The Love Languages Of God

At my nephew’s wedding last week, we sang the hymn, O Perfect Love. It is a hymn that paints perfect love as the love that transcends all human thought and a love that knows no ending. Perfect love is the love that is seen through the perfect life of Jesus Christ. It is the love empowers us with patient hope and brave endurance as well as the childlike trust that does not fear pain or death. It is the love that gives the joy which brightens earthly sorrow and the peace which calms all earthly strife.

Unfortunately, we have a distorted view of love - we define love in terms of our feelings and what others will do for us. We are like caterpillars crawling and seeking for love to satisfy our bodily desires. But God wants us to be transformed into butterflies who will be His agents to pollinate the world with His agape love.

We need to reframe our picture of love – to see love as God’s desire for us to make the best use of our lives. He has created us in Christ Jesus to live lives filled with good works that He has prepared for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). But before we can make a difference with our lives we need a transformation of our inner life. We need to experience God’s love so that His love can be in us and flow through us to others.

Dr. Gary Chapman, a marriage counselor, has written about the five love languages – Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Physical Touch, Receiving Gifts, Receiving Gifts and Acts of Service - to help couples understand how they can show love to one another. God is our Divine Lover and we need to understand and appreciate the five “love languages” of God’s love.

Firstly, the bible is the means by which God gives us His Words of Affirmation. Too often we study the bible for information instead of meditating on the scripture and let God reveal His Love to us.

Secondly, prayer is the Quality Time that God wants us to spend with Him. But we see prayer as merely a time to present God with our requests or confessions. Prayer is a time of being with God and sharing with Him our hurts, fears and concerns. It is a time to be still and to listen for His loving guidance and wisdom.

Thirdly, although it is not possible to feel God's physical touch, the Holy Communion reminds us of the broken body of Christ as well as His precious blood to wash away our sins. As we eat the bread and drink the wine in the Holy Communion, we can reflect on how much God loves us for Christ died and rose from the dead to open a new and living way for us to come before the throne of God. (Hebrews 4:16, 10:20).

Fourthly, we have been given the gifts of the Spirit to help us in our struggles, suffering and temptations in our daily lives. We can see our difficult times as opportunities to receive the gifts of the Spirit. In fact, we are to give thanks IN our struggles for they are the soil for us to bear the fruit of the Spirit.

Finally, we have the church as the Body of Christ to give as well as to receive acts of service. The early disciples provided their world with their practical example of love by sharing and caring for one another (Acts 2:44, 4:32).

The Love of God is the essence of life. We can draw nearer to God's love through prayer, bible meditation, the Holy Communion, acts of service and receiving the gifts of the Spirit. May the Perfect Life of Christ in us empower us to share the Perfect Love of God with others in the power of the Holy Spirit as we celebrate the new lunar year of the dragon.

The Power & Wisdom of the Gospel

Recently I saw a Christian patient whom I was encouraging to stop smoking. He told me that he cannot stop smoking as nicotine is his life. He had been deceived by the evil one and in bondage to his addiction. He was also afraid of dying.

I felt led to remind him of the truth that Jesus, and not nicotine, is our life. The good news is that we have been crucified with Christ and that it is no longer we who live but Christ. And when Christ is our life, to die is not a loss but our gain. Furthermore, we can do all things through the strength of Christ who is in us.¹

How true it is that "a change in one's lifestyle doesn't bring about salvation." But salvation will always bring about a change in one's lifestyle. It is only by leading others to Christ that their morals and lifestyle will ultimately change. For the root cause of all the problems in our society is sin - our separation from the love of God.²

Last Sunday was the day in the liturgical calendar when we remembered the baptism of Jesus. In his sermon at Queenstown Lutheran Church, Rev Lim Kim Hock posed the question, "Are we missing something?" He drew our attention to the important truth that we have been baptized in the name of Christ and have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

His message together with my encounter with my patient opened my eyes to the truth that we will live without the power to love and face suffering and without the wisdom to overcome evil when we do not fully grasp the gospel truth of Christ crucifixion, death and resurrection. We will struggle with our weaknesses and sins when we do not fully appreciate what our baptism in Christ means.

David Eckman made the point that we need to see the emotionally significant events in our lives from God's perspective through the cross of Christ.³ It is only when we do so that we will be able to understand what it means to be crucified with Christ, to be alive in Christ and to live by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If we live by the truth that we in fellowship with Christ's suffering, it will change our attitude towards the pain and suffering we face in our lives. If we have experienced the reality of our baptism that we have died and buried with Christ, this will empower us to overcome the temptations of this world and the evil one. If we believe that we have been raised with Christ and are new creations in Him, we will seek to discover our new life in Christ.

Like a seed planted in the ground, the dying to our old self does not occur overnight. Like a pupa that is in the process of being transformed into a butterfly, we need time for our spiritual formation. So let us remind ourselves of God’s great salvation as we sing Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Love divine, all loves excelling”:

“Finish then thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.

Let us see thy great salvation, perfectly restored in thee:

Changed from glory into glory

Till in heaven we take our place,

Till we cast our crowns before thee,

Lost in wonder, love and praise.”

References:

1. Galatians 2:20, Philippians 1:21, 4:13

2. Greg Laurie – Beyond, page 24

3. David Eckman – Becoming Who God Intended, page 159-160

Perfect Submission, Perfect Delight

2012 is the year that some have predicted will be the end of the world. For me, it started with two birthday celebrations - a birthday of a church and a birthday of a friend. But these celebrations were followed by the funeral of the wife of an old friend on the second day of the new year.

On the third day of the new year, I encountered three women suffering from cancer and an elderly relative in hospital who expressed their wish to die. I realised how badly we need the unspeakable joy of the Holy Spirit in a world that is becoming more and more depressing for more and more people. We need the secret of finding joy in the midst of sorrow and suffering.

The first day of 2012 was a Sunday and I was led to attend the worship service of Charis Methodist Church. It was their 23rd church anniversary and they renewed Wesley's Covenant Prayer during the service. It was the Prayer that I had ended the year 2011 with in the watch night service at the HV Preaching Point of Barker Road Methodist Church about 12 hours earlier. Wesley's Covenant Prayer thus assumed a special significance for me in the new year of 2012:

"I am no longer my own, but Yours.

Put me to what You will, rank me with whom You will;

put me to doing, put me to suffering;

let me be employed for You or laid aside for You,

exalted for You or brought low for You;

let me full, let me be empty;

let me have all things, let me have nothing;

I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine, and I am Yours. So be it. And the Covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in Heaven. Amen.

At the Charis Methodist Church anniversary service, Bishop Robert Solomon spoke on "The Covenant to be Faithful." As he shared the lessons from the book of Nehemiah of how quickly and easily the Jews had made and broke their covenant with God, I was initially convicted by the feeling of being “double condemned” if I fail to live up to the covenant I had made at the end of 2011 and at the beginning of 2012.

However, Bishop Solomon made the point that Jesus came to give us a new covenant. This gave me a fresh insight which freed me from the guilt and shame of not being able to keep my covenants like the Jews in the time of Nehemiah. Our human tendency is to make and break covenants and resolutions. But the Good News is that we have a faithful and loving God who is our Heavenly Father.

We may break our covenants but God will never break His covenant to draw us back to His love. Wesley’s Covenant Prayer is therefore not a ritual we perform in order to become saints. It is a prayer of surrender to the Lordship of Christ so that we can live as the children of God.

The Covenant Prayer is the fruit of the spirit of repentance. Repentance is not just feeling guilty and being remorseful - it is to experience the sorrow of God so that we will be touched by His everlasting Love. Only then will Wesley's Covenant Prayer be "the response of a heart that has fallen in love with the God who reveals Himself in Christ."

2012 may not be the end of the world but it can be the end of my limited personal perspective of the world and life. It is only when I die to my egoistic self that I will be able to live my life from God's perspective. Sufferings, sorrow and difficulties will then become opportunities to die to self and to be more alive in Christ. Only then will I be able to face any storm and tribulation in the New Year with the unspeakable joy of our Lord and His peace which is beyond human understanding.

The following words of Fanny Cosby in her hymn, Blessed Assurance, comes to mind:

“Perfect submission, perfect delight.

Visions of rapture now burst on my sight.

Angels descending bring from above,

echoes of mercy, whispers of love.”

Perfect delight comes from perfect submission. God wants to draw us closer to Him so that we may hear His echoes of mercy and whispers of love. May we find perfect delight in our lives as we encourage each other with Wesley’s Covenant Prayer in this New Year.