When Words Matter Most: Speaking Truth with Grace to Those You Love
By Cheryl Marshall and Caroline Newheiser (Crossway)
Words matter, whether they’re spoken to us, we utter them to others, or we whisper them to ourselves. In When Words Matter Most: Speaking Truth with Grace to Those You Love, long-time friends and experienced counselors Cheryl Marshall and Caroline Newheiser move beyond everyday dialogue to intentional, Scripture-based conversation that takes words to a higher plane.
Marshall, who directs women’s counseling at Founders Baptist Church in Spring, and Newheiser, assistant coordinator of women’s counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., use the book’s first six chapters to offer instruction on the call to speak, those we love, grace and truth. Although a bit tedious at times, without Part One’s context, definitions, underlying concepts and reflection questions, Part Two would be ineffectual.
The practicality of “speaking truth with grace to those you love” comes in the final five chapters. Using personal examples, step-by-step coaching and Scripture, the authors show the reader ways to extend truth and grace to the worried, weary, wayward and weeping. The final chapter instills the confidence to speak as the Holy Spirit leads. Appendices provide recommended resources as well as documentation, notes and general and Scripture indexes.
When Words Matter Most guides women—and men—to assess opportunities, prepare personally and accept the challenge of speaking scriptural truth with grace to those we love without editorializing or trivializing the power of God’s holy word. Every page of this practical volume seems to whisper Psalm 119:105—“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Amen.
Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president
Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas
Waco
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