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34 – Can You Hear God’s “I Love You”?
Every day, in countless ways, God is saying to each of us, “I love you.” So why do so many people struggle with feeling His love? Why do we fall into doubt about the reality of God’s love for us? What if we can’t hear or feel it, no matter how hard we try? Come join us as we explore not just the reality of God’s love for us, but the need to understand how we receive and perceive love. Because more often than not, the problem isn’t listening, but learning and understanding God’s language of love.
Show Notes
Few occupations or vocations require the level of vulnerability and authenticity of writing. But the only way we can be vulnerable and authentic is if we’re secure in the knowledge that the One who gave us this task did so because of His love for us. Because He knows and loves us better than anyone else, and because He seeks to speak through us, to use us to share truths that only we can share because of our individual relationships with Him.
The challenge comes when we start to doubt God’s love for us. When we start to wonder if God truly cherishes us. When we don’t “feel” His love as we think others do. Because without that grounding in the Father’s sure love for us, it’s so easy to lose our focus and voice, to lose our confidence not just in ourselves and our ability to write, but in the God about whom we write.
So, writers, here’s what we want to know today: Are you hearing God when He says, “I love you”?
How We Can Perceive and Receive God’s Love
- Look at the evidence in God’s actions: That He sent Jesus to Give His life for us, that He takes care of us, that He gives us gifts.
- Look at the evidence in God’s word: Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love…”
- Look at the evidence in the way He loves us through others.
- Understand what your “love language” (as described by Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages) is for receiving love.
- Words of affirmation
- Receiving gifts
- Quality time
- Acts of service
- Physical touch
- Choose to walk in trust even when you don’t “feel” it.
- Look to your secondary love language as well. Most people have more than one.
Hosea 2:19-20
“I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me, in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.”
God has acted on His love for each of us. He has betrothed us to Him because of His unending love for us. And as we learn to hear and see the ways He shows us that love, as we grow better acquainted with His love languages and His expressions of that love, we come to know Him. When we do that, we can rest secure in His love, and that will shine in our writing so that those who read our work will come to know Him too. Because, ultimately, that’s what draws people. Not our skill with words, but the powerful, all-encompassing love of God.
Books mentioned in this podcast
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
We want to hear from you!
What’s your love language? Are you hearing God’s “I Love You”?
Tweetable
Everyday, God is saying, “I love you.” Can’t hear it? Then don’t miss this podcast!
I never thought of it this way before. It just never clicked before.
Correlating the 5 love languages with how He shows His love for us. I’m at a season where I’ve really been struggling to believe in words being spoken over my life. Promises. They were just words. I’ve said this to people who are close to me: it’s harmful to me when you say things and not follow through. My love language is receiving gifts and acts of service. I value actions – tangible things that I can see, ones that are acted out – more than words. It makes so much sense that if people in my life care enough to show their love to me through the love language that touches me most, how much more God?
Anyway, so many things to think about with this podcast – even in the area of acting out trust. Thank you.
“It makes so much sense that if people in my life care enough to show their love to me through the love language that touches me most, how much more God?” What an excellent way to phrase that, Joanna! Amen!
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Joanna. They blessed me.