Understanding & Expressing Love | Dr. Gary Chapman | City Light Church

Hey, what's up, everybody? Javen here, and we are about to jump into God's Word, and I am believing that it is going to be a blessing to you, a blessing to your world, a blessing to your life. The Bible says that at the entrance of God's Word, it brings light, it brings revelation and understanding, and I believe that's going to happen for you today in Jesus' name. Just before we go to the Word, our team is asking all the time for you to like and subscribe and hit the notification bell, all the things. I guess it helps with the algorithm. I don't know what the algorithm is, but I guess it's real, and that would help us, and it would help us get the Word of God to you. I also want to thank all of you for your financial support. Thank you for helping us bring the beautiful message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus right here to Las Vegas, the most unchurched city and the most unchurched state in America. We are doing everything we can to win souls and make disciples, raising up the next generation right here in Vegas, and if you are looking for good ground to sow into, this is it. If you want to help us reach more and more people for the Lord, this is a great place to do it. For you who are already giving, thank you. It means the world to us. I love you so much. Come on, let's jump into God's Word. I want to talk to you about the most important word in the English language and the most confusing word in the English language. I say that love is the most important word because in John chapter 13, Jesus said this, a new commandment I give you that you love one another. Here's the new part, as I have loved you. Remember he loved us while we were sinners, and then he said, by this all men will know that you're my disciples by the way you love each other. In other words, he gave the non-Christian world the right to judge whether or not we're truly disciples of Christ by the way we love each other. So I say it's the most important word, but it's also the most confusing word in the English language because we use the word love in a thousand ways. We say, for example, I love hot dogs, or in North Carolina where I live, we say I love barbecue, and in North Carolina that's always pork barbecue. Then I hear people say, oh I love the mountains, I love the beach, I love my new car, I love my dog, and then we say to a special someone, I love you. What is that supposed to mean? Hot dogs, barbecue, and you. I'm not going to talk about a thousand ways that we use the word love, I'm going to talk only about three ways that we use the word love, and I'm going to focus on the third of these. I want to begin by saying a few words about what we typically call falling in love. I doubt that

you've ever heard a lecture on falling in love, but I want to say a few words because I think it's sometimes misunderstood. This kind of love begins with a feeling. I call it the tingles. You meet someone and there's something about the way they look, the way they talk, the way they emote, that just gives you a warm feeling inside, and you want to see them again, and every time you get together it gets stronger and stronger, and eventually it becomes an emotional obsession. You literally cannot get them off your mind. You go to bed thinking about them, you wake up thinking about them, all day long you think about them. They are the most wonderful person you have ever met in your life. Now, your mother can see their flaws, but you can't. Your mother will say things like, honey, have you considered, he hasn't had a steady job in five years. I mean, and you will say, oh mom, he's just waiting for the right opportunity. So, I'm not opposed to falling in love, and people have asked me is this in the Bible, and it is. I'm not going to read it this morning, but if you want to read it, go to the Song of Solomon, chapter four and chapter five, and you'll hear a woman talking about what it's like to be in love, and you'll hear a man talking about what it's like to be in love. But I am going to say a few words about this, because I do think, I just wish people had told me the truth about this kind of love. Because what I was always told is, if you got the real thing, if you're really in love, those feelings gonna last forever. And that's not true. We studied it. Dorthy Tenet, Bridgeport, Connecticut, long-term study on the in love experience. The average lifespan of that euphoric state is two years. Some a little longer, some a little less, average two years, and we come down off the high. Now, let's be glad that we do come down off the high. If we didn't, you'd have to close down business, industry, church, education. It's hard to get anything else done when you're in love. My wife and I dated two years before we got married, and I came down pretty soon after the honeymoon.

And everything my mother had told me about her was true. And I'm sure what her mother told her about me was true. And then we disagreed on stuff. And really, when we were in love, we didn't have any disagreements. I mean, whatever the woman wanted is fine with me. It's just wonderful. And we didn't know how to solve conflicts because we'd never been trained. And so we argued because I knew I was right and she knew she was right, and I tried to convince her and she tried to convince me, and sometimes we yelled at each other in the process. I remember one night, we were in an argument and yelling at each other, and it was pouring down rain outside, and in the middle of the argument, my wife just walked out the front door into the rain. And I thought, this is bad. When a woman walks in the rain, it's bad. And then, not only did I lose the positive feelings, but then I had negative feelings toward her. I just wish people had helped me a little bit more. That's why I wrote a book some time ago. We don't have it here, but I wrote it. It's called, Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married. 12 things I know now I wish I'd have known before we got married. And one of them is, I wish I'd known that romantic love has two stages.

One is the in-love experience. The other is far more intentional and takes far more effort. I'm gonna talk about that later. And I wish they had taught me how to solve conflicts without arguing. Because you know, if you get into an argument, and if you win, they lost. No fun to live with a loser. Why would you create a loser? We're on the same team. So we gotta help young people get ready for marriage a little bit better than we've been doing. My wife and I only had one session with a pastor before we got married, and that was about the wedding. Not about marriage, you know. So let's do a better job with that. Well, the second way we use the word love is not nearly as exciting, but far more important long-term, and that is love as an attitude. That doesn't do much for you, does it? The attitude of love is, I choose to look out for your interest. I choose to do whatever I can to enrich your life. I choose to help you become the person that you believe God wants you to become. It's a way of thinking, a fixed way of thinking. And here's the good news. We choose our attitude. We don't choose our feelings.

You don't get up one morning and say, I think I'll go fall in love today. No, no, no, we don't choose. We have feelings all day about different things that happen in our lives. It's our emotional response to circumstances. We don't choose our feelings. We choose how we respond to our feelings. But we choose our attitude, and we either have an attitude of love, not just in marriage, but in all of life. We have an attitude of love. I want to enrich the lives of the people that I encounter today. Or we have an attitude of selfishness. Selfishness is, I'm in this relationship for what I can get out of it. If I'm in business, I'm in business to make money. I don't care how people feel. And two people or one person that has an attitude of selfishness will never have a healthy marriage relationship. And two selfish people will, it's impossible. And by nature, we're all self-centered. But we can choose to have an attitude of love, and we can choose to have an attitude of selfishness. I'll come back to that later. I want to move now to the third way that we use the word love, and that is love as an emotional need.

And to be honest with you, we don't talk about this much in church. But almost everyone agrees that one of our deepest emotional needs on the human level is the need to feel loved by the significant people in our lives. I like to picture inside every child, there's an emotional love tank. And if the love tank is full, they genuinely feel loved by the parents. They tend to grow up emotionally healthy. But if the love tank is empty, and they do not feel loved by their parents, they tend to grow up with many internal emotional struggles. And the teenage years, they often go looking for love in the wrong places. But I believe that adults also have an emotional love tank. And if you're married, the person you would most like to love you is your spouse. In fact, if you feel loved by your spouse, life is beautiful. But if a love tank is empty, and you feel like they don't love me, they wish they weren't married to me, life begins to look pretty dark. And just as much of the misbehavior of children grows out of an empty love tank, much of the misbehavior of adults grows out of an empty love tank. You see, a person with an empty love tank in the marriage

will be far more tempted at work if they begin to have tingles for somebody else. And that's why it's important that we learn how to meet this emotional need after we come down off the high. Now, the difficulty in doing this is we have assumed that whatever makes me feel loved will make somebody else feel loved. And that is a false assumption. I will never forget the first day that dawned on me. Couple came in, I'd never met them. I found out later they'd been married to each other for 30 years. After we had talked a bit, the wife said, Dr. Chapman, let me just tell you the problem in our marriage. I just don't feel any love coming from my husband. She said, we don't argue, we are civil, but we are like two roommates living in the same house. He does his thing, I do my thing. There's nothing going on between us, and I just feel empty. I looked at her husband and he said, I don't understand her. I do everything I can to show her that I love her. I don't know what else I could do. I said, well, what do you do to show your love to her? He said, well, I get home from work before she does. So I start the evening meal, and some nights I have it ready when she gets home. If not, she'll help me.

We eat, and after we eat, he said, I wash the dishes every night. On Thursday, he said, I vacuum the floor. On Saturday, I wash the car, I mow the grass, I help her with the laundry, and he went on, and I was beginning to wonder, what does this woman do? It sounded to me like he was doing everything. And he said, I do all of that, and she says she doesn't feel love. He said, I don't know what else I can do. I look back at her, and she started crying, and she said, he's right. He is a hardworking man, and I appreciate all those things, but we don't ever talk. We haven't talked in 20 years. He's always mowing the grass, and washing the dishes, and vacuuming. And I realized here was a sincere husband who was loving his wife in the best way he knew how, but he wasn't connecting with her emotionally. And after that, I heard similar stories over and over in my office. And I knew there had to be a pattern to what I was hearing, but I had no idea what it was. Until finally, I took time to sit down and read several years of notes that I made when I was counseling, and asked myself the question, when someone said, I feel like my spouse doesn't love me, what did they want? What were they complaining about?

And their answers fell into five categories. And I later called them the five love languages. And I started using that in my counseling. If you want her to feel loved, you've gotta learn to express your love in her language. And if you want him to feel love, you've gotta learn to express love in his language. And I would help couples discover each other's language, challenge them to go home and try it, and sometimes they would come back in two weeks and say, you know, Gary, this is making a difference. I mean, the climate's already different between us. And then I started teaching it in small classes in our church, and the same thing happened. Probably five years later, I thought, you know, if I could put this concept in a book and write it in the language of the common person, leave out psychological terms and even theological terms that many people would not understand, maybe I could help a lot of couples that I would never have time to see in my office. Little did I know that that book would sell now over 20 million copies and be published in over 60 languages around the world. People have asked me, Gary, how do you explain that? That doesn't happen to books. And I said, well, from my perspective, the short answer is God and the long answer is God. I said, I couldn't make that happen if I wanted to. But I think what's happened is people have read it,

the lights come on, they realize how they've been missing each other, emotionally, they take the quiz, they learn each other's language, they start speaking it, the love tank fills up, and then they want their brother and his wife to read it and their sister and her husband. It's gone word of mouth all over the world. So I want to share with you the five love languages. And incidentally, all of these are found in the Bible, which leads me to say this. Anything you discover in social research, if it's true, it will never contradict the Bible because truth cannot contradict truth. So let's look at them. And if you've read the book, this will be a review, get it on the front burner. If you haven't read the book, it'll be an introduction. Okay? Number one is words of affirmation. First Corinthians chapter eight in verse one says simply, love edifies, love builds up. So we'd use words that build up the person. You look nice in that outfit. I really appreciate what you did. You know one of the things I like about you? It's just looking for things that you can affirm. Now, I heard a wife sometime ago, she said to me, she said, Dr. Chapman, I know it would be good if I could give my husband some positive words,

but to be honest with you, I can't think of anything good to say about the man. And I said, well, does he ever take a shower? She said, well, yes. I said, how often? She said, well, most days. I said, if I were you, I'd start there. I said, there are men who don't. I've never met a man, a woman, a boy, or a girl that you couldn't find something good to say to them. And you give these people negative words, harsh words, critical words, angry words, it's like a dagger in their heart. You're killing them. And you're killing the relationship. For some people, words of affirmation is their love language. A second love language is receiving gifts. James chapter one in verse 17 says, all good gifts come down from the Father of lights. God is a gift-giving God. We've been singing about it. And for some people, this is their love language. Years ago, I did an undergrad and later a master's degree in cultural anthropology, studying cultures all over the world and how they're organized. We've never found a culture where gift-giving is not an expression of love. It's universal. And the gift doesn't have to be expensive.

Haven't we always said it's the thought that counts? But I remind you, it's not the thought left in your head that counts. It's the gift that came out of a thought in your head. You know, guys, you can get flowers free in the spring and summer. Just go out in your backyard and get one. You've out there, you've been watering them. Just cut one off and take it in and give it to her. You don't have any flowers in your backyard? Check out your neighbor's yard. I don't mean steal them. I mean, you say to your neighbor, my wife likes flowers like that. Could I give you $5 for that flower? I'll almost guarantee you, your neighbor will say, man, I don't want your money. Take the flower. Or you could go to a funeral. I did that not long ago. I was out at the cemetery. Service was over and family was leaving and there's flowers on the casket. As some of the family members were leaving, they were pulling out a rose. One of them said to me, Dr. Chapman, would you like to have a rose? I said, thank you, I would. Took that thing home, gave it to my wife. I told her when I got it, she still liked it.

You can pick up a stone in a city parking lot and give it to an eight-year-old boy. Boy, hey man, I found this today. I wanted you to have it. Look at the colors in here, man. If gifts is his love language, you'll find that stone in his dresser drawer when he's 23, and he'll remember the day you gave it to him. And a man say to me not long ago, he said, Dr. Chamberlain, my wife's language is gifts. He said, so I was taking a walk one morning, and I saw a bird feather, and I picked it up and brushed it off. And when I got home, I said, honey, when I was walking today, I found this bird feather, and I want to give it to you because it reminded me that you are the wind beneath my wings. And she said, oh, honey, that is so sweet. I'll guarantee you the woman still has the feather. It's in a book somewhere. She put it in there. For some people, this is their language. And then number three is acts of service. Doing something for the other person that you know they would like for you to do. First John chapter three and verse 18 says this. Love not only in word, but in deed. Do something to show your love. Now in a marriage, this is such thing as washing dishes and vacuuming floors and changing baby's diapers

and washing cars and the same thing that man was doing. He was doing that. He was speaking this one loudly and clearly. Remember the old saying, actions speak louder than words. If this is their love language, that's true. It's not true for everyone, but if this is their love language, actions will speak louder than words. And then number four is quality time. Giving them your undivided attention. I don't mean sitting on the couch watching TV together. Someone else has your attention. I mean the TV's off, the computer's down. We're sitting there, we're not answering our phone. Giving each other our full attention. The lady who said, we don't ever talk, she didn't mean they didn't discuss logistics. Who's gonna take the kids to school? Which restaurant you wanna go to? She meant we don't ever sit down and look at each other and give each other our full attention and talk about life. She was begging for quality time. Mark chapter three and verse 14 says of Jesus, he ordained 12, we call them 12 disciples. Now listen, that he might be with them and then send them forth to preach. Jesus spoke to multitudes, but he gave quality time to 12 men. Can you imagine what it would have been like to hang out with Jesus day and night

for three and a half years? That's what the disciples did. They heard everything he taught, they saw the miracles he performed, they sat around at night and talked about all that. Quality time. Incidentally, parenthetically, we can have the same experience. Jesus is not on earth now, he's with the Father now, but the Holy Spirit is here. And any moment of any day, you can sit down and open your Bible and say, God, I wanna spend some time with you today. And I wanna listen to what you have to say to me. And you read that chapter and you take your pen and underline things that jump out at you and you go back and have a conversation with God about those things. That's quality time with God. He has your full attention. TV is off, you're not paying attention to anything else. You do that, chances are you'll talk to God all day long about everything. Quality time. And then number five is physical touch. We've long known the emotional power of physical touch. That's why we pick up babies, hold them and kiss them and cuddle them. And long before the baby understands the meaning of the word love,

the baby feels love, a physical touch. Mark chapter 10, Jesus was speaking to a multitude and parents started bringing their children to Jesus so he could bless them. And the disciples rebuked the parents and said, no, no, no, no, this is for adults. Jesus rebuked the disciples and said, hey guys, let them bring the children to me for of such is the kingdom of God. And the next verse says he put his hands on them and blessed them. In fact, if you look at the lifestyle of Jesus, he was always touching people, physical touch. Now in a marriage, this is such thing as holding hands and kissing and embracing and the whole sexual part of marriage and arm around the shoulder and driving down the road, you put your hand on their leg and sitting around the house and they walk by, you trip them. I'm kidding, don't trip your spouse, okay? Now listen to me carefully Out of those five love languages each of us married or single Young or old each of us has a primary love language One of those five speaks more deeply to you emotionally than the other four Now we're not going to turn away any one of them. They're all fine But if we don't receive love in our primary language, we will not feel loved Even though the person may be speaking some of the other languages

To parents I say the question is not do you love your children? We love our children by nature The question is do your children feel loved? I? Remember 13 year old had run away from home He ended up in my office in the course of our conversation. He said to me My parents don't love me. I I Knew his parents. I knew they loved him. The problem is they had never learned this concept They assumed that he felt love because they were expressing love in some of these languages, but it was not his language So this applies in all you close human relationships. That's why after I wrote the first book which was for married couples I wrote the five love languages of children, which is for parents of children and then Parents would say dr. Chairman we used that book when they were children now They're teenagers and it doesn't seem to be working what happened And I and they asked me did their love language change when they get to be teenagers now say I don't think it changes But you got to have new dialects Because now that what you've been doing they consider childish So physical touch was their language when they were eight You could go out on the ball field and hug them right there in front of hundreds of people Don't try that when they're teenagers They're gonna push you away no, no, no, no They still need physical touch but not in front of other people stuff's going on in their brain and that's why I wrote the five love lines of teenagers for parents of teenagers and Then single adults come to me said dr. Chairman. I know you wrote that original book for couples, but I read it Why don't you write one for singles in all our relationships? So I did how it applies to your relationship with your parents It helps you understand what why you felt loved or didn't feel loved growing up and Then it also your your dating partners or your college roommates or your work associates So and I brought some of those books here, but I think most of them are gone. But whatever is left out there you all Get them if you don't you can order them, okay But but the concept is that everybody has a primary love language now in a marriage Almost never. There's a husband and wife have the same love language

it does happen, but not very often and Even when it happens, they'll likely have a different dialect of that language But for example a lady said to me she said Gary my husband I have the same love language. I said wonderful. What is it? she said acts of service, but The things I want him to do for me around the house that make me feel loved are different from the things he wants me to do around the house to make him feel Same love language just different dialects. Okay, and By nature we speak our own love language If you don't know anything about love languages and you you want to express love to someone you'll Chances are you'll you'll express it in the way that made you feel love That's precisely what I did in the early days of our marriage before I came down off the high. I Gave my wife words of affirmation I wouldn't have called it that because I didn't know anything about love languages, but I told her how nice she looked I told her how much I appreciated what she did. I told her several times a day. I love you, honey I'm so glad I married you. I well, I remember one time. I said, I love you. Love you. Love you And one night she said to me You keep on saying I love you. If you love me, why don't you help me? And I said, what do you mean? She said well, you don't ever offer to wash the dishes or vacuum the floors or clean the toilet You don't you don't offer to do anything. I Didn't say this but what I was thinking What are you talking about my mother did those things whoa We bring mama with us Hey guys, we're not married to mama And you you gals aren't married to daddy don't expect him to do what your daddy did But looking back on that my wife was telling me her love language I didn't know anything about love languages, but she was telling me her love language and I did say to her I said well, honey I don't mind washing dishes. I mean I didn't I didn't know you want me to do that and I said I I said, I don't know how to clean toilets. And she said, well, I can teach you.

So by nature, we express it in our love language. But if it's not their language, it's not going to mean to them what it would mean to us. So obviously the key, the answer is we have to learn to speak the love language of the other person. And I'm saying learn because if the primary love language of the other person is something you didn't receive as a child, it'll be a learning curve. But you can learn it. I remember the man who said to me, Dr. Chairman, my wife and I read your book, and her love language is words of affirmation. And I hate to say this, but I don't know how to say words like that. I never received any positive words growing up. All I ever heard was that I was lazy and I was never going to come out to anything and all kind of negative words. He said, I don't know how to say positive words. And I said to him, well, you are where you are. Folks, we cannot change our history. But I said, here's the good news. You can learn to speak these languages as an adult. Now that you know this is so important to her, you can learn to do this. I said, for example, can you tell me three things that you like about your spouse or three things that you think she's good at? He said, well, she's a good cook and she's a good school teacher and she's a good mother. I wrote those three words down.

And now beside each of them, I wrote two or three sentences. On the cooking, it was something like, honey, I haven't told you this, but I really appreciate all the meals you fix. You are a wonderful cook. Just two or three sentences under each one of them. And I gave him the sheet of paper. I said, now here's your assignment. This week, I want you to get in a room by yourself twice a day and read these sentences out loud so you actually hear yourself saying these words. And when you come back to see me next week, I hope you can say them to me without looking at your notes. He said, well, I'll try. Well, he came back and he did. He said them to me. I said, okay, here's your assignment. The next three weeks, I want you to give her one of these each week. I don't care what day of the week or what time of day and I don't care what order. Now, I said, the first time you say one of these sentences to her, you may want to do it when she's looking in another direction. Because to look in her eyes might just blow your mind, okay? But I said, she's looking somewhere else but you say one of these. He said, well, I'll try. Well, he came back and he had done it. I said, how did your wife respond? He said, well, after the third week, she said to me, what is going on with you? I have never heard you give me so many compliments. I said, what did you say to her? He said, I just told her, well, honey, you know we read that book and you're

speaking languages, words of affirmation and I'm just trying to put my love into words because I do love you. She said, oh, honey, that is so wonderful. You see, folks, we can learn to speak these languages. This is where attitude comes in. I remember a man, I do Saturday marriage conferences all over the country and I had a man and his wife at a break time standing right in front of me, side by side, and he said to me, look, Chairman, my wife never read your book. Her language is acts of service. But I'm going to tell you and her if it's going to take my washing dishes and my vacuuming floors for her to feel love, she can forget that. And I said to him, that's your choice. Love is a choice. And if you choose to live with a wife who has an empty love tank, that's your choice. I said, I much prefer to live with a wife that has a full love tank. I said, my wife's language is acts of service. I do wash dishes and vacuum floors and take out the trash, et cetera. And my wife tells me I'm the greatest husband in the world. And I said, I know that's a hyperbole, but it feels good to me. You understand what the man was saying? I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do. Pure selfishness. Folks, that man will never have a healthy marriage, nor will anybody that knows the love language of their spouse. and refuses to learn how to speak it. I'm gonna tell you, Christians have an advantage because we have outside help. God loved us when we were sinners. And the Bible says the love of God

is poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And we can love a spouse in the right love language even if we have negative feelings for them. I cannot tell you how many times I've given couples a six-month experiment. Would you be willing with the help of God to speak the love language of your spouse once a week for six months? And let's just see what happens. Time and time again, I've seen that person begin to melt. It might be three weeks, it might be three months, it might be four months before they begin to melt and they begin to reciprocate. Love stimulates love. The Bible says we love God because he first loved us. So either one of them can take the initiative to start it. And you can't make your spouse change, but we influence our spouses every single day by the what we do or don't do, amen.