An author by the name of Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book called the five love languages. After 30 years of counseling married couples, he came to the conclusion that each person has their own love language. The five love languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, receiving gifts, and physical touch.
Let me illustrate this for you, when a husband loves his wife with her primary love language there is nothing better in the world for that woman and vice versa, when a wife loves her husband. Now each person has a love tank, some call it a love bank or even a fuel tank. This is a reservoir that holds all the love one is showed, but the problem is, everybody’s tank leaks, so it needs to constantly be refilled. The only way to fill one’s love tank is to speak their primary love language. Now, this can apply for all relationships but works exceptionally well with girlfriends, fiancés, or wives.
Say your significant other loves it when you spend quality time with her, I am not talking about watching TV and sitting next to her while the TV is entertaining you, I can attest to this one because I made that mistake plenty of times, but when you give her your undivided attention. It is just you and her. This act of you spending quality time is what fills her love tank over flowing. But say, you stop doing this; because you decided to pick up a second job. Now you are spending less time with her and more time making money. Let me be the first to tell you, the biggest diamond in the world, will not do for her, what you spending quality time could do.
This is where a lot of people go wrong, when loving people, they love them with the wrong love language, which makes the woman feel unloved. Fellows, you can buy the nicest dozen of roses, and if your spouse loves when you affirm her, for looking good, keeping the house clean, telling her she is important. And you try to bring roses, instead of the right words; you will strike out every time.
Now if God has commanded us to love him a specific way, and we decide to love God our own way, we are not only being disobedient but ungrateful for all He has done for us. I am not saying that God has a love tank, because Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and Paul also says that God loved us when we were sinners. I do not believe that God has a love tank, but what I do believe is, if we do not love God as we are commanded. We are not doing the good we know to do and James says that is sin.
I do not care if you have the slickest pick up line, the world ever heard, if you speak English and the woman you are trying to get with, is Korean and does not understand English, what good is it. In order to be the most effective with a slick pick up line, you must speak the same language as the woman for it to work its magic. This same principle applies with God. He has made it pretty clear in the way we are to love him.
"How To Speaking God’s Love Language”
Mark 12: 28-31
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: ’Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these."
Thesis: “Learning how to give God all your heart, soul, mind and strength, not only speaks God’s love language, of lifestyle worship, but also makes it so much easier to love people.”
Let me begin by giving you some background info. This statement that Jesus made here has its roots in the OT. This exact verse, except for “with all your mind” is found in the book of Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Notice Jesus tells his audience to hear just as Moses did in Deu. Back in the time of Moses, when the Hebrew people heard the word, hear, it did not just mean to listen, but to listen and obey what you are hearing. They were doers of the word, not just hearers. When we hear, we are to be like the Hebrew people, who are ready to respond before they are even told what to do. This sermon calls for immediate application. As soon as you walk out of this room, you have the choice to love God on a more intimate level then you ever did and also, you have the opportunity to show the love of God to your neighbors (roommates and staff).
The Torah, the first five books of the Bible contains about 613 laws (365 prohibitions and 248 commands). In Jesus’ day, Jewish teachers were wrestling with the idea of how all these commandments relate to each other, and whether these 613 laws can be summed up with one or more basic commandments and that is exactly what Christ ventured to do in this passage. He summed up 613 laws into two commands. So in essence, when you are obeying these two commands you are fulfilling all 613 laws.
Like I said before, out of the five love languages humans communicate in, each person has one primary love language and the rest are secondary. When your significant other shows that she loves you with your primary love language, you feel the most significant and important you can feel as a human. The best thing in the world for me is when my fiancé serves me by helping me get things done for school and for life. A lot of the time, I put too much on my plate and she is always there to make sure nothing falls off. I would not be able to do the things I do with out her help. Just as humans have a primary love language, so does God. His love language comes from the totality of a human. Everything that we are made of is used to bring love to God.
God’s greatest Love language is lifestyle worship. Our hearts, minds, souls, and our strength all have to be firing on eight cylinders to obey this command and to love God as he challenges us to do.
Are you loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Or do you love God with some of your heart, maybe all of your soul, but none of your mind, and a little strength? Are you loving people as yourself? Or, are you loving people, how you used to treat a person that betrayed you or stole from you?
Not giving God our all is unacceptable and wrong. How would you feel if God held back his love for you? Or how would you feel if God loved your neighbor (roommate) more than He loves you? I know I would feel cheated and hurt, but thank God He does not work like that and neither should we.
1) To speak God’s Love Language is to give Him your whole being!
You are the reason why God loves, God loves to love people, and He created us to Love Him. To love God is the highest form of worship. You can’t sing loud enough to out do a life that has given their all to God.
Let me begin by saying that I am not trying to separate the heart, soul, mind, and strength into different components. These four parts make up every part of our being and God wants and deserves our worship from every part.
What I am going to do is show you, what each part looks like and how you can love God in His primary love language. If you were to do this to the best of your ability, it will spill over in the rest of your life so that God’s favor and blessing has no choice but to follow you all the days of your life, as the psalmist says.
The act of loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, strength are combined together to fulfill the Greatest Commandment in life. If you think of anything in the world and you filter it through this commandment, you will know if, you are loving God or not.
For instance, smoking. Some people say, you can smoke and serve God at the same time. Let’s put smoking through the Greatest Commandment filter. Jesus says, Love God with all your strength. Tell me how you can love God with all your strength when you cannot breathe. Tobacco kills more people then any thing in the world, so smoking did not make it through the filter.
We live and function, through our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Everything that we do impacts our heart, soul, mind, and strength, so in turn everything affects your worship to God. I mean everything.
Think about all the relationships you had and have in life. Each family member and close friend, you can say owns a piece of your heart. Now if you are maintaining healthy relationships, then your heart is strong, but if you are in unhealthy relationships, then your heart has the potential of being broken. This will effect the way you are going to love God. This will cause you to love God half hearted, when he commands all of our hearts.
God’s desire is for us to worship Him with our entire personal being. If God truly has our person, our heart, soul, mind, and strength, then He has all that we possess. God is looking to be a Father figure to us, somebody who never leaves, when the times get rough, but is always there in those rough times. Just as God loves us with His whole being, never holding anything back, we are to do the same in return.
If I am not mistaken, God never said, love me with “some” of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” What he did say is all, actually the word in the Greek means, whole. It should read your “whole” heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Remember, I said the greatest commandment is also found in Deu 6:5. The love that this verse commands of us is stubborn, unwavering commitment.
Most people think love is only about, how one feels. We all know that our feelings are like a roller coaster ride. We are up one minute and down the next. You cannot live life solely by feelings, because it was our feelings that got us in trouble half the time and if you do not learn to control your feelings, they will end up controlling you.
Remember, when Jesus said to Peter, I am going to build my church on you, then the next second he said to Peter, get behind me Satan. I am sure that Peter was not feeling the agape, unconditional love, we all hear about when Jesus called him Satan, but it was Peter’s commitment to loving God that kept his sanity and was the basis for his future ministry that began what we call the church today.
Love is a commitment, not a feeling. How do you think you can love your enemies? The last time I checked I did not feel love for somebody whose job is to lead people straight to hell, like the Mormons and Jehovah witnesses, but what I can do is show them love. And this is not done by slamming the door in their faces when they come to your house, but by inviting them in and showing them the love of Christ. You can show love by what you do, not necessarily how you feel. How do you think you love your wife sometimes and vice versa?
(A) We are to connect with God by being heart to heart with Him!
God wants our hearts to be in unison with His heart. I once heard the saying, “the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.” Our hearts are the part of our being that we use when we worship God, but also the heart can worship other things such as the things of this world.
I want to illustrate this with the story of the rich young ruler.
Mark 10: 17-22 “A man ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" . . . 19 You know the commandments: ’Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’" 20 "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy." 21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." 22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
Money was a part of this man’s heart. Money owned him, not he owned his money. He could not make a heart connection to God because he had something in his life that was first priority.
Nothing in life should come close to what God means to you and how you serve Him. If God had a nose, when he smelled you, you should smell as good as a thick 24 ounce steak, not a burnt hotdog.
God gets all of our heart, and everything else is second priority.
Jesus tells us to seek Him first, then all those other things we need in life will come, but we are to put God first.
Connect your heart with God’s heart, by giving him first priority. “Serve God and in your spare time live life.”
(B) We are to connect with God by being His soul partner!
We are to be devoted to God.
Spiritual Growth: On your journey towards spiritual development, you will either move forward in your maturity or backwards in your immaturity.
When you ignore your need of God and stop growing spiritually, you are placing yourself at risk to falling into temptation.
I want to share with you three principles that will revolutionize your devotional time if applied. Shane Hamman, the strongest man in America, was asked how you achieved this status. Shane thought for a second and went on to say:
1. “I was willing to separate from the rest of the crowd.”
When all my buddies wanted to workout, after the first hour they all would leave. Shane said the first hour was the first of eight hours. He worked out eight hours a day, but in order to get all that time in he had to detach himself from his friends to work in his dream.
He was willing to pull away from the crowd to be alone.
Like Shane, we have to separate from the rest of the crowd and connect spiritually to God.
2. The second thing Shane said was that “He had to stay longer then he wanted to stay.”
That is the toughest thing about lifting, I lift and it is easier to get in the gym then to stay long in the gym.
In order for Shane to gain the advantage in weight lifting, he had to be dedicated and had to put in those long hours in the gym.
This principle applies to our spiritual connection with God. Giving God your soul takes time, but speaks God love language.
It is easy to open the Bible, but are you digging in the word and searching for the meat and not the milk. Maturity comes through spending time in God’s presence.
Joseph Victor once said, “God’s word is not cake for special occasions, but bread for everyday life.”
3. The third thing Shane said was “in order to gain the advantage, your own strength can only take you so far.”
One day Shane went to meet a new trainer that he was going to use to get ready for the Olympics. So Shane already had world records under his belt, and he was considered the strongest man in the USA. Shane thought when he got there he was going to have to lift a lot of weight and show the trainer what he could do but the trainer gave him a broom stick. He thought it was a joke so the trainer said I know you can lift all that weight, but can you properly lift this stick that weighs next to nothing. The coach showed Shane how he wanted him to stand and lift the broomstick and when he went to do it he fell on his back.
He can squat 1000 pounds and he can’t lift a broomstick. He was shocked. At this moment he realized that in order to gain the advantage in lifting he needed an outside source of help from an experienced trainer. He realized his strength can only take him so far.
Brothers, trying to operate on your strength will bring you down, when I tried to live life before entering TC, I went so low in life that I had to look up to see the bottom. My strength got me know where, but to jail over and over again.
Like Shane, we need to tap into an outside source to draw strength from. The outside source I am talking about is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will give you the advantage to be courageous and strong enough to face temptation and when temptation has tried to entice you it will flea, because it is sacred to death of the power of God in your life.
(C) We are to connect with God by thinking Like Him!
Your Bible is the mind of God. You get to know God and His plan for your life by reading his word. It is his word that has power, not man’s word. It is God’s word that we are to live by and not man’s word.
In order to think like Him, you must begin to study God’s word. God’s word will clean you and purify your mind.
Romans 12: 1-2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
When this passage was translated from Greek to English, the meaning changed pretty significantly. It looks like it says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, but the word to renew, is not a present tense verb, but a passive verb. A passive verb is where you receive the action. We have all received renewed minds at the time of salvation; it is up to stay transformed. It is up to us to keep them focused on the things of God.
The Greatest Command filter needs to be mentioned again. Everything that comes in your eye gate, and hear gate goes into the mind gate. Since this is true, what are you putting into your mind? Things that Paul says that are good, admirable, true & pure or things the world tries to sell that are lustful, demoralizing and ungodly.
Connecting to God with all your mind is a process that calls us to filter what we watch and listen to. That is only half of the problem, once you filter your intake of what you watch and listen to, then you must inject, Godly things, such as books, Christian music, Christians counseling, anything that will bring you closer to God is what you want to let into your mind, everything else, is really not important, except for the love we are commanded to show our neighbors.
(D) We are to connect with God by channeling all of our energy to worship Him!
This means to love God with all our energy of our being!
To love God with all your might, force, or power.
Connecting to God with all your strength is a matter of your physical being. This is just as important as your heart, soul, and mind and calls for a total commitment. God did not say, love me with all your heart, and half your strength.
Loving God with all our energy gives us the strength to persevere during rough times.
It is your strength that is the motivating thrust that is the fire behind your passion. When you strength is low, so is your spiritual climate. It is important to keep your strength level at its maximum peak in order to worship God at the highest level He has commanded us to do.
Combining all your heart, soul, mind, and strength makes a powerful combination. In order to speak God’s love language, we are to worship him with all of our being. I once heard, God is the Lord of all or He does not want to be the Lord at all.
2) To Speak God’s Love Language is to Love People As God Loves People!
God loves people through people! Did you know that you are the avenue that God has chosen to love people through? God could have picked the animals, but he didn’t, He could have picked, food, but he didn’t. He picked you and me. We are to show love to everyone we encounter, day in and day out.
Jesus says, through our love the world will know that we are His disciples. He could have picked money, but he didn’t. He chose people to express acts of love in many different ways so that our neighbors know that we are children of God.
We are to connect to God as we love people. Loving people speaks God’s love language. It is just as important to love people as it is to love God, you can’t do one without the other. To love God is to love people and to love people is to love God.
Learning to love God with all of you makes loving people simple.
I find the closer I get to God the closer I am able to get to people.
Not loving people is not loving God, but laying down your life for people is actually not just a service to God, but also your neighbor as well. I want to show you how important it is to love people.
Numbers 5: 5-7 The LORD said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites: ’When a man or woman wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the LORD, that person is guilty and must confess the sin he has committed.”
It is an offense to God when we do wrong to people. The word for being unfaithful to God literally means to transgress against God. It is a sin to treat people in an ungodly manner. The way people treat people are top priority to God. God does not give us any space to treat our neighbor in the wrong way, but gives us all the room to love them in the right way. You cannot love be too much. Love is the only debt that cannot not be paid in full.
Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies. Basically, we are stuck loving people. There is no where to hide from people, they are every where and will always be there. Now let me put a little plug in here on how to love your enemies because we have tendency as humans to treat our neighbors as our enemies for too many reasons.
How do you love somebody you hate? This principle can be applied across the board to any human relationship you acquire in life. To love your enemy does not necessarily mean that you have to feel love for them, but you can show them love through your actions. No matter how you treat anybody you have the choice to treat them with love or not. Love is an expression of the heart and you have the option to choose what kind of emotion you are going to show. This means it is possible to love your enemy.
Jesus illustrated this at the last supper, where he sat all the disciples down and showed them how to love people. He washed all of his disciple’s feet including Judas, His betrayer who he knew was going to sell him out, but he still washed his feet, regardless of his evil actions.
To love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love our neighbors is to imitate how Christ served people. He lived to serve those people that everybody else rejected and did not want in their presence.
In my colleg chapel, recently, a missionary from India preached. Her husband and her work in the same area were mother Teresa helped people. The people they helped literally had leprosy, AIDS, name a disease and these people had it. They were neglected, no body had touched them in some cases months and others cases years. These people were so unloved that they did not even have a place to die. They did not have anything or anybody. They were lying on the dirt floors waiting to die. She said, her daughter was at this hospital place in India. Her daughter was a nursing student. She came well prepared with her rubber gloves and all. She had a choice to make, she can either turn around and go home so that she does not take the risk of catching any one of the deadly diseases they were carrying or she can take off her rubber clothes and go love on these women. She decided to put herself to the side and put others in front of herself. She went into this crowd of dying females and they began to grab her feet and pull on her pants. They were begging her to touch them. She would hug them and they would grab her hand it put it on there faces. Mind you, these women were disgusting, let alone the numerous diseases they had that she was in contact with as she touched them.
What’s it going to be, are you going to love God by loving people or are you going to put the rubber clothes on and go home?
It didn’t take any technical skills for this missionary to love on these women, but what it did take was for her to see these people how God saw them.
We have to have a people perspective as God has for people. God sees people as royalty, important, special, significant, regardless of there actions. Just think about your own actions and imagine if God only loved you when you did not sin, we would be in trouble. God has revealed all of His love to us and we are to do the same in return. God does not short change us so why should we short change people. Our actions have the power to change the course of a person’s life. Look at people from God’s perspective and it will help you serve people with true Godly love, and not the left over love that you might have or don’t have.
What does it look like today to wash your neighbor’s feet?
(1) We can give our neighbor “time”!
Time is something that speaks volumes to people today. With the speed of our world, people do not have time for each other. I challenge you to go against the grain of society and give people a few minutes out of your day. Find out what is going on in people’s lives, not just the things that interest you, but what they actually have to say.
Sometimes we engage in a conversation with a friend and we dominate the conversation and only talk in order to get something out of them. Do not dominate, but initiate conversations. Begin by listening to someone once a day, give somebody your undivided attention and they will feel loved and you never even have to say a word.
(2) We can give our neighbor encouraging words!
The Bible teaches us to edify one another with our tongue. An encouraging word can turn a bad day into a good day. Encouragement will motivate your neighbor to do a better job. It will uncover hidden potential some one might have and all they are waiting for is your encouragement. When you encourage someone you are saying I accept you and what you are doing, keep up the good job. To some people there is nothing better, then for you to encourage them.
God encouraged Jesus, three times, He said, my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Even Jesus needed encouragement in his life, and he is the son of God, how much more do we are humans? Everybody can do this, I promise you, if everybody encourages one another, you guys will experience a move of God like never before. Now as Jesus ministered to countless people, He never met before. So should we. I am sure, there are people here that you do not know, make the first move and encourage one another.
(3) We can give our neighbor a service!
Now, everybody in this Drug Rehab ( or church) are good at something. Some people cut hair, some people shine shoes, some people draw, some people sing, the list can go on and on. But each of you can do something for your brother.
Let me give you an example, some of you, can write real well and others cannot. I use to write letters for my friend Eddy who had not so good hand writing. I would copy pages of letters for him to send home to his family.
My best friend Ethan, use to type letters in the reading room for me when I was applying to college. A lot of you guys learn easier then others, find those who are struggling with reading and writing and take them to the side and help them. Show them how you comprehend and study. That is exactly what I did for another one of my best friends, I was hear a little longer then him and I picked up some stuff, and discipled him to the best of my ability. The sky is the limit in the ways you can provide a service for your neighbor.
In conclusion, learning how to give God all your heart, soul, mind and strength, not only speaks God’s love language of lifestyle worship, but also makes it so much easier to love people.”
In order to love people we must develop the same kind of people perspective that God has for the world. Loving God and people go hand and hand. You can’t love God and neglect people and neglect God and genuinely love people. The love God commands us to show our neighbor can only be found in Him, we need to connect with God in order for us to effectively love people. Think about it, imagine before we got saved somebody told us that we have to love our enemies, we have to love people we do not like, we would say they were crazy. Today, we would say we are obeying God. God calls us to love him with our entire being. I think it is essential that we do just that, God was so gracious to show us all his love on the cross; the least we can do in return is love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Once we do that to the best of our ability, we are to love people. How important people are to God should be how important people are to you.
