Gary Chapman | Essentials of a Healthy Marriage (11/13/2013)

how many of you were in Chapel today okay and how many of you are here tonight who are married presently married all right assume the rest of you are single so I hope what I say will apply to both groups here's what I hope is going to happen tonight for those of you that are married I hope that your marriage will get better because we spend a few minutes together tonight would that be all right with you marriage is either get better or they get worse they never stand still and I certainly hope your marriage will not get worse because I came and for those of you are single I hope that your relationships will get better and not worse my second desire is that you will learn some things that you will find so helpful that you will want to share them with your friends who are not here tonight but who desperately need help do you know the people I'm talking about and my third desire is that we can have a little fun while we do this now I need people who don't believe in fun you talk about fun and they say oh no I'm a Christian I do want to speak on the topic of two essentials to a long-term healthy marriage whether you're married or whether you're single I think you'll find application to what I'm going to say maybe I should ask before I go any further if anyone here has ever lived in North Carolina where I live keep your hand up in case I need an interpreter ask these people what did he say all right I believe the two essentials are number one that the individuals in that marriage must feel loved and appreciated if it's to be a long-term healthy marriage now you can have a long-term marriage without this we all know that there are thousands of couples who are married and been married for 20 and 30 years they live in the same house but they don't have a healthy marriage they live as roommates in the same house processing logistics but they don't have anything near what the Bible calls becoming one flesh deep deep intimacy they don't they don't have that if you're going to have that kind of marriage you must feel loved and appreciated by your spouse and so I want to talk just a bit about what is my most popular book and that is the five love languages because here's the problem I discovered this years ago that what makes one person feel loved does not make another person feel loved never forget the first time I encountered this in my office a couple came in I found out later they've been married to each other for 30 years they sat down and the wife began the conversation and she said dr. Chapman I want you to know right up front that we don't have any money problems I read in the book she said that the money was the biggest problem in marriage but not for us we don't have any money problems and I want you to know that we don't argue we don't believe in arguing and she went on with two or three more positive things and I'm beginning to wonder did they come in here to tell me what a good marriage they have but then she started crying she stabbed a dr. Chapman the problem is I just don't feel any love coming from him she said it's just like we're roommates living in the same bouncing up so empty and you just went on and all alone well when she finished I looked over at him and he said I don't understand her I do everything I know to show her that I love her she said sir and says she doesn't feel loved he said I don't know what else to do I said well what do you do to show that you love her he said well I get home from work before she does so I start the evening meal he said sometimes I'll have it ready if not she helps me and we finish and we eat together and it said after dinner I wash the dishes and he said on Thursday nights I vacuum the floor and he said every Saturday I'll wash the car and he said I walked the dog after I won't get through with the dishes every night and he said he said I mow the grass every Saturday he said I help her with the laundry and he went on and I was beginning to wonder what does this woman do it seemed to me like he was doing everything and he said I'd do all these things to show her that I love her and she sits there and says she doesn't feel love he says I don't know what else to do I look back at her she said dog 7 he's right he's a hard-working man she's that with dog did 7 we don't ever talk we haven't talked in 30 years said he's always mowing the grass washing the dishes up you understand what's going on a sincere husband who is loving his wife in the best way he knows how to express it and a wife who's not getting it and over the next 15 years I heard that story over and over and over and over and over in my office and I knew that there was a pattern to what I was hearing but I didn't know what it was so finally I sat down and read 12 years of notes that I made when I was counseling people and ask myself the question when someone set in my office and said I feel like my spouse doesn't love me what did they want what were they complaining about and their answers fell into five categories and I later call them the five love languages I wasn't dogmatic that there's only five but now that the books been out for 20 years and sold over eight million copies in English and been translated in 50 languages around the world and no one has come back with a convincing sixth or seventh love language I'm a little more dogmatic people have said to me dr. Chapman there's a sixth language and I say what and they say chocolate and I say well if they bought it it's a gift if they made it it's an active service and one guy did say six love language is shopping and I said well it sounds a lot like quality time to me she wants you to be with her so I want to just recap these briefly for you if you read the book it'll be a review if you haven't read the book it'll be an introduction love language number one is words of affirmation using words to affirm the other person you look nice in that outfit I really appreciate what you did you can focus on the way they look on the way they talk on something they've done for you you can focus on their personality but you're using words to affirm them first Corinthians chapter 8 verse 1 love edifies love builds up so one way to build up a person is to give them words of encouragement now I meet people like a lady some time ago said to me she said Gary I know it would be good if I could give my husband some positive words she said but to be honest with you I can't think of anything good to say about the man and I said well does he ever take a shower and she said well yes I said how often she said everyday I said if I were you I'd start there I appreciate you taking a shower there are men who don't I have never met a man never met a woman that you couldn't find something good to say about them proverbs chapter 28 verse 18 no chapter 18 verse 21 says life and death are in the power of the tongue you can kill your spouse or give them life by the way you talk to them same thing is true about your children you see ladies when you give him a positive word there's something inside of him that wants to be better and when you give him a critical word there's something inside of him that wants to shoot you I remember when our children were little my wife would tell our children what a great father I was and I knew she was going to be on reality a lot of the times but every time she told him how great I was it made me want to be as good as she said I was it's powerful to give your spouse or anyone else for that matter positive words a second love languages gifts Ephesians 5:25 says husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it in that illustration Christ Himself is the gift the scriptures say that all good gifts come down from God it's Universal to give gifts as an expression of love now the gift need not be expensive haven't we always said it's the thought that counts but I remind you it's not the thought left in your head that counts it's the gift that came out of the thought in your head you know guys you can get flowers free a good bit of the year just go out in your backyard and pick one that's what your kids do how many mothers have ever received a dandelion from your kids yeah yeah now guys I'm not suggesting dandelions okay you don't have any flowers in your backyard your neighbor's yard Ashley they'll give you a flower or you could go to a funeral and ask the family they'll give you a flower I did that not long ago I went to a funeral and after the funeral the church had a luncheon for the family and I went to the luncheon and I walked in and I noticed they had these vases of red roses so when I got ready to go I just said to one of the ladies I said would you mind if I take one of those roses to my wife she said all dr. Chapman you can have this whole vase I'll go home with two dozen red roses I told her where I got them she still liked them you can pick up a stone in a city parking lot and take it home and give it to an eight-year-old boy and say hey man I found this today look at the colors in here I thought about you I wanted you to have this if gifts is his love language when he's 23 you will find it in his dresser drawer and he'll remember the day you gave it to it gifts are powerful communicators and for some people they speak very deeply of love number three is acts of service acts of service first John chapter three verse eighteen love not only in word but in deed do something to show your love not a marriage that is such things as cooking meals incidentally anybody here still cook a few up yeah yeah my son came home he didn't get married till he was 34 people would ask him when he won't get married when he gonna get married and he would say when you grew up in the home of marriage counselor you're very careful but at any rate after he got married he came home six months later and he said dad I got a bonus when I married Amy I said really he said yeah dad she likes to cook he said I never thought I'd find a girl in my generation who liked to cook and then my daughter married a man that liked to cook so my kids got it made washing dishes is an act of service for those of you that are married who washes dishes at your house yeah yeah yeah okay yeah vacuuming floors is an act of service yeah for those reasons single answer these questions for your mom and daddy you know just looking back on your own you own your home okay getting white spots off the mirror yeah cleaning the toilet a lot of you nobody's cleaning the toilet walking the dog mowing the grass washing the car all those things that guy was doing I talked about while ago he was doing acts of service acts of service and for some people this is what communicates that you love them number four is spending quality time by which I mean you give them your undivided attention mark chapter three and verse 14 says of Jesus that he ordained twelve we call them the twelve disciples now listen that he might be with them Jesus preached the multitudes but he had twelve men that he gave quality time to now in a marriage I'm not talking about sitting in the same room and the two of you watching television someone else has your attention I'm talking about sitting in the same room on the couch with the TV off looking at each other and talking those of you that are married do you have couches what do you do with those things have you ever tried this sitting on the couch with the TV off looking at each other it can be scary at first and talking to each other or taking a walk down the road just the two of you in talking or going out to eat assuming you talk to each other have you ever noticed in a restaurant you can almost always tell the difference between dating couples and married couples dating couples will look at each other and talk married couples sit there and you'd think they went there to eat if I sit on the couch with my wife and give her 20 minutes looking listening interacting with her I have given her 20 minutes of my life and she has done the same for me it's a powerful communicator when you give someone your undivided attention number 5 is physical touch we've long known the emotional power of physical touch that's why we pick up babies and hold them and kiss them and cuddle them and long before the baby understands the meaning of the word love the baby feels loved by physical touch now in a marriage I'm talking about such things as holding hands kissing embracing the whole sexual part of the marriage arm around the shoulder driving down the road you put your hand on their leg sitting around the house and they walk by and you trip them I'm kidding I'm kidding as a matter of fact if you're married why don't you reach over right now and just touch each other and all you singles give an appropriate touch to somebody beside of you yeah it's alright come on you don't have to be married to touch yeah yeah physical touch now listen to me carefully out of those five love languages each of us married or single young or old each of us has a primary love language one of those five speaks more deeply to us emotionally than the other four now we can receive love in all five but if we had to give up one we'd give up this one or this one or this one but not this one this is the one that really makes me feel loved it's very similar to spoken language every one of us grew up speaking a language with a dialect I grew up speaking English southern style but everyone grows up speaking a language with a dialect and that's the one you understand best the same thing is true with love now once in a while someone says to me I don't know Gary I think two of those are just about equal for me and my response is fine we'll give you two love languages will call you bilingual but most of us have a primary love language a secondary love language and then the other three fall in line under that in a marriage seldom does a husband and wife have the same love language it happens but not very often and by nature we speak our own language so whatever makes me feel loved is what I'm going to do for my spouse so let's say that words of affirmation is my language and I don't know anything about love languages but I get married what am I going to do for my wife I'm going to give her words of affirmation I'm going to tell her how nice she looks I'm going to know how much I appreciate what she did I'll probably tell her a dozen times a day honey I love you I cannot tell you how much I love you I love you so much but let's say words is not her language let's say acts of service is her language but I don't ever do anything to help her it's just a matter of time one night she's going to say to me you keep on saying I love you I love you I love you if you love me why don't you help me and I will be blown out of the saddle why because in my mind I've been loving her in her mind if I loved her I'd be helping her I believe there are literally thousands of married couples who are loving each other but they're not connecting with each other and some of them been like this for twenty and thirty years and in their minds they're loving the other person but the mind of the other person they're not feeling loved so the key is that we must learn to speak the language of the other person now someone says Gary okay I get it I get it I get it but what if the love language of the spouse is something that doesn't come natural for you and my answer so you learn it my wife's language is acts of service one of the things I do for her is vak in the floors now you don't know me well but do you think that vacuuming floors comes natural for me my mother made me vacuum all through junior high high school I could not go play ball on Saturday until I vacuum the house in those days I said to myself if I ever get out of here one thing I'm not going to do I am NOT going to vacuum floors you could not pay me enough to vacuum floors it's only one reason I vacuum floors l.o.v.e you see when it doesn't come natural it's a greater expression of love my wife knows every time I vacuum the floor it's nothing but 100% pure unadulterated love and I get credit for the whole thing we were sitting around the other night my wife said you know honey these blinds are getting dusty I looked over the blinds and I said they are aren't they honey that's all I said but I heard the lady I catalogued it so two mornings later was a Friday morning I was getting ready to leave later that day to go to a marriage seminar it's about 6:30 on Friday morning I was in there vacuuming those blinds she stumbled in said honey what are you doing I said honey I'm making love big smile broke on her face and she said you have got to be the greatest husband in the world now my love language is words of affirmation so I said to her tell me one more time babe how great am i she told me again I get on the plane with a full love tank she goes back to finish her nap with a full love tank why I spoke her language and she spoke my language you understand why I would say that what I've just shared with you you could literally save thousands of marriages in fact every Saturday when I lead seminars I'll have at least half a dozen couples come up and say Gary we were that close to divorce and somebody gave us a copy of your book and it was like the lights came on and we looked back over our marriage and realized how we had missed each other for years and we took the test and figured out what our language is and we tried it and our whole marriage turn around you see because we so desperately need love when you start getting it in the right language you are emotionally drawn to that other person can emotional law be reborn in a marriage you bet you bet it doesn't come with the passing of time it comes with knowledge and it comes with the willingness to do it now I did meet one man who said to me he said I understand that love language stuff he said I understand he said my wife's language is acts of service and he said but I'm just going to tell you right now if it's going to take my washing dishes and vacuuming floors and doing the laundry you can forget about that and I said well that's your choice if you want to live with a woman who has an empty love tank that's your choice I much prefer to live with a wife who has a full love tank if washing dishes and vacuuming floors and doing the laundry is going to make my wife feel loved I say bring on the laundry and give me the vacuum cleaner it's a small price to pay to live with a happy woman you see the emotional need for love affects everything else in the marriage relationship and incidentally I won't talk about it now but we can if you want to in the QA the same principle applies to raising children every child has a primary love language it's not enough for parents to be sincere almost all parents love their children but not all children feel loved so we have to learn how to love children you know it's very been very interesting to me in that little in the in Titus chapter 4 I think it is where it says the older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands and to love their children you read that and ask what you have to have a class in learning to love your husband and your kids I thought mothers just naturally love their children what has to be learned I believe is how to express love in a way that's going to be meaningful to the child and meaningful to the adult ok all right let me stop there with that the second essential in having a good healthy long-term marriage is that you deal effectively with your failures now I I gave an overview of this this morning in Chapel but many of you are not in chapel so I'm going to take five minutes or so here and just recap what I've said this morning in Chapel and then I want to go a little further because I didn't have time to get to some things I want to get to tonight what I discovered a few years ago with the help of dr. Jennifer Thomas who is a Christian counselor in my city who came to me with this idea that people also have not only loved languages but they have apologi languages and I said to her what do you mean by that and she said well I think that just like in your love language book people have different languages I think that people have different ideas about what it means to apologize the second essentially is that we have to deal effectively with our failures because if you don't deal effectively with your failures you're going to create a wall between the two of you it happens one offense at a time somebody does or says something or fails to do or say something and there's an offense and we ignore it and act like nothing happened we put a block in a wall and then there's another experience than another and we build a wall between the two of us and you're not going to have a healthy marriage you can live forever in the same house but if there's a wall between the two of you it's not going to be a healthy marriage we've got to deal effectively with our failures and that is apologizing and forgiving so what I shared this morning was the results of two years of research that we did across the country asking thousands of people to questions when you apologize what do you typically say or do and when someone apologizes to you what do you want to hear them say and do and their answers fell into five categories I promise you we were not looking for five I like five but we weren't looking for five and I just want to give them to you recap them for you because most of you were here this morning one is expressing regret I'm sorry should not have done that I deeply regret what I've done sorry that I lost my temper and yelled at you sorry that I came home late and we've missed the program tell them what you're sorry for and they'll never put a butt in there don't say I'm sorry that I lost temper but if you had not then I would not okay expressing regret this morning I gave scriptures for these I won't give the scriptures tonight you can find them if you if you want to get them from this morning's Apple program a second language of apology is accepting responsibility I was wrong I was wrong no excuse for what I did I accept responsibility for what I did and for some people this is what they consider to be an apology and if you don't admit that you're wrong in their mind you have not apologized incidentally this is the first step in teaching children how to apologize help them accept responsibility for their behavior a three-year-old or four-year-old breaks a cookie and says it broke it broke and the parent says honey let's say that a different way I broke the cookie it is not a sin to break a cookie but we're helping that child accept responsibility for their behavior my son was probably six or seven when he accidentally knocked the glass off the table it hit the kitchen floor and shattered I was in the kitchen so I looked at him and he said it did it by itself and I said Derrick let's say that a different way I accidentally knocked the glass off the table and he said I accidentally knocked the glass off the table it's not a sin to accidentally knock a glass off a table I'm just trying to help him accept responsibility for what he did I was wrong should not have done that okay the third apology language is offering to make restitution offering to make restitution what can I do to make this up to you how can I make things right between us I know I've hurt you deeply but I value our relationship and I want to make things right what can I do and for some people this is what it means to a sighs and if you don't offer to make restitution in their mind you have not yet apologized number four is genuinely repenting or expressing the desire to change I don't like the fact that I did this again I know I did the same thing last week and I don't like this can we talk I want to find a way to break this habit because I don't like this I don't want to keep doing this and for some people if you don't give evidence that you are trying to change the behavior they're going to have a hard time forgiving you because in their mind you have not apologized unless you're trying to change the behavior and the number five is requesting forgiveness will you please forgive me I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me I value our relationship and I hope you can forgive me now I said this morning I fully admit that I never thought of this as a way of apologizing because in my mind I thought people should know if you're apologizing in any way don't they know you want to be forgiven why do you have to ask them to forgive you but for some people this is what it means to apologize that you're asking for forgiveness and if you don't ask forgiveness in their mind you've not apologized so here's what's happened as I see it in marriages is that there has been a fair amount of apology but often we are apologizing in the way our parents taught us to apologize that's where we get these languages but the other person grew up in a different family and they have a different idea of what it means to apologize so you say I'm sorry and they're thinking you certainly are is there anything else you'd like to say you think you've apologized and they're saying to you you have not apologized they're waiting for you to say one of these other things so in a family I'm encouraging you to process this and and see what each of you considers to be an apology particularly marriage because you came out of different families you're going to teach your children hopefully you're going to teach your children how to apologize and you start with what I said earlier teaching them to accept responsibility but you came out of different families and you need to learn what each of you considers to be an apology and there's one other element here and that is the nature of the offense will also affect how you apologize if it's a minor offense then just to speak the one language that's that communicates to them is probably going to be satisfactory but if it's a major offense I suggest you use all five and and I'm sorry it's not going to be enough in in many in many instances so what I suggested this morning what I'm suggesting you tonight is that we learn in the family how to express apology to each other and then we choose to forgive forgiveness is the next step an offense is committed an apology is made and then forgiveness now I want to talk a little more tonight about forgiveness that I didn't have time to talk about this morning Ephesians 4:32 says we are to forgive each other listen carefully we are to forgive each other just as in Christ God forgave you in other words God is our model in forgiving and where did forgive others in the same way that God forgives us how does God forgive us if we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us God does not just blanket forgive everybody God forgives people who are willing to confess to apologise to acknowledge their failure and reach out to him and because Christ paid our penalty God can forgive us and still be adjust God now that's the model for us an offense is committed we apologize and the person chooses to forgive us now I just stated these things this morning but I want to I want to speak a little more about them tonight I want to give you three or four or five statements on what forgiveness does not do because there's a lot of fuzzy thinking about this among a lot of us number one forgiveness does not destroy our memory you've heard people say perhaps if you have not forgotten you have not forgiven I don't think that's true at all everything that's ever happened to us in our whole life is printed in the brain and from time to time the memory of what they did to you is going to come back to your mind even after you chose they've even after they've apologized and you've forgiven them it's going to come back and with that memory is going to come emotions because forgiveness does not erase the emotions so you remember what they did and you have pain again it may be hurt it may be anger but you have emotions that come again with the memory now what are you going to do if they send they apologize you chose to forgive them but here you are three months three years later and the memory comes back and the pain comes back what are you gonna do with that I suggest you take it to God and you say to God Lord you know what I'm remembering tonight and you know what I'm feeling again but I thank you that that's forgiven now help me to do something that's worthwhile today and you don't allow the memory or the emotions of the past to mess up a new day thirdly forgiveness does not remove all the consequences of sin in our day in some circles you almost get the idea that sin is not all that bad God will forgive you and it'll all be over and done are what you've done everything is going to be okay no question about it God will forgive you if you confess your sin what confession and forgiveness does not remove all the consequences of sin the husband who falls in love with another woman walks off and leave his what leaves his wife and two kids eventually goes off and marries the other lady ten years later he may come to know Christ as his Savior he may confess his sins to God and he may come back and confess and apologize to his wife and to his three children and they may well forgive him and they should forgive him but it doesn't bring back the lost time with those kids and it doesn't bring back the lost time with that wife and there are a thousand other illustrations we are never better for having sinned we're always worse for having sinned a lot of biblical examples of that fourth forgiveness does not rebuild trust I often have people say to me well you know I forgave him or I forgave her but to be very honest with you I don't trust them and they're almost feeling guilty that they don't trust them and I say welcome to the human race because forgiveness does not restore trust forgiveness opens the door to the possibility that trust can be restored often I encounter this most often and most strongly where one of them has been sexually unfaithful to the other and eventually they wake up and they apologize when they come back and they confess and they apologize and that person chooses to forgive them but they still don't trust them and I say to the one who offended if you want your spouse to trust you again then you must be trustworthy they lost trust because you were untrustworthy now you must be trustworthy and if you want a practical way to do that you say to your spouse my cellphone is yours anytime you want to check it my computer is yours anytime you want to look at it and if I tell you that I'm going over to George's house to help him work on this car it's fine with if you call over there and make sure I'm there I am through with deceit my life is an open book and if you take that response in due time your spouse will come to trust you again so forgiveness does not restore trust it opens the door to the possibility of trust and number five forgiveness does not always result in reconciliation in the illustration I just gave you of the husband who left and and remarried his wife can forgive him his children from forgive him but they are not reconciled reconciliation means it goes back to where it was and we start again he's already remarried they're not going to be reconciled so forgiveness does not always equal reconciliation now here's a here's a key question and that is what if the person offends you but they don't apologize well the Bible is very very clear on what were to do at this point Luke chapter 17 verses 3 & 4 Jesus said very clearly if your brother sins against you rebuke him and if he repents forgive him a very clear picture offense committed they don't come to apologize you go to them and confront them with what's happened and if they repent you forgive them that's the ideal pattern if they don't come to apologize you go to them now the word rebuke literally means to put a weight upon it's like putting a paperweight on the stack of papers if you've ever been rebuked that's what it feels like that kind of lay something on you I like to say we lovingly confront them I get the loving part from Galatians chapter 6 and verse 1 that says if you see a brother overtaken in a fault those of you who are spirits will go restores with such a one in a spirit of meekness because next time you may be the one that's sinning so we go lovingly confront it's it's it's it's something like this you go to them and say I really value our relationship and maybe I have misread this whole thing but I'm feeling hurt and I'm feeling angry and because I value our relationship I want to share this with you that when you did dah dah dah dah dah I was crushed inside and you explain to them what you're thinking what you're feeling and how hurts you are and you come back and say maybe I misread the whole thing but I'm coming to you because I want to get this thing right if we can and you take that kind of loving approach you make it easier for them to say I was wrong should not have done that and go ahead and give you an apology so that you can then forgive them that's the ideal now let's say we do that but our spouse or anyone else does not apologize even after we've confronted them here here for example is a husband who has been unfaithful to his wife she confronts him with that he denies it that's almost always the first response no no nothing's nothing's going on were just friends nothing nothing nothing but then two months later she finds out the real truth and she confronts him with that and he says okay you're right but if you think I'm going to break this relationship off you're wrong if you want to leave me fine but I'm not going to break this off so she's confronted but he didn't repent and so she holds all this pain inside all this hurt inside and then three months later she finally goes to her pastor and shares her pain and her hurt and her sorrow and her anger and all that's going on inside of her and the pastor because he wants to help her says to her you're going to have to forgive him or it's going to kill you and now she goes home feeling guilty because she can't forgive him now my question is this has God forgiven him not if he's still living in sin God has not forgiven him so the pastor is asking her to do something that even God hasn't done now this is why I choose to use the word release rather than forgive you release that husband to God and you release your anger to God knowing that God is a just God and a loving God and if that husband ever repents God will forgive him and when he repents you can forgive him but to put the pressure of a wife on a wife to forgive a husband whom God hasn't forgiven I think is undue pressure even though the pastor's trying to help her and I understand what the pastor's trying to do he's trying to get her to let go of the anger and the hurt inside of her so that she can go on with her life and that is that is a worthy objective and I'm not going to quibble about it but I just prefer to use the word release and I can't tell you how many people have said to me when I've shared what I'm sharing with you Gary for the first time in my life it makes sense to me yes I can release him to God I can release her to God and I can release my anger to God and that's what God wants you to do release your anger to him don't hold anger inside anger held inside becomes sinful it becomes bitterness it becomes hatred both of which are condemned in the Bible we're not to hold that anger inside if they don't repent after we confront them were to release them to God biblical examples of that for example Paul said about Alexander the coppersmith in 2nd Timothy chapter 4 he's writing to Timothy said Timothy Alexander the coppersmith did me great evil the Lord will reward him for what he's done didn't say forgave him he turned him over to God and he said Timothy keep an eye out for this man because he'll probably also do you wrong so we released the person to God and then so the first step is we lovingly confront the second step is we release them to God if they don't don't repent the third step is we pray for them and stand ready to forgive them we are always ready to forgive them remember the prayer of Jesus on the cross Father forgive them for they know not what they do read it carefully it's a prayer not a proclamation he was not declaring them forgiven he was praying that they would be forgiven and a few weeks later Peter is preaching to the same group that killed Jesus and said you have killed the King of glory and I call you to repent and the Bible says many of them believe in many of the priests believed so Jesus was dying so they could be forgiven and he was praying for their forgiveness we should always pray that they will come to repentance so that we can forgive them and then number four which you will never do without the help of God is you return good for evil you return good for evil Romans chapter 12 verse 19 do not take revenge on the contrary if your enemy is hungry feed him if he's thirsty give him something to drink in so doing you heap burning coals on his head do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good I don't think you'll do that without the help of God that's not natural to return good for evil I remember the wife who said to me Gary I my husband had left me had moved in with another lady and I was praying one day and I read this passage and I felt God say to me so clearly you need to bake your husband's favorite pie and take it over there and give it to him and she said I said God if I bake his pie and take it over there I'll throw it in his face and she said for two or three days I struggled with that and eventually I said okay God so I baked his favourite pie I went over to his apartment and knocked on his door and when he came to the door I talked to him through the screen door and just said to him when I was reading the scripture the other day God impressed me on me to bake your pie your favorite pie and to bring it to you and so I brought it he opened the door and took the pie and said well that's very kind of you he closed the door and went back in his apartment she said Gary that was the first step in our two-year process of reconciliation she said I hate to think what would have happened if I had not listened to God and return good for evil you say you can't make somebody reconcile but if you follow the pattern I just laid out for you you're doing exactly what the Bible teaches us to do and you are an instrument in the hand of God to influence that other person they may or may not come back and reconcile with you but you can look yourself in the mirror you can look God in the face and you can go on with your life all right let me stop and let me open it up for questions you can just get up and walk to the mic that probably the fastest thing while you're walking I'll just say this if you get these two things in place if you learn how to speak each other's love language and you learn how to apologize to each other effectively and you choose to forgive each other you can have a healthy long-term marriage you do not have to be perfect to have a good marriage but you do have to deal effectively with your figures well this is unlike all the other meetings I've had with students they're asking questions with that yes go ahead yes okay okay she's saying she feels like her love language changed after she got married and before marriage the lovely her love language was gifts after she got married she feels like it's acts of service my answer is this I think that the love language like many other personality traits tends to stay with us for a lifetime however in certain life situations one of the other love languages may become more important at the moment for a period of time for example after marriage there were things to be done they weren't there to be done before you got married so now and perhaps you're in school or doing other things and now he's helping you is really speaking deeply to you whereas before it was only gifts I'll give you another example a mother with three preschool children her language may not be acts of service but I can tell you during those years his helping her is going to speak deep it hurt and it may appear that it's changed but after the situation has changed I think you'll find yourself going back to your to the original love language oh good question yes yes the same five love languages and in the book on children the five love languages children which I wrote with a psychiatrist dr. Ross Campbell we talked about how you discover the child's language and how it interfaces with the child's anger with discipline and with learning and and please don't hear me saying with children that you only speak their primary language now you give them heavy doses of their primary language and then you sprinkle in the other four because we want the child to learn how to receive love and give love in all five languages that's the healthiest adult but I can almost guarantee you that most of us did not receive all five languages growing up we receive one or two or three so that's the pattern for children yes you're really trying to get getting what you're saying but I'm not hearing you it's hard to get out I can see okay if you have a question maybe you want to get out now so you'll be ready all right so is it possible to forgive someone even if they haven't repented or should we only follow like God's example as you said and only forgive someone after they've repented it all depends on what you mean by forgiveness some people call that one-sided forgiveness if that's what they want to call it I'm not going to argue with them it doesn't reconcile it doesn't remove the barrier it doesn't restore the race it doesn't open the door to restore anything one-sided forgiveness helps you but it doesn't do anything for the relationship I just prefer to call it releasing them to God to me that makes more sense it's more in keeping with the biblical pattern you release them to God and that helps you it doesn't restore the relationship either it doesn't remove the barrier either it's just that you you let go of your hurt and your bitterness and you you let go of them so that you're not going to try to make them pay for it you're going to turn them over to God who is the just judge that makes sense yeah thank you yes hi I'm Daniel flavin I'm a student here and I was wondering since you've been talking so much about how these principles work in marriage could you maybe talk about some similarities or differences and how they might play out with say a roommate or a dating relationship yeah I think they apply fully as well in the dating relationship you have a book called the five love languages Singles Edition for single adults in which I apply this concept for the sync between the single and their parents the single and siblings the single and college roommates the single and dating partners the single and work associates because I think the same principle is true obviously these are different relationships other than marriage but all of us have the need to feel loved by the significant people in our lives and many young adults come to adulthood with fractured relationships with their parents for example our fractured relationships with a brother or a sister and when I was two essentials I've shared can be extremely helpful in restoring relationships I remember the brother of the young young adult brother who came to me and he said Gary my brother and I had a falling out ten years ago over some I forget what it was now we had a falling out and I have not spoken to my brother in ten years and he said now I've become a Christian and I've been studying the Bible and I just don't think it's right for two brothers to live in the same city and not talk to each other and I think I need to do something about it well I obviously confer he does need to do something about it so we talked about it and we talked about the power of apology and how if he was willing to take the initiative there's a chance that the relationship might be restored so we sit there in my office and carved out an apology for him to make that included all five apology languages and I said now here's what I want you to do I want you to call your brother on the phone remember having talked in 10 years call your brother on the phone and ask him if you could possibly come by and see him and if he says no way that's fine you just say I understand and we'll try it again in six weeks so he called his brother and on the first call his brother said yeah that'd be fine after 10 years yeah that'd be fine so I said to him all right now when you go over there to see your brother and knock on the door and he comes to the door don't you talk about the weather and don't you talk about sports as soon as he opens that door you say to him I have come to apologize and then you move into your apology and then just see what happens that's precisely what he did his brother was standing behind the screen door while he apologized and when he got through his brother opened the door came out of the porch put his arms around his brother and said you don't know how many times I wanted to come to you and apologize and the brothers hugged each other and cried with each other and then had a further conversation and ended up the brother invited him to bring his wife over this Friday night for a cookout and the whole relationship was restored it's the power of apology no matter what the relationship and so and you know many times would say well it was really their fault I mean it was 95% their fault okay let it be 95% their fault but you go apologize for your five percent you know in this case he was apologizing that he that he had allowed whatever it was that happened to separate them for 10 years he said that's not right you know so I think it certainly has a relationship certainly applies to all the relationships and in roommate situations we're not talking about love but we are talking about appreciation and so speaking speaking the appreciation language if you want to call it that two roommates respecting them as an individual and also confronting each other when you feel like the other ones treating you unfairly in the room that's authentic friendships that's that's the way you build relationships is to say you know I want to share this with you maybe there's nothing can be done about it but I want to share with you that this this this has just been hurting me an irritating million I don't know maybe you can't change it maybe you shouldn't change it but I just want to share it with you because I want I want us to have a good relationship and that kind of honesty and openness with a roommate can go a long ways in moving that relationship simply being roommates to beginning to develop a friendship yeah good question thank you hi my name is Erica and I was just wondering around what age do you think people saw start figuring out their love language would it be when they're in eighth grade or in high school I think a parent can understand a child's love language by the time they're four years old just observe their behavior my son I learned his language when he was four or so when I would come home in the afternoon he would run up to me and grabbed my leg and climb up on me he's touching me because he wants to be touched our daughter never did that our daughter would say daddy come to my room I want to show you something see one equality time instead of my daughter's here tonight shall he stand up her wave or something so his cell is now medical doctor and has two children of her own so she's loving them and teaching them to apologize yeah so I think I think a parent can learn that and actually we we have a book now for children on the five love languages children ages four to eight it's called a perfect pet for Peyton in which we use animals to teach the child the love languages mama has the language daddy has the language sister has a language so fun it's a fun book children can learn the concept rather early you know if parents teach it to them yeah thank you good question a perfect pet for Peyton yes thank you dr. Chapman for your thorough explanation on forgiveness or I mean apologizing I was wondering for making offering to make restitution if they say oh no that's fine you know how to do anything would you still recommend doing it anyway or is that better respect what they're saying or yeah good question I wouldn't first of all I would encourage you if if making restitution is meaningful to you and a person says what can I do to make it up please tell them please tell them but if they say no no you don't need to do anything yes that's alright you know I think you have you have to think about it in your own mind and ask yourself is there something else I could do that would really communicate to them that I deeply regret what I did and if if God brings something to your mind I think it's okay to go ahead and do it yeah yeah hi I was just wondering do you suggest if you have like a bunch of like I have three boys in my husband so I really have four boys but is it a good thing to find out all their love languages and so sit down and to go over that so you kind of start to understand it just thing there's a lot of testosterone in the Houston yes yes I think I think if there are five years of age and older you can discuss it with children they can understand it clearly and they can realize that we do have different languages different love languages and it enhances the whole family relationship because if you see a child it's kind of down you can say to a brother hey hey John I think he I think your brother needs a little love language from you and so he knows now how to go love his brother so yeah I think it can be what can be a fun thing in the house and I think it'd be excellent to share it with the kids hello um I had a question about singles in the church and not so much college age but like later on in life maybe late 20s 30s 40s and older I I've just recently been talking to people about it and we've been discussing how I feel like perhaps the church doesn't do a very good job of loving the singles in the church and do you would you agree with that or do you that makes am I making sense here yes I do I do agree that that many churches maybe even most churches do NAR not sensitive enough to two young single adults I'm not home again by college students are those just right out of college but just a little bit older than that young career people and many times they will say to you I just I've been going to this church but I there's nothing going on here for me you know and all the illustrations are couples and seldom is it addressed to singles yeah no I think that is a problem Ventura solutions to this problem or I think it takes vision on the part of leadership for anything to be done about it but I think if the leadership of the church has the vision that we not only have young career people in our in our church but we we want to reach young career people then it's pretty easy to come up with ideas on how how we can do this and make room for this there's a lot of ways to build bridges between singles and marriage and there's a lot of ways to help couples learn how to relate to each other and social activities together Bible studies together and that sort of thing that are sponsored by the church and not just something that the that the signals came up with themselves I mean it's fine to do it yourself but it's encouraging to know that the church recognizes our group as an official group of the church yeah thank you you're welcome hi I'm not a student married 18 years together 25 three kids my question is for stubborn couples when you've sort of fallen into a pattern of not apologizing to each other either one how do you make yourself come back to that point where you can move forward yeah and not just operate as parents good good question and let's face it there are thousands of couples that are right there they fall into a pattern of never dealing with failures not expressing don't even talk about or even think about each other's love language they're just carrying out the logistics of life together and she's asking how do you break through into that well what a lot of husbands and wives will say to themselves is well I would treat her different if she'd treated me different and you can sit there for 20 years with that attitude what I say is this one person cannot restore health in a marriage but one person can greatly influence the spouse so the challenge I give is for the individual that's willing to work on the marriage is to learn the love language of the spouse and begin speak ask God to give you the ability to speak it on a regular basis at least every week you're going to speak their love language no matter whether things change or whether they don't change and over the long haul you're going to begin to do this and once you've been doing this about three months you say to your spouse I want to ask you a real personal question on a scale of zero to ten how much love do you feel coming from me and if they say 5 6 4 3 2 1 you know you're not quite there yet and so you might want to reassess whether you're speaking the right language to them but whatever they give you an 8 9 or 10 you know that you're getting through to them so a week later you can say to them you know something I would really like for you to do for me and you make a request of them and because they have been feeling your love over a period of time they're they're very likely to reciprocate to your request and what you're doing is teaching them how to speak your love language even though they don't even know anything about the concept because love stimulates love remember we love God because God first loved us the same principle is true in relationships I would say to that person that that wants to get things moving in a positive direction you take the initiative in loving and you take the initiative in apologizing and that person is going to recognize first of all something is going on with this woman are with this man because you're responding to them in a different way okay hi I have a lot of friends who live a long long way away on how and how intentional should I be in demonstrating these of languages to them close close friends who are who are at a distance from each other geographically different from each other a lot depends on what kind of contact you have with them already in today we have more avenues to have contact with them we've ever had before so I think you use the avenues that you have to communicate love to the and appreciation to them you know we just just released the first of September a special edition of the five love languages for military couples and what we're doing in that book is teaching them how to speak all five languages when when the spouse is deployed half a world away and people say how can you do that with physical touch I mean well just give you one example a lady said to me my husband's language is physical touch so I put my head on a sheet of paper and trace it and I'll mail it to my husband and I told him put your hand on my hand and let me hold your hand and he said when I put my hand on her hand I felt it I felt her in love you see it's not literal touch it's emotional touch but that's what we're talking about here is emotional touch so there ways to speak all these languages long distance and I would say keep-keep friendships alive by by speaking languages long distance well would you say that dating relationships before marriage is helpful or harmful to a marriage you know people have different ideas on dating my ideal dating is that the purpose of dating is to get to know the individual and to enrich each other's lives in the process and as you get to know them you're going to make a decision either to stop the relationship or to move to marriage and I think that the dating process can be very very helpful in making a wise decision about getting married I do find some people who say they don't believe in dating they just believe you know you let God lead and bring it at the right moment they bring the person into their lives and so forth and and certainly God has done that and I'm not going to tell god what to do I mean you know but but I don't I don't think and dating it's not a universal phenomena as you well know in many cultures the parents arranged for them for the marriage and they don't even know each other until they get married but I do think that healthy dating healthy dating can be very positive and in the book that I shared last night things I wish I'd known before we got married I have a whole section at the end of that on how to have a healthy dating relationship and the kind of questions I ask to get to know each other yeah those are my thoughts yeah thank you over here how would you suggest helping like a sibling or a parent or a friend heal if their love language has kind of been used against them like how would you heal from that would you just be really intentional about using it positively or would you suggest to use any of them to use any of the love languages in a negative way hurts that person far more deeply than you would hurt another person for example if words of affirmation is a child's love language and you give that child harsh loud words you're hurting them far more than you heard another child if that was not their language so I think if you see this happening in any relationship and you are you are involved in it and you see that child hurting over what's happened I think you give them a chance to share their hurt you say honey how did you feel when dad did that to you and let the child share the hurt and then hopefully in a positive way you share what the child has said with the person who hurt them and encourage them to apologize you know it all depends on how healthy or how mature they are because immature people are not open to change and they don't admit that they did wrong mature people are maturing people I don't know that any of us are mature but maturing people are wanting to learn and wanting to become better so that would be my suggestion as an illustration in Chapel this morning you had us all say out loud just the words I was wrong is to see if we could get it out of our mouths so to speak and it was difficult even in a non real situation do you have any advice for just overcoming that subconscious attitude of I can't of course I'm not wrong of course I'm right yeah I think the people that have most difficulty admitting that they're wrong are people who grew up in homes where they their parents seldom ever told them what they did right but everyday they told them what they were doing wrong and something inside that child started recording the message to them if I ever get to be big I'll never be wrong again because they've heard so much of what's wrong with them that when they get to be adults to admit that they were wrong is saying I'm a bad person my parents have been right all along I'm really no good those are the people who have most difficulty admitting that they're wrong let me just throw this out when I say wrong I'm not necessarily always talking about morally wrong but if I've done something that's hurt the relationship even though it's not sinful if it's hurt the relationship I need to be willing to say I was wrong I should not have said that you know I think I gave an illustration somewhere today my wife who spent two weeks I had no idea about she spent two weeks searching for material to upholster a chair that I sit in every morning put my shoes on well she had he fixed one day and I came in and I noticed that you know it was different and so I was sitting in the chair and she came in and said how do you like the new the new chair the new upholstery and I said well it's okay honey I really like the other better and she burst into tears well they wasn't what I said was not morally wrong I was just being honest you know I just I like the other better but I realized and she told me she's I've been looking for this material for three weeks ago all over town and I don't know but when I realized that what I had said had hurt her then I need to be willing to admit I was wrong it's not morally wrong but I was wrong what I did hurt our relationship I regret it I wish I hadn't said it I should not have said it I should have thought before I said it I should have asked question before I said it what I did was wrong so if we can take it out of the moral category we're not always acknowledging it's a moral wrong but it's it's acknowledging that we're human and the fact is all of us do things that are wrong okay I'd be happy to okay generally how do you deal with insecurities in marriage and between the in relationships and specially spouses not sure I understood that how do you deal with insecurities insecurities in a marriage yeah between spouses or even in relationships in general bickering spouse is fighting in relationships yeah okay okay so we'll make sure I understood your question yeah well let's face it without God all of us are insecure our only ultimate security comes in a relationship with God but some people emotionally are more insecure in who they are than other people are and a lot has to do with the way they grew up when we recognized that I would hope that what I've shared tonight would be helpful because if you learn to speak their love language and you learn to apologize to them and they recognize that it's okay you know I don't have to be perfect to have a good marriage here hopefully that will be that will be somewhat helpful in the process I think the bickering and the fighting back and forth and let's face it again that is very very common in relationships because most of us did not learn how to solve conflicts before we got married in fact I never thought I would have any conflicts when I was in love I thought then we agree on everything but the reality is all of us have conflicts every human relationship and the biggest thing in solving conflicts you're never going to get anywhere arguing because if you win the argument they lost the argument and now you've got to live with a loser and that's not no fun so the biggest thing is learning how to listen to each other empathetically and treat their ideas and their feelings with respect it's essentially treating the other person like a human humans think differently in humans feel differently so if you can respect their thoughts and respect their feelings even if you don't agree with them and say honey I hear what you're saying and it makes a lot of sense because it'll make it makes sense in their head always in their head if you listen long enough you can honestly say what you're saying makes a lot of sense now obviously we disagree on this how can we solve the problem and you spend your energy looking for a solution rather than spending your energy trying to win the argument in a nutshell I think that's what I'd say well thank you for being here tonight let's pray together and ask God's help father we thank you that you have placed this in your family that we are brothers and sisters that you are our Father thank you for your provision in all of our lives you know our past every one of us you know the positive things you know the painful things I pray that as your children you would give us wisdom on how to be how to take initiative in stimulating growth in all of our relationships an especially I pray for those who may have painful relationships fractured relationships that you would bring to their hearts and to their minds steps that they may take that have the potential of enhancing the relationship I ask this for your glory I ask this for our good in the name of Christ our Lord amen thank you for coming you are dismissed thank you you

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Length: 78min 38sec (4718 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2015