A Love Language Minute: God Speaks Your Love Language

From Dr. Gary Chapman

After almost forty years of counseling couples and families, I am convinced that there are five basic languages of love. There may be many “dialects,” but only five languages. Each person has a primary love language, which means that one of the five love languages speaks more deeply than the other four on an emotional level. When someone speaks my primary love language, I am drawn to that person because he or she is meeting my basic need to feel loved.

The five love languages are more fully explained in my previous books, but let me briefly review them:

(1) Words of Affirmation
(2) Quality Time
(3) Gifts
(4) Acts of Service
(5) Physical Touch

Feeling God's Love
Susan was my first appointment of the day, and I felt like crying when I heard her story. Her father had committed suicide when she was thirteen. Her brother was killed in Vietnam. Six months ago, her husband had left her for another woman. She and her two small children were living with her mother. I felt like crying...but Susan wasn’t crying. In fact, she was vibrant, almost radiant.

Later the same day I had an appointment with Regina. Her parents had divorced when she was ten years old. She saw her father only twice after the divorce: once at her high school graduation and again at her younger sister’s funeral. Her sister had been killed in an auto accident. She was in my office because she was contemplating a fourth marriage. “I don’t want to grow old alone, but I don’t have a very good track record with marriage. My mother keeps telling me that God loves me and has a plan for my life. Right now I don’t feel God’s love, and I think I must have missed the plan. I’m not even sure there is a God.”

Two ladies, each having experienced enough pain for a lifetime. One feels deeply loved by God; the other feels empty. Why do some people claim to experience God’s love very deeply, while others feel so distant from God that they are unsure God even exists? I believe the answer lies in the nature of love itself. Love is not a solo experience. Love requires both a lover and a responder. If God is the divine lover, why do not all of His creatures feel His love?

God's Languages
God Speaks Your Love Language (to release February 2009) builds on the concepts from my previous books and considers the love languages of God. It is my premise that the love languages observed in human relationships all reflect various aspects of divine love. If people are indeed made in the image of God, and if people have five distinct love languages, then we would expect to find all those love languages expressed in the character and nature of God. Indeed, God speaks every language, so it is not surprising to discover that He communicates fluently through each of the five love languages. In the weeks to come, I'll discuss each of these.