Showing our Love

As most of you already know, I was lucky enough to meet a wonderful guy over five years ago, who I am now lucky enough to call my husband.  Because of this, I find myself reading many devotions for couples.  One I am working my way through lately has been “The Five Love Languages”.  This book starts with a man that asks, “What happens to the love after the marriage?”.  Being divorced three times, he couldn’t figure out how it is possible that while dating, you are in blissful love, but he finds that once the honeymoon is over it comes tumbling down.  The book goes on into detail about 5 love languages ( words of affirmation, gifts, physical touch, acts of service and quality time).  Each person has a specific love language that they “speak”.  It is important to understand your spouse’s love language and show your love to them in their own language (even though in most cases, their language is not your own). 

So this is what I got thinking...  Over and over again in the bible the church of God is referred to as the “Bride” (rev 21:2, to name one).  How true is it that we also have this “honeymoon stage”, when we meet with Christ.  So many times, we worship God and show him our love through our love language, and then our fire grows dimmer and dimmer throughout the years.  I know for myself growing up I found myself on what we call a “camp-high” for the first few weeks after returning from camp each summer and by the time winter rolled around, it was back to meeting up with Christ once, maybe twice a week. 

So, in a way we can ask a similar question as the man did in the book, “What happens to the love after the repentance?”.   Here’s the thing... God’s love never changes... if anything is changing it is us.  In Hebrews it says God is the same yesterday, today and forever.  In a way, God shows us his love throughout all the love languages.  He speaks loving words to us all the time through his Holy Word, the Bible, he blesses us with everything we own, he puts his loving arms around us in times of need, and most importantly, the largest act of service is sending us his Son to die for us.  So the one left is quality time... the thing is God is always waiting for this quality time, but we need to come and give our time away.  God is a loving God, we just need to show him our love, in whatever language that may be.  We can have our quiet time with him daily (our quality time), we can serve others (as everything we do unto others we do unto him), we can give gifts to our God (this is how the three wise men showed their love), and we can worship him with our words and song.

Now comes the hard part, how are we showing our love to God?  Do we only do it once a week at church, or is it daily?  Being newlywed, I know how much work must be done to keep a marriage together, and this work needs to be daily.  Even when things get tough, we need to show that love to each other, just as when we go through trials, we need to show our love and appreciation to God.