Tag: touch

Your love language

Karla Lees

I have been leading a book study by Danny Silk for the past five weeks, which touched on the 5 Love Languages a few weeks ago.

I was struck by the truth that I need to be a student of everyone I love, to know how to best love them.

Then the lightening bolt of uber truth crashed into my brain this morning as I reread the chapter in preparation for my group tonight:

In order to love You the way You desire to be loved, I need to enroll myself in the “God study” program for the rest of my life.

Not just to know about You, learn what You have done, promise to do and Your amazing love for us all, but to discover how You like to be loved.

The Five Love Languages (as coined by Gary Chapman) are:
○Touch
○Gifts
○Quality time
○Acts of Service
○Words of Affirmation

As I read this list , I realize that each of them got their start in God
and how HE loves!

Touch:
(Lovingly touch me)

God reaches down and hold us, picking us up where He finds us. Jesus never failed to lovingly touch those in need.

Touch can also be seen through the love shining in someone’s eyes and especially His gaze, virtually loving us.

God reminds us in His Word to reach out and touch those in need, which ties closely into…

Acts of Service:
(Show me Love)

Each time we help another in need, we are not only showing God we love Him but showing those we help His love.

When our yes is yes and our no is no, we show God we are prepared to serve as He leads, and honor the One guiding us.

And each time we set time aside in our schedule to sit at His feet and meet with him? We show Him love through…

Quality Time:
(Be with me Love)

One on one time when we make Him our sole focus delights His heart.

When we deliberately carve time out to spend it with God? It also becomes a gift…

Gifts:
(Give me Love)

When we offer something that is costly to us that we know the gift’s receiver will adore, we show our love in not only the gift itself but  the thought we invested in it.

As receivers of the best gift ever, we should be seeking to offer all we are as a gift for Him and His glory.

Which leads us to the final love language….

Words of Affirmation:
(Tell me of your Love)

As the living Word, author of the Bible, we know the power and importance of words to God. Words have the power to build up, love and encourage, heal and restore.

Our words have the same ability to bless.

When we offer Him thanks for what He has done, praise for who He is and love as one of His Beloved, God receives love through our words.

As someone whose primary love language is Words of Affirmations, I am most comfortable loving my family and friends that way.

But as I was reminded working through the Love Languages that a student is supposed to study their subject, and adjust their mindset as they learn new information and put new practices into place.

God has not held back one good blessing from each of us children. His love is passionate, determined, focused, deliberate and forever.

How we love God needs to respond to Him in a way which shows Him the depth of our love, in a way which makes Him feel loved.

Invite Him to speak to you about how you express love.  As its author and inspiration, He is bound to have insight into His heart to share with you as you ask.

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Check out the 5LoveLanguages.com to learn how you best feel love, and are likely primarily showing love to those around you.

Wanting to dive deeper into love, and connecting on purpose? Visit lovingonpurpose.com and take your love assessment.

touchy touchy

Karla Lees

There are moments when we don’t want to be touched.

When we want to stay entrenched in our fury, stand on our injustices and refuse to allow the pressure to  release.

When we want to be right even though a little voice may be poking us to tell us we aren’t.

When we have lost what feels like our world from beneath us, our grief emanating from the depths of who we are.

When the pain radiates so strongly that the lightest of touches feels like a bee sting.

When we are too touchy and prickly in our woundedness.

These are the very moments God came to touch us in.

I have had several car accidents (as a passenger) that have left my neck & shoulders exceptionally tight.  I can feel relaxed everywhere else, but not in those two spots.  Prayer helps with the pain management, yet the work I do typing daily doesn’t help. 

I need the strong touch of my massage therapist or physiotherapist to help get the knots out, and smooth away my tense muscles.

If I go too long in between, I feel it.

In the same way, we were not designed to be solitary creatures, keeping ourselves removed from God’s loving touch.

We were meant to reach out and touch God. Our bodies, minds, emotions & spirit need His touch in order for us to let go of what needs to be uprooted or sloughed off under His soothing gentle yet firm touch.

Let God help you release the tension….
Get rid of that knot of burden you refuse to take off your back…
Help your stiff neck turn towards Him again…
Soothe the raw nerves as only He can….
Bring deep penetrating rest into the areas you may not even consciously be aware need it…

In the Old Testament, God kept Himself apart, and required distance from direct contact with His people.

Jesus arrived, and turned this on its head!

Jesus touched people everywhere He went…
the hurting,
the diseased,
the paralyzed,
the lonely,
the beggars,
the lepers,
the outcasts,
the grieving,
the children,
the ones seeking their last hope,
the untouchables,
even the dead.

Against all traditional beliefs in how God should treat people, God in Jesus touched lives beyond what we believed possible in a holy God.

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He touched our hearts as He did.

For all the world to see, Jesus reached out and embraced the cross. That touch reverberated through out known time and space, rippling out into heaven and eternity.

When He allowed man to touch Him, wound Him over & over, and crucify Him, He knew intimately how some touches can devastate us.

When He rose from the dead, He knew how much those He had left behind, His disciples & followers would need the real touch only a loving God can bring:
compassion
forgiveness
mercy
love
grace
kindness

He still offers this to us each and every day.

Are you ready for God to collide with you right where you are at? Embrace you, holding you closer than you can dare to imagine?

God’s touch brings the hurting, broken and dead areas in us back to life again.

Reach out and touch His outstretched hand.

All it takes is one touch for your life to change.

hands…

Karla Lees

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Hands speak of so much to us:

Words, in action.
Comfort as we offer a hand.
Provision, from the work of our hands.
Therapy, healing- with a touch of a hand, release can occur.

Whether your hands are small (like  Jewel’s hit song “Hands”.) or large, they have the potential to impact not only your life but the life of those around you.

My grandmothers had very different hands.

One used hers to serve in the hospital and auxiliary.

The other cleaned, and grew gardens of flowers & produce, offering the surplus to those in need.

Both created with yarn, and could be counted on for a hug if you felt blue.
One loved to talk on the phone, the one further away loved to talk with her hands and write letters in cards she designed with pressed flowers from her garden on the covers.

They impacted those who knew them with the work of their hands.

You too can do the same.

God has placed each of us in the right time and place to lend a hand, to serve someone in need.

He offered His hands willingly to serve all humanity, including outsiders, lepers, the social outcasts and oppressed peoples.

His hands have never stopped reaching for us, to this day, evening, moment in time.

He gives us a hand when we offer ours to Him, to use as He would lead, to touch all those He had for us to bless and serve with our willing hands.

The Newsboys have captured the image of hands beautifully in their song, “Hands & Feet”

An image flashed across my T.V. screen, another broken heart comes into view. I saw the pain and I turned my back.Why can’t I do the things I want to?

I am willing yet am so afraid
you give me strength when I say …

Chorus: I wanna be your hands, I wanna be your feet. I’ll go where you send me, go where you send me. I’ll be your hands, I’ll be your feet. I’ll go where you send me, go where you send me
And I’ll try, yeah I’ll try, to touch the world like you touched my life
And I’ll find my way
To be your hands

I’ll abandon every selfish thought
I surrender everything I’ve got
You can have everything I am
And perfect everything I’m not

I am willing, I’m not afraid
you give me strength when I say …

Repeat Chorus

This is the last time I turn my back on you. From now on I’ll go out, send me where you want me to. I finally have a mission, I promise I’ll complete.
I don’t need excuses
when I am your hands and feet
I am your hands and feet.