• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • My Books
    • True You
    • Katharina and Martin Luther
    • 50 Women Every Christian Should Know
    • Spiritual Misfit
  • Blog
  • On My Bookshelves
  • Contact
  • Privacy & Disclosure Policy

Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

September 3, 2012 By Michelle

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: What’s Your God Love Language?


“I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I’ll be able to say I’m wildly smitten with Jesus,” I say to Brad, leaning my elbows on the kitchen counter as he sorts through the mail. “Not in the whole rest of my life as a believer. I’ll never get there. I don’t think I’ll ever feel that kind of love, that depth of love, for God.”

Brad looks up from the stack of envelopes. “Well, who says you have to?”

I sigh. I’ve been reading a friend’s writing, and her love for God, her stark, raw passion for Jesus is so evident on the page, it takes my breath away. It also leaves me feeling…lacking. Inadequate. Less than. Afraid.

“I just worry,” I admit. “I just worry that my faith isn’t real, because I don’t feel that kind of love, that exuberant, bursting passion. I feel like…I don’t know…I sort of feel like I’m faking it. Like I’m a big faith fraud. ”

“Well then I’m faking it, too, because I don’t go around feeling all wildly in love with Jesus either,” says Brad.

“Yeah,” I tell him, laughing, resting my chin in my hands. “That’s what I say to make myself feel better: ‘Well hey, look at Brad…and he’s still got faith…he’s still okay.’”

Yesterday in church Pastor Sara preached on Matthew 22: 36-40, in which Jesus explains the most important commandment:

“You must love the lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s the heart part of that commandment that trips me up. I get loving God with my brain. I sort of get loving God with my soul. But with “all my heart”? That sounds a lot like “wildy smitten” to me. And I’m not good with wildly smitten.

In her message, Pastor Sara described what the “heart” portion of that commandment might look like. When you love God, she said, you:
  • Surrender your desires to God
  • Know that God is working to transform you
  • Practice spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible, prayer and worship
  • Practice the fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control)
  • Share your faith journey with authentic community

Not exactly a wild and crazy declaration of love, is it?

According to Pastor Sara, loving God with all my heart looks pretty practical: surrender, know, practice and share.

In fact, I do most of these things pretty regularly — or at least I try to. But I’ve always considered most of these as acts of obedience, rather than expressions of love.

My conversation with Brad and Pastor Sara’s sermon both reminded me of Gary Chapman’s book, Love Languages, which describes five basic ways couples demonstrate love: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical touch.

You’ll notice that some of these acts of love aren’t exactly wildly passionate or exuberant. But I tell you what. You vacuum my living room and scrub the dirt ring off my tub, and I swoon. My love language is the hugely practical “acts of service” all the way.

I suspect that a practical, acts-of-service type love is how I best express my love for God, too: obedience as an expression of love. It’s not a wild, tear-brimming passionate expresson. You’ll never hear me say I’m smitten with God.

But it’s love just the same.

What about you? What love language best describes your love for God?

 

Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in — thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

Click here to get Graceful in your email in-box.
Click
here to “like” my Facebook Writer page. Thank you!

Weekend Meditation: Amazing
Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Two Words

Filed Under: Gospels, love, love languages, obedience, Use It on Monday

Primary Sidebar

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

Read Full Bio

Available Now — My New Book!

Blog Post Archives

Footer

Copyright © 2023 Michelle DeRusha · Site by The Willingham Enterprise· Log in