Sinclair Ferguson

He just can't keep it to himself.

Some time ago I was having dinner with some Christian friends, and at one point they were interested in something that had happened in my life when I was a teenager, and I said to them, I'll tell you what it is as long as you promise never to tell anyone.

Promise me?

You know, none of them promised.

They were all mature Christians.

Most of them were pastors.

And come to think about it, I think most of them had read some of John Newton's letters.

And I wonder if they were thinking, you know, I don't think I can trust myself to keep Sinclair's secret.

I think I'd be tempted to share it.

Now, you see, this was the problem with Mr. Humanus.

He trusted himself too much, but he had lost control of his tongue.

And that means he had actually lost control of his heart, because spiritually, the tongue is directly connected to the heart.

And the result of it was that eventually his fellow Christians realized they couldn't share their secrets with him.

For all his friendliness, they could never unburden themselves to him.

And so they never told him about their struggles, their problems, their failures, or their deepest needs.

And he was left wondering, why do they share these things with those other people and never with me?

Keeping secrets is a small thing.

Failing to keep them is a big thing.

Because faithfulness isn't really faithfulness unless it's faithfulness in everything.

Now, being faithful in the big things doesn't minimize the importance of being faithful in the small things.