Sharing Agape-His Love Language!
Was just thinking how arrogant it is to want the love delivered from someone else to ourselves in a particular package. I haven't been able to fully see this until this moment. I'm talking about "preference" being a luxury of the rich, such as we are in our affluent American society. For example, there wouldn't be books published in third world countries entitled The Five Love Languages. Some of them are happy to just get one meal a day.
In this book, it lists 5 different ways we like love delivered to us, with the idea being that we figure out which way we like it, and then communicate that to our spouse or friends, so hopefully they will deliver, so that we can feel loved. What's wrong with gladly receiving someone's love in the package they give it in? "Oh no, but I like it this way, and if you don't speak "my love language" than I don't feel loved," is the perspective. Sounds like a very self-serving expectation to me, possibly resulting in a self-sabotaging hindrance in relationships too.
I have been guilty in the past of having this kind of expectation. I first had it with my parents, even before the book was published. I expected them to know my needs through and through and then meet every one of those needs. "They just don't understand me," I thought, and was angry with them because of that. I judged them wrongly. For many years, I thought they owed me an apology, but in truth I owed them one, and needed God to forgive me for judging them. As my eyes were opened to the truth of my own heart, I did receive forgiveness for this attitude, and asked God to "cleanse me from all unrighteousness," in this area, and He has been faithful to do that. Then I had it with my husband. Poor guy. I was expecting him to be God to me! Again, this caused so much unnecessary heartache for both of us, and only because of one deadly thing-PRIDE!
Who do we think we are anyway? Do we think other people are in our lives to serve us and our wants and our needs? I can see it clearly now. When David said, "Create in me a clean heart, O God," he surely spoke for all of us in our need for redemption throughout! As we receive Jesus, all things become new in us, and if we let God clean us up, He will burn out that wicked foe!!! Then we will be able to serve Him as we serve others, and our self consciousness will go too, thank goodness!
He frees us from ourselves! What a relief when our flesh, our sin nature, and our pride are destroyed! We then become truly free to live and to love and to reflect His glory, and to let His love language, the one all people need, flow through us. Now that kind of talk is universal!!!
In this book, it lists 5 different ways we like love delivered to us, with the idea being that we figure out which way we like it, and then communicate that to our spouse or friends, so hopefully they will deliver, so that we can feel loved. What's wrong with gladly receiving someone's love in the package they give it in? "Oh no, but I like it this way, and if you don't speak "my love language" than I don't feel loved," is the perspective. Sounds like a very self-serving expectation to me, possibly resulting in a self-sabotaging hindrance in relationships too.
I have been guilty in the past of having this kind of expectation. I first had it with my parents, even before the book was published. I expected them to know my needs through and through and then meet every one of those needs. "They just don't understand me," I thought, and was angry with them because of that. I judged them wrongly. For many years, I thought they owed me an apology, but in truth I owed them one, and needed God to forgive me for judging them. As my eyes were opened to the truth of my own heart, I did receive forgiveness for this attitude, and asked God to "cleanse me from all unrighteousness," in this area, and He has been faithful to do that. Then I had it with my husband. Poor guy. I was expecting him to be God to me! Again, this caused so much unnecessary heartache for both of us, and only because of one deadly thing-PRIDE!
Who do we think we are anyway? Do we think other people are in our lives to serve us and our wants and our needs? I can see it clearly now. When David said, "Create in me a clean heart, O God," he surely spoke for all of us in our need for redemption throughout! As we receive Jesus, all things become new in us, and if we let God clean us up, He will burn out that wicked foe!!! Then we will be able to serve Him as we serve others, and our self consciousness will go too, thank goodness!
He frees us from ourselves! What a relief when our flesh, our sin nature, and our pride are destroyed! We then become truly free to live and to love and to reflect His glory, and to let His love language, the one all people need, flow through us. Now that kind of talk is universal!!!
posted by Patti Blount @ 7:23 AM
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