[Devoted1]

"Words Of Love, Not Meaningless Noise"
By: Zach Wood
Proverbs 15:4 (NLT)
Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.


The other night, my wife and I read a devotional together with this Scripture as the main passage. We read about how we are to speak words of love and praise in our home. Even though we both knew that should be happening often, we realized how often we do not use words of love as we should. It was a great reminder of how we need to treat each other, even in the stressful times. Every married couple deals with saying things they do not mean and later regret what they have said.

How about your friendships? How about your relationship with co-workers? How about your family members? Are you using gentle and loving words toward them as you should? I find myself struggling constantly with using words of love. For some reason, the human part of me wants to take over so much of the time in conversations when I know I should be speaking in love. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:1, "If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth, but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal.(NLT)" How many of us want to be making meaningless noise around others? I think we all do. In fact, I know we all do. We get bad attitudes and become annoying noises to those around us. No one likes to be around someone who is annoying and negative. If we use words, but have not love, then we are just wasting our breath in conversation.

As the proverb says, we should be bringing life and health to others with our words of love. When we use hurtful words, we are damaging our witness toward others. We crush what the Spirit wants to do through us.

Have you ever been around people who always seem to be using loving words and being gentle toward others? It's like you think to yourself when you see them, "Hey, love is spoken here". That is a great feeling to have when you are around others! We should have the same effect when people talk to us. I do not know about you, but I do not want to be making meaningless noise.

God desires for us all to have words of love, not meaningless noise.

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