I think I may be helping my wife lose her mind. We have more power in what we say than we realize, so we really need to make sure what we say is true and right.

Recently, Lily and I were getting ready to go on a vacation. There was just one glitch. I had to do some scrambling to get a post-dated pay cheque. But I finally got it and we took off.

Things were going well for the first bit of vacation when I realized it was past pay day. So I said to Lily, “We have to get my cheque in the bank”, and promptly got the reply of “where is it?”

I couldn’t believe she was asking that question because I was positive I had given it to her when I came home. So I told her, “You have it!”

She looked at me with a stunned look and I could almost see the wheels in her brain spinning back and forth trying desperately to remember where she had put the cheque.

Both of our minds were now working overtime trying to figure out where this cheque was. We both started looking in places where we might have put it and even places where there’s no way it would be.

All the time I kept telling Lily, “I gave it to you”. And, to be honest, I only thought I gave it to her but I couldn’t actually remember handing her the cheque.

This mini crisis went on for a while. Lily called our son to see if he had seen it at home. She checked to see if we could get by without it. There was even talks of contingency plans of having it couriered to us.

All the while, I was drumming it into Lily’s mind that I had given her the cheque.

For about twenty minutes this kept up, and I was trying to retrace my steps in my head because I thought maybe I hadn’t given my cheque to Lily … not that I was going to publicly admit that out loud!

As I went through my steps, I picked up a folded piece of paper on the coffee table in our cottage. Although I had looked at this paper before, I had only glanced at it because, of course, I had given my pay to Lily.

This time I unfolded the paper and looked at what was there. Guess what? My pay cheque was inside. It all came back to me how I got the cheque and what I did with it.

At this point, however, Lily blurted out, “No wonder I think I’m losing my mind! It’s you planting thoughts in my head that aren’t true that get me worrying that I’m not able to remember things!”

Now she thinks it’s my secret plan to drive her crazy!

Here’s the thing: It’s not a good thing to lead someone to believe something that’s not true. It’s criminal to lead someone to believe something about God and His Word that’s not true. We need to be very careful when speaking for God that our words are not just hearsay. The answer is to know God’s Word and then be careful using words like “God told me” or “God says”. Make sure it’s really true before you lead someone to believe it.

That’s Life

Paul

Question: Have you led someone to believe something that you later found out was not true? I’d like to here your thoughts; you can leave your comment below.