Let Your Words Be Few

Ecclesiastes 5:1–5

I once sat in a meeting with someone who had an answer ready before any question was finished. Every sentence around the table was cut short. He was not unkind; he was afraid. An unfinished sentence might expose something he did not know, so he never let one finish.

I see the same pattern at the bar and in the halfway houses. Someone comes wanting to say something, and before they are done, another person has handed them a solution and moved on, answering a question that was never asked. What they needed was not a fix. They needed to be heard. Many of our Restarters have gone years without being truly heard — by courts, by families, sometimes even by churches.

Covey observed that most people listen to reply rather than to understand. Some also talk to protect themselves. If they keep speaking, no one can say the thing that reveals their weakness. But a person who cannot be corrected cannot grow. Proverbs is blunt: “A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself” (Proverbs 18:2, KJV).

Solomon turns the same light onto prayer. We are to come to the house of God “more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools” (Ecclesiastes 5:1, KJV). God is in heaven; we are on earth. He knows the end from the beginning; we barely know what Thursday holds. Yet prayer so easily becomes a monologue — a briefing to the Almighty on cash flow and rosters, then “Amen” and out the door. When I was lost, Pastor Paul Tan listened to me far more than he lectured me. It was in that patient space that I first began to hear God, and I have never forgotten what it did for me.

The Hebrew shema means both to hear and to obey. Hearing that never becomes obedience is not really hearing. Samuel told Saul, “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22, KJV). Saul offered plenty; he simply would not listen.

The men at Changi remind me why this matters. Breakthroughs rarely come when someone has the best point ready. They come when the silence is left alone, and a brother is allowed to finish the sentence he has carried for years.

So this morning, before the first shot is pulled, the invitation is simple: open the Word, pray briefly, then wait. Let our words be few. The Spirit still brings Christ’s words to remembrance (John 14:26) — for all who will be still long enough to hear them.