Dangers of Hasty Words

Part of being true to your words and allowing them to have good integrity is not being hasty and rash in your decision-making. If you are known to being true to your word, some people might see that as an opportunity to abuse your faithfulness and integrity to your word by pressuring you into making a decision right on the spot without having the time to consider and ponder your words and steps. If this happens to you, don’t make that decision and give your word without first considering it.

“It is a snare for a man to devote rashly something as holy, and afterward to reconsider his vows.” – Proverbs 20:25. Proverbs calls hasty decisions a trap and a snare and these hasty choices are rightly so. A hasty decision is like a contractor convincing you to use them to construct a building, making it sound sweet and delightful. Yet, when they built a building, it was so poorly built because of how quickly and cheaply they built it. Therefore, the integrity of the building is cheap and poor. In the same way, hearing about an offer or something that sounds wonderful can trap you into giving your word to something that could bring a great cost to you if you don’t first consider and discern it. Joshua faced this exact issue with being too hasty and people taking advantage of it. (Joshua 9) The Gibeonites deceived Joshua into making a treaty with them by changing their appearance so they didn’t appear as Gibeonites. Joshua, without praying to God, decided to make that covenant with them and made that treaty. Later, Joshua found out they were the Gibeonites who were living in their land. At the end of the day for Joshua, he remained true to his word even though it cost him that land. Many people are like Gibeonites changing the appearance of the situation to suit their agenda. They try to deceive people into coming into agreement with them without discerning what the motive is and what is really happening behind the scenes. That is why in all situations, discern and consider the motives of why people want to make a deal or an agreement. It would be better to lose out on something by taking time to consider and ponder than to be hasty and come into something that will cost you much greater. So overall, be true to your word and commitments, but be forewarned that people will try to abuse that by pressuring you into making hasty choices without first discerning what is going on. Take time to pray so that you may have the discernment to identify what is happening behind the scenes.