“We tend to speak our primary love language, and we become confused when our spouse does not understand what we are communicating. We are expressing our love, but the message does not come through because we are speaking what, to them, is a foreign language.”
I find Dr. Chapman’s observations to be true in my marriage. I cook my husband’s meals, wash his clothes, and clean his house. Because I am a doer who likes to check off boxes and accomplish things, I prefer to demonstrate my love by doing. I speak the language of hard work, self-sacrifice, and get ‘er done.
Trouble is, I’m like the cashier talking to the immigrant in the grocery store line ahead of me. She thinks volume will make up for her lack of Spanish language skills. The louder she speaks, the more confused and frustrated her brown-skinned customer becomes.
“No comprende.”
No comprende indeed. In my husband’s native tongue, love doesn’t look like clean clothes and 3-course meals. It looks like lingering kisses, lazy evenings, and back scratches. His dialect says Slow down. Linger long. Stay a while.
And so, like my grocery store friends, we wave our arms, gesture wildly, and leave frustrated. We love each other, but our love language barrier often pushes us apart rather than draws us together.
My relationship with God sometimes struggles with a similar love language barrier.
I say, “I can do it myself.”
God says, “Come unto me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
I say, “If I just give enough, do enough, be enough . . .”
He says, “For by grace you have been saved, through faith, not of yourself, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.”
I say, “If I can just get all my questions answered.”
He says, “Unless you have the faith of a child, you cannot see the kingdom of God.”
I say, “I can do it myself.”
He says, “No man can come to the Father except by me.”
I say, “Show me.”
He says, “Trust me.”
And I wave my arms, gesture wildly, and leave frustrated. I yearn for a relationship with the Lover of my soul, but I try to bypass the bilingual Translator.
Thankfully, God’s love language speaks across millennia if I have ears to hear it:
For whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. (Acts 2:21)
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. (John 11:25)
Do you believe this?
If you’ve been trying unsuccessfully to connect with God by speaking your own language, why not try his?
Commit to read the Bible, his love letter to you, every day. Talk to him in prayer. Watch as he reveals himself to you. Then you will begin to understand what it means to have a love relationship with the God of the universe. And it will be amazing.
What have you got to lose?
You want to connect with God, but in the craziness of life, it’s just not happening. You want practical, biblical answers to situations you face every day, but you don’t have hours to pore over Scripture.
You need a resource that answers the questions you’re afraid to ask out loud. Questions like:
• Is my situation hopeless?
• If God already knows what he’s going to do, why bother to pray?
• Why have you allowed this to happen to me?
• No one appreciates what I do. Why shouldn’t I quit?
Each devotion begins with a Facetime question and ends with a biblical answer wrapped in a modern day parable. Like a spiritual power bar, Hungry for God … Starving for Time is packed with enough scriptural nutrition to get you through the day.
Wherever you are—in break rooms, carpool lines, or wherever you can snatch five minutes of quiet reflection—Hungry for God … Starving for Time, 5-Minute Devotions for Busy Women is for you.
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