Love: The Greatest of AllNäide

Without Love, We Are Annoying

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

-1 Corinthians 13:1 NLT

“Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?” If you thought of the movie Dumb and Dumber (New Line Cinema, 1994) you know the sound the two guys make. (If you don’t know, look it up.) The sound was so annoying that the person in the middle started to yell for them to stop. When we say things without love, we sound like those two guys making the screeching sound.

Can you imagine knowing all the languages on Earth? According to Google, there are 6,500 different languages spoken on Earth today. That is a lot. I don’t think anyone is capable of knowing them all. The person who speaks the most languages can “only” speak 59. That’s 58 more than I can speak. However, if this man speaks any language without love, the Bible says he is a noisy gong.

Everything we say and do needs to have the element of love as the driving force. When the driving force is anything else, the person we are talking to will miss the real intent of what we are trying to communicate. Even though we are technically communicating, the message is altered without love. This is something that we can all work to improve.

Without Love, The Results Are Not The Same

Someone I know made chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. Naturally, I thought they would taste like sugar cookies, but nope. They didn’t taste like sugar cookies at all. The taste was thrown off without the key ingredient, and the result wasn’t good. When we communicate without love, we may think it’s the same “flavor,” but it’s totally different.

Communicate With Love

We can all get better at communication. Sometimes, we can say insensitive things. We need to take more time to examine what we are saying before we say it. You can apologize after, but it is not the same as never having said the thing at all.

Don’t be the actors in Dumb and Dumber! Don’t be annoying! Be the person full of love that people want to listen to.

Confession Today

“Today, I will watch my words. I do not want to be an annoying person who doesn’t have love mixed in my words. Without love, what I am saying is not what is being received, so I will examine my words before I speak! I will speak with love.”