I was on my way to Randburg the other morning. As I was plodding along in the traffic, I glanced at the car in the next lane, and noticed something very strange going on inside. The driver was bopping his head in time to the music from his iPod earphones!

“Well, what’s so strange about that?” you ask. Well, his wife was sitting aimlessly next to him, completely cut-off from the song in his ears.

The reason why we need to exhort one another is because hurt feelings cause us to lose perspective, as Satan constantly seeks to draw us away from God, and because of our inherently sinful and stubborn natures.

• As we exhort one another we must remember that every person is worth understanding.
• Many Christians are problem-orientated rather than people-orientated, in other words, they see the problems when they ought to be seeing people.
• Behind every human problem there is a person.

Text : James 1: 19-21.

Be quick to listen and slow to speak
Vs. 19 - We should learn this principle from Jesus Christ. Listen when He speaks with the Samaritan woman. These principles will help our personal relationship and also our relationship with Christ.

Most of us do too much talking and not enough listening. As parents we lose our children because we do not engage ourselves in discussions with our children, and we don’t have time to listen to their problems and things that concern them.

The Bible has a great deal of instruction on this subject.

Some Scripture references where caring is referred to:

Philippians 2 : 1-2
“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”
Hebrews 3 : 13
“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
Matthew 25 : 40

Well speaking of blogoi (logoi, Greek for words), I have always been fascinated by languages & words. I have had the privilege of studying five languages, dabbling in another two and if you include reading music and some odd computer languages, I can add a few more notches to my belt.

Well with all this talk of language, I was recently thinking about synonyms … Why are there synonyms in language? Surely language would be simpler and more functional without synonyms.