Meshugge for my Mashiach

Intimate conversations

Love languages. After I read about them and learnt what they were (yes, yes, at Focus), I immediately set out to be the curious (ok, nosey) cat and figure out which languages my roommates and friends spoke most fluently. More recently, just to see what kind of reaction I would get, while talking to someone I was just getting to know, I would randomly blurt out, "So, what's your love language?" I've gotten more than my fair share of raised eyebrows and blank or confused stares that way. Try it sometime.

All joking aside, it seems more people than not in the groups that I have been in seem to know what these are and can even quote you the five languages on the list.

The concept of love languages is based on the idea that there are certain means through which people most feel loved, and those means are different for everyone. There are generally thought to be five broad categories of love languages; Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Quality Time. There may be others.

For most of the people I have talked to, after going through the list, they generally come up with two languages that they speak most fluently, as it were. And from getting to know and observing others, you can oftentimes pin down what languages they most relate to.

Is this a frivolous exercise? Does it sound too methodical? It may or may not be, but what I am after is the point behind the exercise.

Scripture tells us to encourage each other, "all the more as you see the day approaching." This blog community was started on the basis of encouragement and a desire to uplift each other in our journeys with Abba through the desert that is this earth.

But encouragement has a different face for each person. Where one person's spirit may be lifted through inspirational words, another person may be revived by a smile and a hug.

Think of someone you have come to know well, maybe your best friend. Think of the way they see the world. What makes them smile the type of smile that lets you know they are filled with joy? That they are ready to face whatever comes next with courage? For that is what encouragement does. It spurs us on to live the life that we know in our hearts Abba wants us to live.

One of the most amazing things I realized about Messiah was his ability to relate to people in a way that mattered to them. He touched people's hearts personally, because he seemed to know exactly what approach to take with each person.

As his talmidim, we should make every effort to learn how to touch the lives of others in a way that has meaning for them, not only for us. And that means learning their love language, and then practicing it, even if, especially if it is not our language. And that means effort. And that means time.

As I write this, faces pop into my head. People I think are awesome but I don't know well because I have not taken the time to delve beneath the surface. There are those I think I know well but I haven't taken the time to speak into their hearts in the language they most understand and appreciate.

Odds are you hang out in a group of sorts. Odds are out of that group there are one or two people you know really well and vice versa. Odds are there are one or two people in that group or in other groups that are not getting the encouragement they need from the body of believers. Find them. Learn their love language. Speak it to them.

Because, for all our words and platitudes, for all our visions, if, at the end of the day the body of believers is not lifted up, if, at the end of the day, we each return to our beds bereft of peace, and hanging on to the same hurts, bitterness, and despair we have been carrying for who knows how long, then how can we expect the excitement of revival to overflow from us to those places that are in our visions?

How can we offer the balm of Gilead to strangers when we have refused to offer it first to our friends?

We cannot be Messiah's face to a dying world unless we first choose to show his heart to those who are already in his body.

posted by Handmaiden @ 3:50 pm