God’s Love Languages: Words of Affirmation

A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 8, 2004

If you were to compare, as is the practice these days by some, the many major religions of the world and you were to put their scriptures side by side, the New Testament would not be the longest. But one thing you would be astounded by when you saw it in contrast is how it is preoccupied with the word “love”. Think about it. Think about how much you just take for granted that is love-centered.
The first verse the children might learn in Sunday school is a verse from I John 4: “God is love.”
Perhaps the most widely quoted verse out of the New Testament is John 3:16 which begins “For God so loved the world.”
How many weddings have you been to, how many weddings have I officiated at where somewhere in the proceedings I Corinthians 13 was read – the Love Chapter.
Jesus said the greatest commandment of all is “Love God with your heart, mind, strength, and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” Why then is, is there so much emptiness in our world when it comes to real love? Why is it that Christians can’t love one another? Why is it that Christian marriages break apart?
One who has studied and counseled through the years, Gary Chapman, says one of the reasons is because we haven’t understood the complexity of love and that there are five love languages. All of us have a little bit of five, some of us have a whole bunch. But there is one, he says, that fills our what he calls “love tank”, and that if that is not being addressed, if that has not been filled, we feel unloved.
How do you know your primary love language? He says by asking yourself some questions. For example, he would say, “Ask yourself the question, how do I most express love to other people. If somebody expresses it mostly with words, affirmation, encouragement, commendation, your love language is probably the love language we call “Words of Affirmation.”
On the other hand if you really don’t talk too much but you’re always patting somebody on the back, shaking hands, appropriate hugging, your love language is probably a physical expression, “Physical Touch.”
Second question he says, listen to yourself. What do you complain about? Because what you’re complaining about is what you don’t have. And if what you complain about is what you don’t have, that’s likely to be your love language.
If you don’t mind, let’s turn the channel and let’s turn it heavenward. What is your love language for loving God? It’s apt to be the same as your love language for loving other people but not necessarily so. What is your love language for loving God?
Ask yourself these questions: How do I most often express my love for God? Well, if you feel closest to God when you get up early in the morning, open your Bible, have your prayer time, your quiet time, get ready for the day. If you feel closest God during the day at that point, you’re probably looking at the love language of Quality Time.
But on the other hand, if you feel closest to God when you’re helping other people. Suppose you’re working in our clothes closet or in our food pantry or with Grace Fellowship on Thursday night, it is likely your love language is Acts of Service.
Second question is what do you complain about when it comes to your church? Nobody talked to me today. What you really want is Words of Affirmation or Boy the preacher. You know he puts me to sleep. He, goes here, there, and yonder and doesn’t ever touch my life, you know what you’re really asking for is words of affirmation from God.
Suppose you say the music. The music, oh boy, it drags, you know. It’s old. It just doesn’t ever speak to me and it doesn’t move. What you’re probably saying is my love language of worshipping to God, you could even say your worship language, is something that needs physical expression: praise songs, moving your arms, moving your body, tapping your foot, you know, physical.
Now the important thing here, friend, there is no one right love language. And if you have one, and another person has another, and you look down your nose at them, well, the same God that made yours made theirs.
How do you love your God? How do you love your God so that you feel your God-love tank is filled up?
Last week we looked at Gifts – the gift of Christ on the Cross that he gave for all of us. This week - Words of Affirmation.
Have you ever thought about how much the word, “word” plays in our faith? We call our Bible the Word of God. We say of Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” We speak of the Bible as being the “Word that is quick and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even the dividing soul, of soul and spirit and is the discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart.” Psalm 119: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my pathways.”
But nowhere, not in the whole Bible, do you find the positive affirming word so consistently and so brilliantly given as through Jesus, the Living Word.
Turn in your Bible to the Book of John and I’m going to walk you through some episodes to show you what I’m talking about. John’s Gospel, Chapter 4.
A little background please. Jesus is traveling through Samaria. It was kind of a middle, a middle state if you want to call it, like mid-Atlantic, you have states lined up. It would be like you were in South Carolina and you were going to Virginia and you passed through North Carolina which would be, in this case, Samaria. Or if you’re from North Carolina and you don’t want to be Samaria, let’s move it back down a state and you’re in Georgia, and you’re going to North Carolina, you’re passing through South Carolina. Now I made those folks a little upset. But it’s a good illustration because it says that Samaria was in the middle and you had to pass through it. But let me tell you what most Jewish people did. In that day and time they went around. They couldn’t stand to go through Samaria.
Jesus shrugged it off, went right through the middle of it. It was 6th hour according to our scripture. By their Timex keeping which starts at 6 in the morning and ends at 6 at night it would have been noon. Jesus is hot and he is tired. He stops at a well that is very old. It was dug by Jacob well over a thousand years before Jesus got here. As he is resting he sends the disciples in to town to get some lunch, to get something to eat. While he is sitting there a woman comes at a non-respectable time to draw her water because she is a non-respectable woman.
Jesus says as he’s thinking about it, “Wonder if she’ll approach me?”
She does. “Sir, you talked to me. Jews don’t talk to Samaritans. What’s going on here?” (That’s my translation.)
He says, “Well, water.”
“Water? You don’t even have something to draw the water with. Would you like for me to draw you some water?”
“I would. But let me tell you something. The water that you’re going to draw up. That’s going to pass away in a hurry. But the water that I can give you never goes away. It’s like a spring of water that just comes up.” Verse 13: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
And the woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water.”
Let me ask you something. Do you have deep within you a spiritual spring that is just bubbling over and there when you need it: A bringer of life, a bringer of joy, a bringer of the presence of God, a kind of inner invisible spiritual spring that got put there when you became a follower of the Lord? The woman didn’t have it. She asked for it.
Jesus said, “Bring your husband on out. Let’s talk about it.”
She said, “I don’t have a husband.”
To which Jesus says, “Well, that’s right. You’ve had five and the man you’re now living with isn’t your husband.”
Big eyes! How did he know that?
In the process of the conversation she eventually goes into the town and she says, “I want you to come out and see a man who told me everything I ever did.” She brings out a whole congregation to listen to Jesus.
Oh, by the way, the disciples went into the same town, probably found a fast food place. Came back with, what do you suppose—lambburgers? At any rate, they came back with lunch. She came back with a congregation.
Now let me ask you, how do you get through with someone about love who has been cast off as often as she has? She’s a retread. She has been abused, rejected, run over. How do you talk about love to somebody like that? And Jesus knew you didn’t, you didn’t upbraid them, you didn’t judge them, you didn’t say, “I told you so”, you didn’t even bring out the Ten Commandments. You talk about possibility. You talk about new life, new water, water that’s going to be there because God put it there. Words of Affirmation.
Turn to John 8, the well known story of Jesus and the woman who’d been caught in adultery. You remember the story. The woman had been caught. She was guilty as sin. It is interesting to me though that they don’t bring the man. It takes two to tango. It was that culture, in some ways, still is.
She, she came and they were going to make her a kind of a way at getting at Jesus. What should we do, should we stone her? That’s what the law says. Jesus seldom answered yes or no. He wrote on the sand and then listen, 8th chapter, 9th verse: “At this those who heard began to go away one at a time when he said, ‘The one who is without sin, you throw the first stone.’ And Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are these, where are your accusers. Has no one condemned?’
‘No one sir,’ she said.
‘Then neither do I condemn you. Go, go now and leave your life of sin.’
Have you heard “a picture’s worth a thousand words?” You’ve heard also from me that there are times when a word is worth a thousand pictures. This is one of them. Consider the one-syllable words that come. Two brief sentences. “Neither do I condemn you. Go, sin no more.” No oil painting, no watercolor, no painting with a computer can capture the power of a guilt, of words who are addressed to a guilty woman who feels completely under condemnation and the Lord does that wonderful thing he had of doing. On the one hand he gives her sheer grace, “I don’t condemn you.” And on the other hand, accountability, “Go and sin no more.” Affirmation. Words of affirmation from the mouth of the Savior.
Go to chapter 11. Lazarus, his friend has died and he tarries. He waits. It reminds me of the old Yiddish story. Izzy goes before the Lord and he says, “Lord is it true that a thousand years in your sight are like a second?”
And the Lord said, “Yeah, Izzy, that’s true.”
“And is it true, is it true that a billion dollars is like a penny?”
“Yes, Izzy, that’s true.”
“And is it true that you said I ought to ask so that I can receive?”
“Yes, Izzy, that’s true.”
Izzy said, “Then give me a billion dollars.”
And the Lord said, “Sure, Izzy. Of course it will take a second.”
Sometimes the Lord tarries. Are you the kind that sometimes think he always tarries. We have a time schedule and the Lord just refuses to meet it.
Martha comes. She says, “Lord if you’d been here our brother would not have died.” What family has not said that to themselves. “Lord if you’d have been here, if you had intervened, this one would still be with us.”
What is Jesus’s answer to that? It’s a tough one. He has disappointed somebody he dearly loves. His answer, listen to it, you’re going to need it: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that lives and believes in me will never die.” He doesn’t stop there.
Mary now comes, says the very same thing: “Lord if you’d have just been here, our brother would not have died.” Jesus has said to Martha, (remember the Mary-Martha episode when Martha was cooking the dinner and Mary was just worshiping the Lord?) Now Martha goes to get Mary. It’s a wonderful scene and she goes because the Lord said, “I want to see Mary.” And Martha goes and says, “The Master is calling for you.” Words of affirmation.
Friends, a few days after this, Jesus went to the Cross and after he had gone to the Cross they put him in a tomb. But on that Sunday so long ago, that Resurrection Day, he took off those grave clothes, and he shook them. He shook them until every bit of death fell off of them, every particle of death fell to the floor. Every part of death’s odor is gone. Then he moved that rock away and he came out to say, “I’m still here. I’m alive and well. Now listen to me. I’m the Resurrection and the Life. And if you will believe in me, though you were dead, yet shall you live and if you live and believe in me, death will not be your final word.
The story is told about a missionary family that came home on furlough and they were living out in a little cabin on the lake. Friends of theirs owned it. And on an, on an afternoon, momma was in the kitchen for supper and dad was in the boathouse tinkering around and the three children: one of them 12, one of them 10, one of the 8, were out playing in the yard when the 8 year old got away from the overseeing glance of the 12 year old and went out on the boat dock. Somehow or another lost his balance so attracted was he to that boat that was going like this and he fell into eight feet of water.
The 12 year old heard the splash and cried and the father came running and immediately knew what had happened.
He dove into that old murky, muddy water feeling for his son. He felt nothing. He came up for air and dove down again feeling for his son and he felt nothing. He came up again for air and the third time when he went down his eight year old, Billy, was holding on to a sunken dock of years ago, holding onto the wood just as hard as he could.
His daddy pried his fingers away and took him to the surface where he gasped for water, for air. And they took him out, dried him out, put new clothes on him.
They were all half weeping, half laughing, when the father turned to Billy and he said, “Billy, what were you doing down there?”
And the little boy said, “Just waiting on you, Dad, just waiting on you.”
When heartache comes your way and in the murky, muddy waters of tragedy, you’re going to feel very much like you’re holding on, just holding on for dear life because you just have the faith and you have the belief that sooner or later the Lord’s going to come. And when he does you’ll be able to say, “Just been waiting for you, Lord. Been waiting for you.”
I don’t have all the answers, I have Jesus who said “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Praise God.