How Do You Show Love?

Do you know what your love language is? We all have different ways we like to give and receive love from others. For some, it’s gift-giving or words of affirmation. Others prefer acts of service, physical touch, or quality time. Your preference could even be a blend of any of these five.

But no matter the differing ways we seek to communicate our care for others, we each have specific ways we’d most prefer to have love shown to us. But what if there were a love that transcended the confines of these five languages, one that meets all our needs and then keeps going? The good news is that the go-getting love of the Father does just that. And today through His church, His care for us—and others—is still on the move.

A Love that Transcends

Most often, when we talk about love, we think of it in terms of the limits of worldly love. But the love of God shown to us in Jesus supersedes the confines we’d like to place on it. It’s a love that’s bigger than our present understanding and frames of reference.

This is the way that God loved the world: by giving His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. Most of us are very familiar with this passage, maybe even too familiar so as to find ourselves getting complacent with its closeness to us and our “Bible belt” culture. But no matter the way we view it, the truth remains: God saw a need to restore us back to Himself. And not only did He see this need, but He took it upon Himself to fulfill it. This, in essence, is the go-getting love of the Father that takes initiative on our behalf.

Accepting and Extending

The earthly love we know and experience wanes and subsides as time and circumstances go on. We feel this through the various seasons we endure in our relationships and friendships. God’s love, though, remains constant and consistent, no matter the tides that change around us. Our role as the church, in turn, is accept this love and then to extend it to those around us.

Do you see a need in your midst? Someone grieving, in need of a warm meal or a nice, big hug? Anyone sick, in need of encouragement? Somebody else who is struggling with loneliness, just in need of a friend’s presence? We are able to tangibly reveal the love of God through the relationships and friendships around us. How can you be the hands and feet of Jesus today?

What Now?

Have you accepted this all-encompassing, already initiated love of the Father for yourself? Have you allowed it to transform the ways you interact with the world around you, with people who so desperately need to see it in tangible action? Ask the Lord to reveal how you can best serve His people and reflect His great love.