”Let your speech always be with grace (or “winning”, the Danish rendering) seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”  Col. 4:6

”Don´t you want to become a lawyer?”  an officer once asked me as a soldier down in Germany.  He meant to flatter me, as he liked my way of arguing.  I  was stupid enough to bask in that empty kind of flattery. (That doesn´t mean that I look down on lawyers.  In fact, I highly admire them!)

It´s one thing to win an argument.  It´s a completely different thing to win a soul.  It´s stimulating for our pride to disarm an opponent.  However, winning a soul usually means loss of your own prestige.  Sometimes you may even find yourself in a situation where you must humbly say, “I´m sorry!”

Recently I felt I must do that to one of my toughest opponents in the local newspaper.  I had used just one little ”innocent” word against him, but I felt it wasn´t right, so I wrote him an “I am sorry-letter”.  Suddenly he was my opponent no longer – he even wanted me to visit him and his sick wife!
The same thing happened when I did that towards another harsh debater.  He immediately gave me a ring and the tone had completely changed.

Oh, never mind about ”winning”.  Let´s rather by the grace of God overcome our own pride for the sake of some soul won for our Lord Jesus Christ!

Lead me to some soul today/

and teach me, Lord, just what to say/

friends of mine are lost in sin/

and cannot find their way/

few there are who seem to care/

few there are who pray/

melt my heart and fill my life/

give me some soul today!

-jn-

April 7, 2009