WHAT IS GOD'S LOVE LANGUAGE?

I was talking to a couple about their marriage last night. We centered in on the topic of love languages. It is based on the idea that each of us “hears” love in a certain way. Some of us recognize touch as an expression of love. Others feel loved when they receive gifts. Another group hears, “I love you,” when they are on the receiving end of acts of service. There are those who do not hear, “I love you,” unless you spend meaningful time with them. And finally, some people hear love, when they hear, “I love you,” or other words of affirmation spoken to them.

At the end of our discussion last night, the husband asked a very significant question—“What is God’s love language?” What a question! If the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, soul, and mind (and it is), how do you love God?

The very short and biblical answer is obedience. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” But I believe we often hear obedience as merely keeping the rules. The Bible tells us the rules and we show God how much we love Him by the way we keep those rules.

I submit that the obedience that says, “I love you” to God is more about imitation than compliance. In the same context where Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandment,” he also said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

When we are so secure and satisfied with God’s care for us and His control of the world that we no longer feel a need to take care of ourselves, but feel free to abandon ourselves to His plan and purpose and devote ourselves to the pursuit of the benefit of others with the same intensity that we have pursued our own, then we are speaking God’s love language.