly to the normal give-and-take of relationships, how will we ever respond redemptively in the face of real sin? If we are not loving our neighbors in the normal course of things, how will we ever do it when the stakes are much, much higher? Location: 2,259
- A rebuke is not a condemnation but a call. Words of exhortation are not a judgment but an encouragement to follow the Lord. The confrontation is not a sentence but a warning. We speak God’s words to one another not because we are higher or better and not because we are capable of fixing people. No, we teach, encourage, admonish, correct, and exhort because God has commissioned us to do so. This call is not one sector of our already-too-busy lives; it is itself a lifestyle. It is what we are to be doing wherever we are, whoever we are with. Location: 2,364
- Mercy. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus was tempted like we are in every point, so he understands and sympathizes with our weaknesses. We can come to him and find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need (Heb. 4:14–16). In the hardest of situations, in the most trying of relationships, we never stand alone with only our personal abilities to help us. We are in Christ, and in him we can do what would otherwise be impossible. We cannot love our enemies. We cannot do good to those who mistreat us. We cannot be patient in the face of provocation. We cannot honor when we are dishonored. We cannot leave vengeance to the Lord. We cannot find delight in self-sacrificing service. We cannot speak softly in the face of another’s anger. We are not naturally kind, compassionate, gentle, or forgiving. The standard is too high and the calling is too great for us to fulfill. But that is why Jesus came. In him we really do find everything we need! Location: 2,433
- Winning the war means speaking to serve others in love (Gal. 5:13–14). We say no to the rule of passions and desires not only because Christ gives us the power to do so but also because we have been called to serve. The opposite of indulging the flesh is not saying, “I must not, I must not, I must not.” We are called to put off self-indulgent talk in order to put on talk that flows out of a love for others. Location: 2,818
- Winning the war means speaking with a goal to restore (Gal. 6:1–2). Paul says, “Brothers and sisters, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (v. 1). Let’s be sure we understand these words. Notice first that Paul does not say, “If you catch anyone in any transgression . . .” He is not talking about sneaking up on someone to catch him or her in the act! Rather, he is talking about how we as sinners get “caught”—that is, entrapped and ensnared in sin. Location: 2,892
- Winning the war means choosing our words carefully. We do not want to give any room in our talk to the passions and desires of the flesh. In our own conceit and envy, we do not want to provoke one another to sin. We do not want to bite and devour one another with words. Rather, we are committed to serve one another in love with all our talk. We want to speak in step with what the Spirit is producing in us and in others. We want to speak in a way that encourages the growth of that fruit. Finally, we want to speak as gentle, humble agents of restoration—as burden-bearers committed to live by Christ’s rule of love. Location: 2,956
- The war rages on! This is why we must choose our words carefully. We are prone to wandering away. We are controlled by our raging passions. We are still easily taken captive by sinful desires. We do get tricked again and again by evil’s deceitful scheming, which tempts us to lose our gospel moorings. Location: 2,997
- In every situation we need to ask, “What is the best way for my words to accomplish God’s goal of grace?” Our answer will be different according to the situations we encounter and the people involved. Location: 3,231
- In it all, the tongue will serve the master to which the heart is already committed. It is time for us to submit to the Lord’s claim on our tongues as our King and Redeemer. More than ever before, we need to be committed to speak for him. Location 3304
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