“Words create worlds,” writes Mark Batterson in Please, Sorry, Thanks. If so, what kinds of worlds are we creating? Do our words give life or deal death (Proverbs 18:21)?

Batterson is pastor of National Community Church in Washington DC. More than any other city in America, our capital is a place where people eat the fruit of their words, turning the nation’s stomach sour. And what happens in DC doesn’t stay in DC. It radiates out to every nook and cranny of America. Our public discourse is poisoned.

Please, Sorry, Thanks offers a different way — a loving way — of speaking. It is a short, simple book with a timely message. If sin is “culpable disturbance of shalom,” as Cornelius Plantinga puts it, then, as Batterson writes, “please, sorry, and thanks are the way shalom is restored.”

P.S. This episode of the Influence Podcast is cross-posted from InfluenceMagazine.com by permission.