Talking Too Much
The wise listen to others (Proverbs 12:15, NLT).
Dear friends:
Sometimes God can remind us of our own faults through the faults of other people.
There is a person whom my dear wife,Vonette, and I have known for many years, and although we love her and respect her, we know that whenever we're together she monopolizes the conversation.
With this woman, everything is "me, me, me," and "my, my, my." She is obviously a very lonely and insecure person. For obvious reasons people are not drawn to be with her because her insecurity has motivated her to talk, talk, talk, and in the process people are uncomfortable. She has not learned to listen. This is not good.
But sometimes I catch myself being the same way. As a matter of fact, I get so excited about the Lord and what He's doing through the ministry of Campus Crusade and other ministries in which I'm very much interested that I am prone to talk too much. Sometimes Vonette will say to me, "You talked too much at a dinner," or "You talked too much at that meeting." (Oh, how God uses wives to speak to us!) I often find it necessary to say to her, "We both need to watch what we say because we're so full of our subjects, of Christ and what He's doing that we want everybody to hear, but that's not the best way to communicate." So, I personally am not without sin and not without fault.
Let us not be like the man referred to in Proverbs 18:2: "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions" (NIV).
Let us always be good listeners, because sincere listening is an act of love, sacrificing our own desire to talk for the benefit of others. And whenever we do talk, let us make sure our words glorify the Lord and are edifying to others, and not like the people referred to in Jude 16: "These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage" (NIV).
Yours for fulfilling the Great Commission each year until our Lord returns,
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