“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
Ephesians 4:29 (ESV)Ephesians 4:29 uses the word corrupting; the Greek word there means rotten. Do not let rotten talk come out of your mouth. Only what builds up, what fits the occasion, what gives grace to the person hearing it.
That last phrase is the one that really lands for dads. As fits the occasion. Our kid gets a bad SAT score and the flesh says pull up the data, build the plan, solve the problem. But that is not what the moment is calling for. The moment calls for a father who sees a person before he sees a problem.
Marcus, 45. Father of two teenage boys, 17 and 14. His oldest, Jaylen, just got his SAT scores back; not good. Marcus gets the notification before Jaylen gets home from school. The laptop is already open when his son walks through the door.
🥀 The Flesh
“Sit down, we need to talk about this.” Forty-five minutes of scores, benchmarks, school rankings, revised application timelines. Marcus is not unkind; he loves his kid. But he talks at Jaylen the entire time like he is a problem to be solved. Jaylen gives two-word answers and goes straight to his room. His wife tells Marcus later: “He cried in his room for an hour.”
The fruit on Marcus’s tree? Disconnection, performance pressure, a son who stops sharing.
🌿 The Spirit
Laptop closed when he hears the door. “Hey. I saw the score. That had to be rough. Come sit down.” No data, no benchmarks; just one question. “How are you feeling about it?” Jaylen talks for twenty minutes. At the end Marcus puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m proud of the way you showed up and took that test. We will figure out the path. But first, are you okay?”
The fruit on Marcus’s tree? Safety, affirmation, a son who stays close.
The flesh leads with correction because it loves outcomes. The Spirit leads with the person, because it loves them; and it trusts that love is what produces the outcome anyway.
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