I remember talking with my grandma on the phone when I was a kid, around Christmas time.

I remember her saying, “Now, don’t you kids get us a thing. We have everything we could possibly need. Don’t get us a thing for Christmas!”

As I talked about this with my mom, I learned a secret to the family code. Don’t listen to what we say; listen to what we mean!

This conversation really meant: “You better make sure to get something for your grandparents at Christmas!”

Sometimes, my grandma had a bad habit of saying the exact opposite of what she really meant. It was important to her, I think, to say what she thought people wanted to hear, to give the polite response; truth sometimes took a back seat.

We’re continuing to look at specific ways we can offer ourselves to God.

What about our mouths? How do we offer our mouths to God?

It’s important, because so much of how we interact with each other has to do with our mouths, with what we say. It’s so important that we’ll continue to look at offering our mouths next week as well.

Today, I want to focus on one specific way we can offer our mouths to God. As we said earlier when we read from Ephesians, we can make the commitment to speak truth, in love.

I’ve said this before: sometimes the hardest things to talk about are the things that really are important to you.

Speaking the truth, even when it’s hard, even when it’s tense, even when it hurts, has become a very important value to me.

In part, it’s probably a reaction to the family code I mentioned growing up with. When you try to shape what you say around what you think other people expect, everything gets really difficult. You’re never confident you really know what the other person means.

Every part of a relationship is on shaky ground, because you aren’t sure what’s true and what isn’t.

Early Quakers were known for speaking the truth.

They wouldn’t swear to tell the truth in court, because they thought it implied that they might lie some other time. So they simply affirmed that they would tell the truth, as they always did.

“Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’” was another important value for early Friends. They were known as “Publishers of Truth.”

Perhaps what made the biggest impact on their culture was their honesty in how they did business. In the 1600’s, when Friends first began, most stores did business by bartering and haggling. Some customers would get preferential treatment and preferential pricing.

But Friends, in an effort to be fair and truthful, set standard prices that were the same for everyone. Their efforts to speak and live the truth earned Quakers a great reputation…and a great deal of wealth!

Offering our mouths to God by committing to speak the truth has its benefits.

But it’s also hard! It’s hard to speak the truth in love. There are all kinds of relationship dynamics that keep us from speaking the truth.

You know, the kinds of relationship dynamics that crop up when someone says to someone they love, “Do these pants make me look fat?” Speaking the truth in love can be very hard!

In what situations are we most often tempted to lie? [ASK]

We lie to save other people’s feelings. We lie to save face. We lie to get ahead. We lie to gain power, or money, or status, or something else that is a benefit.

I’m using the harsh word “lie” intentionally.

What are some of the other things we call it? How do we “soften” the ways we describe our non-truth speaking? [ASK]

Little white lie, fib, half-truth, leave something out.

When truth speaking isn’t our commitment, our relationships and our view of truth is on shaky ground.

Listen to Eph. 4: 14-16, a little bigger chunk than we read together a bit ago. Listen to the way truth speaking is a solution to being unsettled and unsure. [READ from NRSV]

Speaking the truth in love moves us away from uncertainty, and toward unity with others in Christ’s body.

I love the connection in these verses that Paul makes. He says one of the solutions to being tossed back and forth by the waves, one of the things that can keep us from being deceived, is speaking the truth. But it isn’t always easy.

When we were in Boise, we had a friend who had a lot of issues. She had been married and divorced, she had been the reason for another marriage breaking up, she was insecure and very up and down emotionally.

She came to our church, and seemed to be doing well; then, something happened, and she was gone for months.

Then one night, she appeared at our front door about 10:30, bawling her eyes out. She was sure she would never have a healthy relationship with anyone. She didn’t even know if she wanted one. But she was lonely, and she didn’t know what to do, and she was distraught.

Elaine and I listened to her for a long time that night, and we prayed with her. I don’t know if I’ve seen many other people that upset or unstable.

Evidently, our concern for her made a difference, because she plugged back in to church. She started e-mailing everybody, she came to worship, to Wednesday night, to everything.

And then a little over a week after showing up on our doorstep, she asked me if I’d perform the wedding ceremony for her and someone she’d met 6 weeks before.

I was in total shock.

Elaine and I met with her and her fiancé for a marital counseling session. Their relationship scared me. Both had been divorced, both had weird relationship issues, but they said they weren’t scared at all because “he’s finally the one,” “she’s finally the one”. When we asked what things made them think this relationship would be different than previous ones, the only thing they could say was that they were “older and more mature”.

I told her I couldn’t marry them in good conscience.

It was not an easy thing to do. We were her only connection to healthy relationships. Saying “no” to her request meant risking her leaving the church, rejecting Jesus, and ruining our friendship.

But it was a loving thing to do to speak the truth to her. This was a very poor decision, and it was important to tell her what I saw and what I thought was best.

They ended up getting married anyway.

She stayed at the church a few more months, until something else set her off and she disappeared again. It’s not a happy ending story where telling the truth led her to realize the error of her ways and how smart I was. It didn’t help.

But it was important for me to do.

If we are going to be the people God wants us to be, we will need people to speak truth to us when we’re heading down a wrong path. Even if we don’t want to hear it.

We need to speak truth to one another. Confront each other when necessary. Be honest when our feelings are hurt.

Would you want your doctor not to tell you that you had cancer, simply because she didn’t want to hurt your feelings?

Of course not. In that situation, we need to know the truth from someone who we trust to give it. Yet even in our closest relationships, speaking hard truth is one of the most difficult things to do.

You know what, though? It’s a much healthier place to live.

In college, I had to tell two really good friends that I was concerned about their relationship…and I had to do it after the man asked me to be his best man!

I’ve spoken truth by confronting people about alcohol addiction and about having an affair and about stealing money.

I’ve spoken truth by confessing lies to my wife and failings to friends who hold me accountable.

Each time, I’m afraid I’ll be rejected, I’ll lose friends, I’ll be attacked. There are a lot of fears. But each time, the truth is a much freer place to be. And each decision to speak truth makes the next one a little bit easier. Each decision NOT to tell the truth makes the next lie or omission of truth easier, too.

It’s a better road to commit to speaking truth. But we need to remember the “in love” part as well.

Aubrey was outside the other day with her friend Jake. She saw a cat that she didn’t know, and started to get scared. She went over to Elaine, and Elaine comforted her and said, “Oh, honey, it’s ok, it’s just a cat, a nice kitty cat.”

Jake, watching the whole thing, said to Elaine: “Actually, Ewaine, we don’t know if it’s a nice kitty or a mean kitty!” I can just imagine how Aubrey’s eyes bugged out!

Now, that would be speaking the truth, but it’s not speaking the truth in love.

There was a kid at the store who saw a really large man. He walked up to the man and said, “Are you pregnant?”

His mom tried to cover it up by interrupting and saying, “Johnny, you know men don’t have babies. Don’t bother this man!”

“Well, he’s big enough to have twins in there!”

Speak the truth in love.

As usual, the bible puts two very important things together in a way that makes all the difference. Usually, it’s really easy to do ONE of those, but probably hard to do both.

It’s easy to speak truth to people we don’t really know, but who disagree with us. Many in the church are guilty of proclaiming truth to those we don’t agree with in a very self righteous and vindictive way.

And when it’s people we care about, it’s easy to love and look the other way, to overlook bad choices and simply remain silent and affirming and loving.

Offering our mouths to God means bringing them both together.

Speak truth, and do it in love.