Speaking True Love

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Rev. Timothy Phillips

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all the blessings you pour out on us daily. We thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you for your Word. We thank you for the forgiveness of sins and for sending your Son, Jesus, to die for those sins. And we pray that you will bless us now as we draw near to you and meditate on your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen.

As I mentioned earlier, our theme for this day is to speak true love. Last week, it was speaking the truth in love. In other words, going to your neighbor and speaking to them about the issue that is between you.

Today, we're talking about authentically communicating love in a way in which it can be received. Now love is at the very essence of who we are and that is for good reason. If we look at the scriptures, Genesis 1:26, it says, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" In this one verse, we find that God made us different from every form in creation. Every other part of creation is not made in God's image. Only mankind, only you and I, are made in the image of God. And you might be saying, "What does that mean?" Good question. What is the image of God? And as you look around, what do you see? We're all different. How can we all be made in God's image if we appear differently? The answer is that image doesn't simply refer to outward appearance but to something within us. And I would say it as simple as this: God created us and us alone to have a relationship with Him, to be able to receive His love and to respond with love towards Him and to have love for each other. Only mankind can do that. Only you and I can do that. The rest of creation is simply the beautiful work of His hands, but we alone are made in His image. This shows that God has a special and tender love for each of us. He made us in His image.

Love is something we all find very important in our lives. We seek it in our relationships. We see problems in our culture related to the lack of love, whether it's prejudice or war, the failure of love between nations, the failure of love resulting in divorce, the failure of love resulting in violent acts and criminal acts in our society. So we can see how important it is to understand love. God thought it was so important that He made us with the ability to love Him and to receive His love. But it doesn't stop there. Love flows out from Mount Sinai as Moses climbed that awesome mountain where the presence of God made it look like the mountain was on fire at the top, and all the Israelites were afraid. So Moses went in their place up to the top of the mountain, and he spoke face to face with God and God gave him the Ten Commandments. The first three deal with us in our relationship with God and the rest of them deal with our relationships with each other. That should tell us something, shouldn't it? God knows we need guidance in our relationship with Him and guidance in our relationship with each other.

In Lutheran's Small Catechism, many of you read that the summary of the first three commandments is to love God. And the summary of the rest of the commandments is to love our neighbors. So love is even built into these commands. God shows us the way. You'll honor your parents. You'll honor life. You'll protect other people's reputations and things like that. All of that is the doing of love, the actions surrounding the idea of love.

In 1 John 4:8, we find it says, "God is love." So not only does He call us to love, invite us to love, create us to give and receive love, but He Himself is love. As we think about all these things, we see the common thread from the beginning of creation to this day. God is love. It is what motivates Him. It's His primary will. It's His desire for you and me. It's His desire for us to have that with each other. It's all focused on love. Why did He send the Son? God so loved the world, right? It's all about love. Jesus' love for us, God's love for us, and our love for God and for each other.

Sometimes it's hard for us to get a handle on what this is all about and to see what's really going on, but I've read somewhere and maybe you've heard this, too, that young girls and young children who grow up without a loving father, maybe in a single parent home, seek that love that wasn't given. Young girls who don't have a father there to show them love on a regular basis look for that love in other men and sometimes get into difficulties because of that. God designed us to give and receive love. And when something's not there, we look for it in many places.

There's a great book out, though, and I want to show you just quickly what it's all about. It's called The Five Love Languages. It's by Gary Chapman. Maybe you're familiar with this book. It's very easy to understand. It's an easy read, which is good for me. It's not hard to comprehend the principals he's talking about. It talks about five ways that people give and receive love, five different ways. And as I speak about them, you'll recognize yours, your primary way of giving and receiving love. He calls them languages, The Five Love Languages.

The first one is Words of Encouragement. That means building people up, saying nice things. "Oh, you look nice today." "Oh, you just came from the beauty parlor. Your hair looks great." Guys, that's a good thing to say. Don't even think, just say it, okay? Words of encouragement. They are so precious and so important.

Another love language is Quality Time. Spending time with that person whom you love. That means so much to people.

Receiving or Giving Gifts. That's the third love language. Some people get a real charge out of giving gifts, looking for gifts, buying gifts, or even just receiving gifts.

The fourth love language is Acts of Service, things you do that demonstrate your commitment and your love for that person.

The fifth love language is Physical Touch. Most guys think that's theirs. "Physical touch, that's my love language." Most women don't agree.

Love languages. It's an interesting concept, isn't it? Five different ways that people give and receive. You may have one or two or three love languages. I'll show you how this works. My love language is words of encouragement. Now I enjoy all the others, too, because it's all love and that's good. But words of encouragement mean a lot to me. Last week, I got an e-mail from someone saying they liked my sermon. And I thought, "Yes, I can do it. This is great." You see what I mean? Words of encouragement that build people up. That really makes a difference in a person's day. It's real easy to do. And if you know that about somebody, that those kinds of things really build them up, then you can choose to love them by doing the things that make them excited and happy.

The next one, quality time, I had an illustration of this yesterday. I was at my in-laws and my little nephew came out to see us. There's a tire swing, and he and I always go out to the tire swing and I push him and we pretend it's an Olympic event and we set the record. When I push him so high, he can touch his foot on the branch on the tree. So we went out and set the record yesterday but, as we were going out, he said, "Let's have some uncle son time." He's a little confused. I didn't say anything, and he just looked at me and said, "Am I your nephew?" And I said, "Yes." "Oh, let's have some uncle-nephew time." Can you guess what his love language is? It's quality time. No matter when I see him, he always wants to go out on that tire swing and he wants me to go with him. He doesn't want to do it by himself. He wants me to go with him. Now his family is very busy. His father works hard, works long days. Can you see what his little heart desires? He just desires more time with dad. Most of us felt that way growing up.

My youngest daughter loves to give and receive gifts. She gets so excited about this, and maybe you know somebody like this that they get so excited about gifts, they buy them six months before your birthday or buy the whole year's gifts early. I knew a girl in New Jersey who had a closet, her gift closet, and she had that whole thing packed full of wrapped gifts that were to be given out at different times of the year because she was so into this. It was the way she showed love.

The fourth one, acts of service, this is how it works. My love language is words of encouragement. My wife's isn't words of encouragement. So when I say encouraging words to her, she's like, "No big deal." Her love language is acts of service, and you might recognize the way she does this. She's the kind of person that, when she gets up in the morning, she works from the minute she gets up to the minute she goes to bed, all day long and that's the way she shows her love, by doing things, taking care of things. So when I come home from work and I'm tired and a little bit worn out and I just want to relax, I go kick my feet up on the couch and get the remote and start channel surfing. She's like, "I feel so unloved." What's she waiting for me to do? She's waiting for me to do her love language, acts of service. She's waiting for me to do anything except sit on the couch and watch T.V. I think I hear some familiar laughing there. In fact, something as simple as mowing the grass, taking out the trash, or cleaning up in the kitchen or anything gets her all charged up. It makes her feel loved. It makes her feel secure in our relationship, and isn't that what God wants us to do with the commandments? When we show love, it makes the other person feel secure and comfortable and it blesses our relationship.

These are the different ways that this author, Gary Chapman, has discovered that people give and receive love. Words of Encouragement, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, Physical Touch. All of them are good, and you might have more than one or two. But as you think them over, try to figure out which one's yours. And if you'd like, don't all respond at once, maybe we could have a class on this sometime and just talk about that and explore that so we will know how to have a good relationship with someone. It's very simple stuff, but it's wonderful. I can always tell when things are a little bit rocky with my wife and me, a little bit of friction, when I start thinking, "Oh, I've been coming home and sitting on the couch. Or I haven't been pitching in with things she wants me to do." All I have to do is start doing a few of those things, and her whole attitude changes and our relationship gets better. And she knows what I need, too. She knows I need those gentle words of encouragement to help me work hard and do my best and just to feel secure.

God's plan is for us to communicate love, true love, to each other in ways that can be received. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you have clearly communicated your love to us, in creation, in the Commandments, in sending your Son to die for our sins to restore that love relationship with us, in giving us heaven as an eternal paradise waiting for us, a place of perfect love where there's no sadness, no bad days, no friction, no struggles, just joy and peace forever. What a beautiful thought. Bless us now as we think about these different ways of giving and receiving love, that we might grow in our love for each other and that we might do better at making each other feel secure in our relationship with each other so we can work hard together in serving you and that the devil won't find a foothold in our relationship. Bless us also in our loving response to you, that as we reflect on how you have demonstrated your love and what Jesus has done for us, we'll have a burning desire to share Jesus with other people and to serve you in whatever way you call us. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church