Easter is in two days, and that's gotten me thinking a bit about love and how we can show love to each other since Easter is really about how God showed His love for us.
All of those things make me feel wonderful.
But.....I fail miserably at doing the same things for other people.
I wish I could say I was habitually the kind of person who comments, compliments and encourages, pursues, asks and answers tough questions, points people to Christ, and does all of the things I love having people do for me. But the truth is that I really don't. Not as much as I should. I usually have to be actively thinking about it.
What's sad is that I do actively think about it for myself. I'll post an album to facebook and keep checking back to see if people have commented or liked anything yet. I'll continually check my Google analytics and see how many visits my blog has gotten. (I can almost assure that I'll be doing that right after I post this.)
Shouldn't it be the other way around? In John 13:34 Jesus says to love one another as he loved us. Mark 12:30-31 says to first love God and then love others as you love yourself.
If you can relate with me, you may be thinking, "Okay, great. I should be more loving. I need to do that intentionally and through God. Wait - how am I going to do that?" I have two words for you: Love Languages.
There was an author a few years ago who wrote a book called "The 5 Love Languages". The concept is simple: he proposes that people give and receive love primarily in these five ways. They are: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. If you're able to recognize the ways in which your friends typically feel the most loved, then you can know how to love on them.
If you're interesting in finding out how you typically feel most loved, you can go here and take a quick 30 question assessment. At the end, you'll see something like this (these are my results):
Your Scores
| 8 | Words of Affirmation |
| 11 | Quality Time |
| 0 | Receiving Gifts |
| 5 | Acts of Service |
| 6 | Physical Touch |
Now that you know your love language, here’s some more information you might not have realized about it, and why certain behaviors affect you more than others.
Your Love Language
Quality Time
In Quality Time, nothing says “I love you” like full, undivided attention. Being there for this type of person is critical, but really being there—with the TV off, fork and knife down, and all chores and tasks on standby—makes you feel truly special and loved. Distractions, postponed activities, or the failure to listen can be especially hurtful.
The max you can get for any one category is 12, so, according to this assessment, I almost maxed out feeling most loved by just being with people. Secondly, I like being affirmed. Nearly tied are acts of service and physical touch. And, lastly, gifts aren't very important to me. That's all very true. It's basically what I'm trying to say in that opening paragraph (which I wrote before I took this assessment).
I encourage you to take five minutes and figure out how you best receive love. If you're open to it, post it on here as a comment so I can know how to love you best. Post it on facebook so your friends can. Tell some people close to you. Encourage them to take it and let you know how they receive love.
So, in a nutshell, God calls us to love one another and I think one of the most practical things we can do with that is loving people in the ways that actually make them feel loved the most. And here is a place you can figure out what that is.
(*I considered leaving out my results and talking about things I like because I don't want this to be about what you could do for me. It's meant to emphasize how you can love on the people around you. But, at the end, I ask you to be open and share your heart, so I didn't think it was fair to not also be open about myself.)
Cool idea! :)
ReplyDeleteMine is words of affirmation. I got a 10 on that. The other three were all within a point or two of each other.