As the executive director of a men’s ministry that has reached thousands of men and a pastoral counselor that has worked with hundreds of couples, God has shown me a thing or two about how people “tick.” The majority of my time today is spent working as a marriage counselor and I absolutely love it. You can’t hardly work in the church or counseling world today and not be at least familiar with the concept of The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. As I’m sure you are.
A few years back I began to notice couples disagreeing, that’s the polite way of saying fighting to the point of divorce, over what seemed like simple issues. Simultaneously I found myself gravitating to certain spiritual practices in a season of feeling almost burned-out in ministry. Here’s what happened.
Feeling exhausted with ministry, I knew I had to refill my soul with Jesus so I jumped into some deep inductive bible studies to quench the dry and thirsty places. The problem is that it didn’t work. I still felt empty. Our church, praise God, was hosting a worship night and I love worship. For over 2 1/2 hours our worship team played and I cried. Hands lifted high, horribly off-key voice crying out, my heart and soul were being filled. Jesus was there.
Was this encounter something supernatural about our worship team? Yes and no. Everything about Christianity is supernatural and every time we encounter the presence of the Holy Spirit it’s deeply supernatural but that wasn’t only why. The reality is that Worship is one of my love languages with God.
I have identified at least 10 of these languages, or way’s that we experience God’s love, but I’m sure there are plenty more. Worship, Prayer, Community, Scripture, Giving, Serving, Nature, Creating, Teaching, Tradition. If you read that list and saw one in particular and thought, “Well of course, that’s the most important thing in Christianity,” that is unquestionably your primary love language with God. Please realize that none of these are more important than any of the others, it’s simply more important to you. These are all from God and each one has a deep significance to different individuals.
Let me give you my personal story with this concept, often I would begin my quiet time by reading a passage of scripture but nothing happened. It felt flat. I would pray and still nothing. Is this because scripture and prayer aren’t powerful? Of course not, they simply aren’t my primary love languages with God. Please hear me, I’m not diminishing the Word or prayer and I have had incredibly significant and life changing experiences in the Word and in prayer….but they aren’t my primary ways of connecting with God.
My primary ways of experiencing God is Worship, Nature, Teaching and Community. If I’m having my quiet time now and it feels flat, then I plug in my phone and play a few worship songs first to prepare my heart. Or I grab a camp chair, stashed in my office closet, and I go outside to watch the sun rise while reading or praying. It changes everything. I also love teaching and community so every time our home group meets and I get to share something that encourages someone or we are studying a passage together, I experience God in a deep and profound way.
I have a cousin who is a pastor of a church that is heavily focused on Serving and Giving. He struggled for the first 4-5 years of the church because most of the congregation was not as bought in as he was to the concept. He would get discouraged because he would watch various people gather for pot-lucks, bible studies or even worship nights but not necessarily have the same zeal for serving out-side the church. Once I explained this concept, he saw it. They aren’t wrong, bad or immature in their faith, they simply have different ways of experiencing God’s love and presence in their lives.
God is in all of these experiences and all of them are deeply important to someone. Let me be clear, I’m not advocating that we ignore or avoid any of these languages, we need to be engaging in all of these activities to serve Jesus and love on people. We also need to be engaging with all of these to experience the full love of God in our own life. The point is to have understanding and appreciation that we all have various ways we experience God’s love. It isn’t to isolate from any of them, it’s rather to gain understanding for others who experience God differently than we do.
We also need to be engaging with all of these to experience the full love of God in our own life.
With True North there is a prayer team, men who connect with God in a deep and profound way through prayer. For years I felt ashamed because I didn’t have the same connection as these men in prayer. Yet after sharing this concept with these same men, several of them expressed that they often felt sub-par because they didn’t feel as connected through teaching or worship.
In conclusion, can you identify your primary way of experiencing God and His love for you? Can you help your congregation identify theirs? Can we learn to appreciate that God is in all of these and that He has uniquely equipped us all with distinct love languages with Him so that we can experience His love intimately?
Trey Dixon
Founder – Choosing Love Marriage Ministry
2 responses to “Experiencing God”
Bro this is good. I never thought of it like this.
Isn’t God so good that He speaks to each of us in unique ways.