Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words

Dr. Gary Chapman has become known for his books on the five Love Languages–five ways that love can be expressed—whether to a husband or wife, family or friends.  Here they are: gifts, touch, acts of service, words and quality time. Each of us has a primary way we best respond to love being expressed to us, using one of these languages.

But I believe these five are also ways we can express love to our Heavenly Father.  Let’s think about that for a moment.

First, we can express love to God by gifts, for love is to be the motive for all that we give to Him. What an example we have to follow: God so loved that He gave us His Son.

When it comes to touch, while we can’t physically touch God, we can touch Him in prayer when we slow down enough to know that we have truly made contact with Him.

The third love language, acts of service, is certainly a way of expressing love for God, for when we show kindness to others, Jesus said we’re actually doing it to Him (Matthew 25).

What about the love language of words?  It’s so easy to think, “Well, God knows everything, so He already knows I love Him. I don’t need to tell Him.”  That’s like the husband who told his wife on their wedding day, “I’m telling you today that I love you, and if I ever change my mind, I’ll tell you that too!” Just like us, God must long to hear us say we love Him.

Then, there’s quality time—which goes beyond prayer time to the focus of our thoughts throughout the entire day. Thomas Merton is famous for saying that “solitude is not turning one’s back on the world; it is turning our face toward God”[1]

Have you expressed your love to God today? You have five ways to do it. John wrote, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

 

 

[1] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1962) 52-63.