Hello, and thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is the Bible teaching

ministry of Rick Warren, and today we are continuing in a series called The Miracle of Mercy.

Rick will show us how God's mercy can lift your guilt, heal your wounds, and transform the way

you live. And now let's jump right in

with Rick with part two of a message called being an agent of mercy in the world. Here's the third

principle. Choose my words carefully. If you're going to be an agent of mercy in the world this week, you're God's secret agent of mercy.

And you're going out and you're showing mercy in the workplace and in the neighborhood and in the grocery store and at the post office.

You have to choose your words carefully.

Mercy puts a monitor on my mouth.

If I'm going to be an agent of mercy, there are some things

I just can't say. Does that make sense? I can't be mean to people. I can't be rude to people.

I can't be sarcastic to people and I can't put them down. I have to choose my words carefully. Colossians 4,6.

When you talk, you should always be kind and pleasant, so you will be able to answer everyone

in the way you should. Circle the word pleasant and kind. You are never persuasive when you're abrasive.

If you can't get what you want in a grocery store or in a department store or at a restaurant

and you're being offensive and you're being rude to the clerk or the waitress, you are

never persuasive when you're abrasive. He says, when you talk, you should

always be kind, always be pleasant, so you'll be able to answer everyone in the way you should.

That's what agents of mercy do. Let me show you another verse up here on the screen.

Ephesians 429. Do not say harmful things, which tear people down, but say what people need.

Words that will help others become stronger.

In other words, words that build them up, not tear them down.

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