Church thoughts to chew on for November 15th, 2009: Learning God’s Love Language

Posted By Hup | November 15, 2009

thoughtstochewonOne of the things that I really like about our church here in California is that each season we fire up a new focus that guides the message that’s preached for the next couple of months or so. As I think I’ve mentioned before, this season’s focus is called iLOVE, which is all based around the fact that, as a Christian, loving God and loving others is more important than anything else. To emphasize this focus on love and to set some expectations for what all will be covered throughout the iLOVE program we are aligning our message each week with the various points that are found in one of the most common wedding verses, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, which tells us what love is all about from a Biblical and Godly standpoint:

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Before each week’s message the entire congregation stands up and reads this verse out loud so that we all get into the right mindset to learn more about how to love. Stephanie and I almost have this verse memorized, too — it’s a great one to know by heart, that’s for sure.

This week’s big question was What is God’s Love Language?, which our pastor Gary asked all of us after talking about a book that he thinks should be read by all newlyweds, The Five Love Languages (which Stephanie has mentioned that we should read together). Here were the 3 main elements of God’s love language that Gary explained to all of us in further detail, meaning that these are 3 actions that will show God the love that you have for him:

Live from Grace - God giving you a chance to get back in the game. This is how Jesus treated Peter after he denied him and he even called him a drifter, but he still gave him forgiveness. God spells love G-R-A-C-E. The fact that Peter understood and received God’s grace made him feel love. See how God gave Peter grace in John 21.

God’s grace is incredible and nothing shows it more than when he got Peter back in the game after he had severely denied that he had anything to do with Jesus 3 times. By acknowledging God’s grace we are showing God that we love him.

Live into your Unique Design - once you are saved you are a masterpiece of God, so we need to treat ourselves like a masterpiece. We need to break out of the everyday culture of this world and live differently. Also, to be a masterpiece you must spend time with your master (we need to spend time learning more about God in the Word, community, etc.). Until we spend time and open up to God’s love we won’t be able to fulfill our unique design.

As Christians we all need to remember not to get sucked into what is accepted by today’s culture and instead we need to live by what’s acceptable to God. Also, this reminds us that God feels our love whenever we spend time with him through reading the Bible, community groups, evangelizing, praying, etc.

Follow Jesus Faithfully - You will be lead to places by Jesus that are not all going to comfortable. In fact, many of the places most likely won’t be comfortable (apologizing, giving, hard conversations, etc.). How are we going to follow Jesus this week?

This reminds is that we also show our love to God by faithfully following Him to wherever he leads us, even when it’s not where we feel comfortable or where we were expecting to go.

As a final note, Gary passed along this little bit of wisdom to all of us:

When we get busy we go from grace to legalism (love-based relationship to rules-based relationship). What are we too busy doing to remember that we are loved by God’s grace?

What this means is that when we fill our lives with so much stuff (other that God) that we get way too busy, we tend to turn our relationship with God into a checklist of rules (legalism) as opposed to a relationship that is full of love (grace).

Thanks again for reading and as always, if you have any questions or comments to share, please let us know in the comments!

Filed Under you gotta have faith

We think that you might also like these, too:
  • Getting back into running is HARD (and so is everything else that you don’t pay attention to)
  • They say imitation is the best form of flattery…
  • The story of Hup and Steph Part 2: The Fun Begins

    • Talkies (we love hearing from you!)

    4 Talkies! to “Church thoughts to chew on for November 15th, 2009: Learning God’s Love Language”

    1. Kristin on November 16th, 2009 11:49 am

      Hey Hup, Steph (and Frank!)

      Enjoy your blog. Think I stumbled acrossed it after you & Steph were dating and I check it once and awhile. Glad you are connected to a church…and you are blogging about it. :) My husband and I (UofI/UIndy grads…in case you are like who ARE these ppl?) go to a church here in St. Louis and sounds kinda similar to yours. They post the past sermons online at journeyon.net so if you are interested, stop by! All the cool kids are doing it and I didn’t want to leave you out of the loop. HAHA! :)

      Happy Blogging!

    2. Hup on November 16th, 2009 12:23 pm

      Hey Kristin, thanks for stopping by the blog and I’m glad that you popped your head in to say hello!

      I just checked out your church’s website and it looks like you guys have it going on over there in the Midwest — we could learn a bit from what your church is doing.

      Did I go to school with you and your Hubby at UINDY? GO HOUNDS!!

    3. Kristin on November 16th, 2009 1:54 pm

      Yeah you did go to school with us. I met you once when you were kicking off the newsletters on good ol’ PFS trays. :) GO HOUNDS indeed. Better yet, GO COLTS!! Did you see that amazing game last night? WOW!

    4. Kyle Hupfer on November 16th, 2009 2:05 pm

      I actually did a reading of that piece of scripture at Megan’s rehearsal and wedding. Father Dhondt said it was one of the best he had ever heard.

    What do you want to tell us, hmmm?