As I have reached the ripe “young” age of 45, I have thought about God’s plan for me to grow beyond being a typical Sunday Church-goer. As I look back, I can more clearly see His desire to mold each of us more and more into His likeness, if we are willing.

Don’t get me wrong. If I were a sculpture, my Christian development could probably best be described as only partially molded. But with God now centered in my life, I can feel myself taking form, and I can’t wait to see what my life will look like when He is done with me.

However, it has not been easy and I don’t always have the kind of clarity I would like. God’s life for us is a “work in progress” to be sure.

I often recall how much I seemed to enjoy engaging in gossip. Let’s face it. We all seek connections, and for some reason, discussing another person in a negative or judgmental way makes us feel like we have something in common with the people we are with.

Gossip is the product of our judgment of others. Gossip also represents our choice to avoid the real work of communicating and working through an issue with the person involved in a truly Christian way.

Let me define gossip in purely Christian terms. The impact we allow Jesus to have on our lives can be directly measured by what lies in our hearts. When we have truly been open to God transforming us, our hearts become filled with Jesus-like qualities such as empathy, compassion, understanding, and most importantly, trust in God. If your heart is not fully transformed (by choice), then you are likely to secretly judge others. Perhaps you judge their children, attire, attitudes, or choices. You believe you do so secretly, but God knows. However, perhaps those judgments you hold deep within your heart feel better when vocalized to a spouse or a friend. I believe this is gossip.

And God wants so much more for us.

I can honestly say that today, as I truly study the life of Jesus and try to understand the gravity of God’s love for us, I can no longer find any joy in talking about others in a judgmental way. You see, God has held up a mirror in front of me on numerous occasions, and it’s obvious to me that He will never stop. It’s a large mirror showing me how painful and hurtful it can be to His children. And it’s not just a voice whispering to me that what I am saying is not right. He is showing me that what is in my heart is not right.

Let me share with you the following:

- What I thought I knew about someone or their actions, I actually new nothing. Nada. What I thought I knew was ALL wrong. Only God knows everything going on in someone’s life, and who the hell was I to interfere with the life of this person made by God? How completely arrogant of me! We’ve become desensitized to the phrase “until you have walked in another person’s shoes”. Empathy is a good example of what we seem to lack or only show during a full-scale tragedy. We seem to fail to apply it in the way God designed it to be used – every single day, in every single situation. Here is what we know about our brothers and sisters in Christ. Not much! Maybe it’s a piece of information passed onto us through the personal viewpoint of someone else. Maybe it’s something we are personally observing at a particular moment in time. That is all we need to know to form a negative opinion and speak critically about someone, right? Right! It’s kinda like what is happening now – judging and maligning the Casey Anthony jurors for their verdict, and not acknowledging that they sat through weeks and weeks of testimony and evidence that we did not! All we heard were slivers of biased information from the news. Isn’t this a classic case of how we judge each other? We know nothing. I realize that now.

I. Know. Nothing. But guess what? God does. He knows each person’s heart, intent, day, life, prayers, concerns, fears, set backs, wrong choices, good choices, etc. He is molding them too! I have come to understand that I am questioning and losing faith in God when I gossip or judge one of His children. Can I hear an Amen sister?

-Do not judge lest ye be judged. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that people spoke about me in a more negative light during those times when I spoke of others in a negative light. I put it out there, and it came back to me ten fold. I behaved in an untrustworthy manner – and though people close to me seemed to like me, they felt they could not really trust me to not judge them too. This hurts me more today than probably any other part of my past behavior.

-What is in your heart does not need to actually be verbalized to be wrong. True transformation by God includes changing how you see others. When your heart is right, it is filled with love, empathy, patience and compassion. There will be little room left for gossip or judgment, if any.

- I realize now that in God’s battle against good and evil, He has selected special individuals to bear His cross more heavily. I refer to anyone taking on a leadership role of any kind. He is asking them to have some kind of IMPACT on someone else as part of His plan. As a result, they seem to attract infinitely more judgment and gossip. Yes, they might goof up, or even fail miserably. But do I want to be sitting on the sideline criticizing people as God uses them? Speaks to them? Teaches them? Cries with them? Rejoices with them? Allows them to figure things out? I feel like I can see God out on the big football field of Life huddling with a few of His chosen children such as Pastors, Teachers, Police Officers, Bosses, etc., and He stops, turns to me and gives me that look of sheer disappointment because He hears everything I am saying and thinking. I have learned to trust what is going on in that huddle. It’s private and it’s between God and His special children. I’ve learned to try to become someone cheering in the background and trusting who He has chosen for leadership positions. This is not to say that we shouldn’t scrutinize or question when called for, but when a heart is truly transformed, there is so much more good to be seen in these individuals, and He gives us better Perspective.

-God has a plan for us. It absolutely, positively DOES involve us making His world a better place. It is a plan sprung from and utilizing Love. I have learned that even harboring negative opinions or judgments about others, particularly when it is none of my business or does not impact me, shakes this very foundation of Love that God has graced me with. It’s downright selfish. I’ve tainted the soil I walk upon. My entire life begins to suffer from a lack of fruit. And the funny thing is, I used to turn around and blame God and others for my unquenched thirst and rotten fruit my life was producing. Little did I realize I was the one providing an unhealthy environment. I no longer try to poison the gifts given to me by God by engaging in gossip out loud, or judgment in my heart. It’s simply a bad contribution I am making to God’s plan for me. And trust me, over time, some very, very amazing things start to spring from this foundation when we allow God to transform our hearts and fill them with love.

- Satan hates progress. He hates goodness. He hates anyone fulfilling God’s plan. It has become apparent to me that he uses our weakness for judging and gossiping as his main mode of interference in God’s plans for us. It’s ripe for the taking, readily available – an unending supply of opportunities to stop us dead in our spiritual tracks. And Satan attacks in our hearts, not just our actions. Add up the minutes spent even thinking poorly about someone else, let alone gossiping. Perhaps in my life it has added up to months or even years. That is a WHOLE LOT of sick people I could have helped mend, hurting people I could have helped uplift, an untended room at the Church that could have been cleaned, a hug I could have given a friend or a child, teenager sitting quietly needing someone to reach out and acknowledge their presence. A prayer I could have lifted up to my Father. Many prayers I could have lifted up to Him. How many of God’s plans for me did I waste because I chose to give my heart, thoughts and actions freely to aid Satan instead of nurturing God’s love for me and focusing on being His conduit?

It’s God saying “you are my soldier in the battle called Life, so please stop helping the wrong side”. And each time I forced myself to look at that person in the mirror, His was the image looking back at me.

It’s the reflection of all God wants me and you to strive to be.

- Last but certainly not least, and most important in my book – is trust. Do we really trust God when we do what we do? Much of gossiping stems from feeling hurt, harmed, ignored or having something done unfairly to us. And in some cases, we might be right in our assessment. However, what happened to “turn the other cheek”? Bearing the cross He intends us to bear? Being righteous instead of being right? See, when we gossip, we flat out do not trust God to handle the situation. God will address all “actual” wrongs. Call it karma, or call it God’s consequences. He will handle it with His children as needed. Pretend that God, just like any good and responsible parent, knows something has been done to you that is wrong, and points His finger and tells you to walk away and do something helpful somewhere else. Just as a parent will handle it out of the presence of the child, God will handle it out of your presence. Please trust this. If you do, the anger or hurt you feel that drives gossip will dissipate quickly. It’s not up to you, in most cases, to dole out consequences.

Quit getting in God’s way. You cannot handle it better than He can. The terrible impact of gossiping, and more importantly, the negative feelings you allow in your heart that launch gossip and other detrimental behaviors, have been demonstrated over and over again throughout history.

I am incredibly far from perfect. What sometimes lies in my heart scares me, and I know I am not God-centered at that moment. But I look forward to God’s mirror every single day. I find myself crying in thankfulness for revealing what I am really capable of.

I will continue to pray for the clarity and strength to look into this mirror and see it for what it really is. I pray that you make it your practice to do the same, daily.