Tag: love

Categories
Relationships

I Recommend that You Find Out Your Spouse’s Love Language

Do you know your love language? Do you know your spouse’s? How about your children’s?

Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, has been around for more than 20 years. And it is still a powerful resource to help us love those around us – our spouse, our children, our family members, even our friends and co-workers.

Even if you do not read the rest of the post after this sentence, be sure that you go to this Five Love Languages Website Link to take the free on-line test to discover your primary love language. And then get your spouse and children to take it. And then share with each other the languages that mean the most to each of you.
     (The free assessment consists of 30 questions and only takes 10-15 minutes to complete)
a graphic showing the five love languages
Dr. Gary Chapman has hit on a fundamental principle for us all in his discussion on love languages, as he indicates that:

  • Love is an emotional need. If we know we are loved, the whole world is bright, but if we don’t have love being poured into us, we are likely to feel lonely and unappreciated.

  • Inside each of us is an emotional “love tank” that needs to be filled with the “right fuel” to help us feel loved.

  • Each of us has a primary love language, and we expresses love in the way that comes naturally to us. And since it is rare for a couple to speak the same love language, each person must learn to show love in the way that their spouse needs to receive it.

  • Love is a choice – something we do for the other person. We can and must learn to speak our partner’s primary love language, or we may wind up with our partner feeling unloved despite our sincere effort to love them.

  • Remember that when speaking your partner’s love language “doesn’t come naturally” to you, and yet you make the effort to do so anyway, you are showing your partner just how important they are to you.

  • The issue is not being comfortable, the issue is choosing to love.

  • It takes practice, practice, practice, but the results will be worth it!

    • The Love Chapter found in the Bible at 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 provides us with a look at the selfless nature of God’s love that we should take in and then pour out to our spouse and to others. It tells us that:

    Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

    Are you willing to learn the love language of your spouse and your children and then selflessly provide love to them in a way that might not always come naturally to you?

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    Categories
    God

    The Love of God. God is Love.

    Pastor D. L. Moody wanted everyone to hear the truth: God is Love.
    portrait of D. L. MoodyBut he also knew that even though people may come to a worship service, not everyone is listening! Therefore, he shares:
    “We built a church in Chicago a few years ago, and we were so anxious to make people believe that God is love, that we thought if we could not preach it into their hearts, we would burn it in! And so right over the pulpit we had the words put in gas jets, ” God is love,” and every night we had it there.”

    R. A. Torrey worked with Moody in that church and became the pastor a few years before Moody’s death. Regarding the message of “God is Love,” he indicates:

    Mr. Moody… was so anxious that everybody should always hear this one truth, and was so afraid that some preacher might come and forget to tell it, that he had it put on the gas jets right above the pulpit, to that the first thing you would see when you went in there on an evening was that text shining out in letters of fire.

    One stormy night, before the time of the meeting, the door stood ajar. A man partly intoxicated saw it open, and thought he might go in and get warm. He did not know what sort of a place it was, but when he pushed the door open he saw the text blazing out, “God is love.” He pulled the door to, and walked away muttering to himself.

    He said to himself, “God is love? No. God is not love. God does not love me. He does not love me, for I am a poor, miserable sinner. If God was love, he would love me. God is not love.”

    But it kept on burning down into his soul, “God is love! God is love! God is love” After a while be retraced his steps, and took a seat in a corner. When Mr. Moody walked down after the meeting, he found the man weeping like a child. “What is the trouble?” he asked. “What was it in the sermon that touched you?”
    “I didn’t hear a word of your sermon.”
    “Well, what is the trouble?”
    “That text up there.”

    Moody himself indicates:
    “I found him there weeping like a child; but as I unfolded the Scripture, and told him how God had loved him from his earliest childhood all along, the light of the gospel broke into his mind, and he went away rejoicing!”

    Jesus is the clear evidence to us that God is Love. Jesus came to rescue us from our sin. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. The religious leaders were appalled at such behavior. To their complaints about who He associated with, Jesus explained:
    “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

    Brennan Manning indicates:

    This story provides us with a revelation as bright as the evening star: Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams. He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, and even used car salesmen. Jesus not only talks with these people but dines with them—fully aware that His table fellowship with sinners will raise the eyebrows of religious bureaucrats who hold up the robes and insignia of their authority to justify their condemnation of the truth and their rejection of the gospel of grace. Are we really that different?

    I hope I not only remember that God is Love toward me, a sinner, but also that I am to now share that love with others who are struggling with their own sin.

    Categories
    Christian Living

    Love God With All You Are – Heart, Mind, Soul, Strength

    Jesus said that we are to love God with all that we are – with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
    Sign showing How to love God - with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength
    What does that mean exactly?

    Love Him with your Emotional Life (heart). We will not let emotions rule us. For example, we will not let anger turn into revenge or cruelty; instead we will allow our emotions (such as compassion) to lead us to do His good will.

    Love Him with your Intellectual Life (mind). We will not fill our minds with garbage, as God wants us to think on the things that are pleasing to Him. But so often we fill our minds with trash almost every day – music, movies, tv, internet – I’ve heard it said this way: You can’t “pick up a piece of poop from the clean end” – and yet it seems we keep trying to do that with some of the stuff we are putting into our minds. (Just be glad today’s picture wasn’t tied to this paragraph!)

    Love Him With your Spiritual Life (soul). We will not hold onto any idols. Many want to say, “God I’ll give you everything except for _______.” (Simply fill in the blank with: my money, my relationship with this person or people, my desire for popularity, my dreams, my occupation.) Give God anything and everything that tries to compete with your attention toward Him.

    Love Him with your Physical Life (strength). We will not let our physical desires rule us either – not in lust, not in what we put into our bodies. Instead we will use our physical bodies in a way that promotes purity and self-control and brings glory to God.

    Make the commitment to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength today.

    Categories
    Christian Living

    The Trouble with Lip-Service Christianity

    Okay. We’ve made it all the way to post #2 for 2017. For those skeptics out there as to whether I can top last year – I only have to post 6 more times to surpass my dismal 2016 showing… so I am well on my way! Regarding as to what days to check for new posts, my plan is to send one out three times a week – on Mon, Wed, & Fri mornings.

    I have a few quotes, passages, and thoughts that I had planned to share in 2016 which I never did, so before I move into sharing some newer thoughts for 2017, I am going to strap into my time machine and go back 11 months to pick up some ideas that I jotted down last year when I was a much younger man. Let’s start with the idea of Lip-Service Christianity:

    God doesn’t want a relationship with you where you only talk to Him once a week on Sunday morning for an hour, or where you ask Him for things only when you are in big trouble, or where you pay lip-service to being a Christian but have no actions that back up your words.

    Can you imagine being in a marriage with someone who tells you: “I really care about you, but due to the fact that I am really busy, we will only be able to spend time together one hour a week – let’s say Monday night for dinner – I’ll carve that hour out and we’ll eat together at a restaurant each week – you will have my undivided attention for that entire hour – I’ll even let you choose the restaurant. During the rest of the week, if I need you then I’ll call you. And regarding the weekends, you know that it is important for me to have time for myself for recreation to get recharged for the upcoming week. But it will make that one hour a week on Monday nights really good – something we both really look forward to.”

    How ridiculous. Of course we’d never agree to such a relationship. So why would we think that God wants a relationship with us like that?

    Let’s be honest – He doesn’t.
    photo of person reading the Bible symbolizing the question - does reading the Bible have any value? Is it important?He wants us to spend time with Him every day where He is speaking to us through our reading of His Word. And then He wants us to spent time with Him every moment of the day through continual prayer. And if we do so, then it will change our behavior.

    Move out of Lip-Service Christianity into a relationship with Jesus that changes your life.

    And that will only happen as you make the intentional effort to start reading the Bible. If you aren’t sure where to start, I’d recommend Mark, then John, then Acts. As you read, jot down some ideas to pray about from what you are reading, and when you finish reading, stop and pray for each.

    Categories
    Christian Living

    Dutiful and Obedient Love

    A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none;
    a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.

    Although these statements appear contradictory, yet, when they are found to agree together, they will be highly serviceable to my purpose. They are both the statements of Paul himself, who says: “Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all,” and: “Owe no man anything, but to love one another.”

    Now love is by its own nature dutiful and obedient to the beloved object. Thus even Christ, though Lord of all things, was yet made of a woman; made under the law; at once both free and a servant; at once both in the form of God and in the form of a servant.

    –Martin Luther

    Though you are a person who is free, have you placed yourself into a love relationship with God and others, choosing voluntary service to them?

    You have told your spouse that you love her. Would she say that you serve her well?
    You hug your children and tell them that you love them. Would they say that you serve them well?
    You tell God that you love Him. Would He say that you serve Him well?

    God told you that He loved you. Then He died on the cross for you. Jesus served you well with dutiful and obedient love! It is now my calling and your calling to go do the same for Him and for others.