How Do I Stop Saying Things I Regret?

What You’ll Learn

• Understand why harsh words come so easily, and discover where kinder words actually come from
• Find real peace when your own conscience won’t let you rest
• See how being forgiven can change the way you talk to the people closest to you

Introduction

Most of us know the feeling of saying something we wish we could take back. Maybe it was a sharp comment, a bit of gossip, or the truth told in a way meant to hurt. This page looks at why our words get away from us, and at a different way of speaking that actually leaves people better off.

Why do hurtful words come out so easily?

Most of us don’t set out to hurt anyone with what we say. But words have a way of defending us, shrinking someone else, or making sure our version of the story is the one everyone hears. Sometimes we repeat something just because it makes another person look worse. Sometimes we tell the truth in a way that is technically accurate but calculated to wound.

The Bible is honest about this. In Ephesians 4:31, the apostle Paul describes what life apart from God sounds like: “bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” As that list goes on and on, one thing becomes clear. What’s broken inside us eventually becomes audible. It comes out of our mouths. Bitterness rarely stays silent. Sooner or later, it finds a voice.

What should people walk away with after I talk to them?

Paul sets a surprisingly high bar for everyday conversation: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29). In the original language, that last phrase literally says our words should give grace to those who hear.

Paul is asking what the other person actually receives from our words. After someone has listened to me speak, what have I left them with? Something built up, or something torn down? The idea is that an ordinary conversation can be one more place where a person meets the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

That raises a real problem, though. The same mouth that is capable of lying, anger, bitterness and slander is somehow supposed to give grace. And that’s not easy.

Where does kind, gracious speech actually come from?

If kind words were just a matter of trying harder, most of us would have figured it out by now. Paul points somewhere else entirely. At the end of the chapter he writes, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

That’s where it begins. Not with your effort, but with what God has already done. God in Christ forgave you. As the pastor put it, “I’m going to say that until you get it.”

Gracious speech isn’t something we manufacture through willpower. It flows out of first being on the receiving end of mercy. People who begin to grasp how much they have been forgiven slowly start to sound like it.

Why is it so hard to forgive someone after I’ve been forgiven?

Jesus told a story about exactly this in Matthew 18:21-35. A servant owed his master ten thousand bags of gold, a debt so enormous that in today’s terms it would be tens of billions of dollars. Repaying it was completely impossible. Then, with one word, the master forgave all of it. Life-changing news. Mercy beyond anything the servant could demand, earn or even imagine.

Right after that, the same servant met someone who owed him about a hundred days’ wages, a tiny fraction of his own debt, and he acted as if mercy had suddenly run out. He had heard mercy and received mercy without letting it shape how he lived with other people.

We know something about that too. We can hear that we’re forgiven and then spend the rest of the week speaking a very different language. Accusation comes naturally. Old grudges are a lot easier to rehearse.

How can I find peace when my conscience won’t let me rest?

That’s why faith begins not with speaking, but with listening. As the pastor likes to say, God gave you two ears and only one mouth. Before we learn how to speak well, we first have to hear something.

When guilt is real and your conscience is shaky, looking inward rarely helps. The conscience is a terribly unreliable place to go searching for peace. What we need is a promise sturdy enough to come from outside of ourselves.

In church, that promise comes in plain words. We hear that our sins are forgiven. We hear God place his name on a person in baptism. And at Communion we hear Jesus’ own words, his body and blood given for you (Luke 22:19-20), for the forgiveness of sins. Peace doesn’t come from proving to yourself that you’re okay. It comes from hearing what God has said.

What does “confession” actually mean?

The word sounds heavy, but its meaning is simple. Confession is just a fancy Latin way of saying “to say the same.”

When Christians confess their faith together, often by reciting an ancient statement of belief called a creed, all they’re doing is declaring before God and the world that they believe what he has said to them. When we confess our sins, it’s because we believe what God has said about sin: that it fractures our relationships with one another and with God, and it needs to go.

Paul calls people to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully” (Ephesians 4:25), and confession is where that honesty begins. Either way, confession isn’t about coming up with the right words on our own. It’s agreeing with words God has already spoken. We need God to speak first.

What was Martin Luther’s Reformation really about?

This message was preached on Reformation Sunday, when many churches remember Martin Luther. Luther knew what it was to search his own conscience and find absolutely no peace there. He confessed his sins at extraordinary length and kept asking whether his forgiveness was sure. The deeper he looked, the less certainty he found.

The gospel, God’s news of a Savior, turned his attention elsewhere. His confidence came to rest on Christ crucified and risen, and on God’s promise of eternal life to everyone who believes in him (John 3:16). That’s why he could stand before the emperor and say, “I cannot and I will not recant,” because his conscience was held captive to the Word of God.

Luther later joked that while he slept or drank beer with his friends, God’s Word did all the work. “I did nothing. The Word did everything.”

How can so many different people share one faith?

Look around any church and no two voices sound quite alike. Different ages, backgrounds, personalities, jobs, even languages. Think of a choir. A bass still sounds like a bass. A soprano is a soprano, an alto is an alto. (The pastor admitted he left out tenors only because he is one.) Every voice is distinct, yet all of them sing the same song. Paul describes it as “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).

Prophets spoke this message, apostles proclaimed it, and today parents, teachers and friends pass it on. And the message is this: Christ crucified and risen for the forgiveness of sins, for sinners. Not good people looking to get better, or bad people trying to become good, but dead people raised to life through faith in Jesus. That is a word worth speaking.

Key Scripture

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Ephesians 4:29 (NIV)

Paul is saying that our everyday words are never neutral: they either build people up or tear them down. Christians are invited to speak in a way that leaves others better off, not by trying harder, but because God has first spoken forgiveness over them.