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Construction or Demolition

Have you ever watched a controlled demolition? I have never seen one in person, but several times the local news has shown an old building come down. Dynamite is strategically placed throughout the building, and when it is detonated, the building will implode and come crumbling down.

It is really amazing how quickly a dilapidated structure can be leveled, especially when you think about how long it took to erect it. People spent months planning and drawing, then carefully constructing until the building was finished; sometimes it takes years to move from a concept to completion. 

Years to build, and gone in minutes. 

There are two types of crews involved in this lifecycle of a building: the construction crew and the demolition crew. One specializes in building up and the other in blowing up. 

It seems that people can be divided into those same two groups. Some people love to build others up, and some, it seems, enjoy tearing others down. Our words have the power to do both. Consider what Paul told the church in Ephesians 4:29:

"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."

With your words you can carefully construct a person, building them up with praise, encouragement, and love. We should do this with our spouse, letting them know we love them; we should do this with our children, building their self-esteem; we should do this with our brothers and sisters in Christ, cheering each other on and encouraging them to stay the course.

But years of building up can be destroyed in an instant when, like TNT, our words are used to blow them up. Our speech can cause irreparable harm to the very ones we wanted to encourage. 

And some even seem as if they like being on demo duty. If you enjoy tearing others down, you need to check your heart, because no child of God should find joy in that. Satan is the foreman of this crew, but Jesus is the foreman of the construction crew.

We are all on one crew or the other. We are either team construction or team demolition. Which team are you on?

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