Have you ever said something “in the moment” and then wished you had thought a little harder before you said it? Athletes are praised for talking trash before a competition, but most of the time it’s best if they just kept quiet.
Watch what happens when football (soccer) players make public promises they may not be able to keep:
Invite students to watch the following video [4:54]:
6 players who broke promises they’d made
It’s American football season and everybody loves to talk a big game. What’s the most outrageous promise you’ve heard a player make? (Let students share appropriate responses.)
- Are any of you impulsive with what you say? Why is it so hard sometimes to think before we speak? (Sometimes we want to seem important or clever in front of a group. Other times we just don’t have a filter for what we’re spontaneously thinking. And still other times we might get angry or frustrated and this makes us “snap.”)
- Keeping a promise is much, much harder than making one. Has anyone been promised something and then realized it was not going to happen? How did that make you feel? (Answers will vary. It is common to feel jaded, dismissed, disappointed, and even cynical when others habitually break their promises to us.)
- The digital world has made impulse control even harder. Have you ever sent a text that you couldn’t retrieve later? Why are digital and voice messages even harder to deal with? (When we use a digital device to send a message, there is a record of what we said. When someone can revisit the offense, it becomes even harder to make amends.)
It’s easy to say something stupid in the moment, but it can hurt those around us. Instead, God wants us to be men and women of our word. Let’s read about someone who paid a heavy price for making a rash vow.
