She's flat out running the kids around, cleaning, cooking, all the stuff she thinks she should do. And he's just lonely. She never has time for me. He never helps me! This week on A Different Perspective we're taking a bit of a look at what it means to communicate our love for one another in the context of marriage. You know I believe that marriage is just one of the most amazing gifts that God can bless us with, but sometimes husbands and wives get so frustrated because they don't know how to love one another. And that is just so frustrating because you're doing your best. You think to yourself, "Man, I couldn't possibly be trying any harder to love my husband, or love my wife and yet they say they don't feel like I love them." And so often it's because we're speaking our love to them in one language but they need to hear it in another. So this week we're working our way through the fantastic book by Gary Chapman, it's so insightful, it's called The Five Love Languages and today, today we'll be looking at the fourth of those, Acts of Service. Jesus was visiting two sisters Mary and Martha. Now these young women were really quite different from one another. If you'd like to read the story you can, it's in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 10 beginning at verse 38. Jesus comes into their home and Martha, well Martha is working flat out, she's cleaning the house and cooking the dinner and doing all the things you need to do when you have a guest come into your home. Mary her sister, on the other hand, Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens to what he has to say, she's glued, she's riveted and Martha gets pretty frustrated, she says to Jesus, "Don't you care that Mary's just sitting there and leaving all the work to me?" Now that's fascinating because then you see a conflict between two sisters. Mary obviously loves spending quality time; she's sitting there with Jesus and she's doting on what he's saying. Mary's primary love language is probably spending quality time with someone. On the other hand Martha, Martha's gifting clearly is in Acts of Service. She's just one of those people who like to do all the busy things and to serve people. Some people are just hard wired doers, they jump up, they help, they cook, they cater, they clean, at home, with friends, at church, at the club, whatever they do, they express their love by serving them. Now we should all serve. Jesus said it himself, "I've come to serve, not to be served" right. But Mary and Martha are clearly wired differently, somehow in their DNA, deep in their character, in their persona, they're quite different and that's life, we're all different. This week so far, we've looked at three primary love languages, that is, that we all receive love in slightly different ways, for some people it's Words of Affirmation, they experience love when their husband or their wife encourages them and says, "you look fantastic, that was a great meal, thank you so much for doing that for me". The second is Quality Time; it's what we see in Mary, some people experience love most when they and their spouse simply spend exclusive time with each other and focus exclusively on one other, and that quality time is how they drink in one another's love. The third one, which we looked at yesterday, is Receiving Gifts. And each one of us has maybe one of the five that we're looking at this week, which is the main way that we receive love. Today we're looking at Acts of Service, and the picture of Mary and Martha is a great one. But imagine if they were Max and Martha, imagine if they were husband and wife. And Martha is your hard wired acts of service type. For her to love is to serve, for her to love is to cook and to clean, for her to love is to do stuff. But Max, Max is your gentle type, he's one that loves to spend time together. He doesn't care if the dishes don't get done. "We'll do that later, let's just spend some time together now that the kids are in bed and we'll do the dishes later." You can see how the chips would fly. Martha on the one hand would resent the fact that he doesn't do anything. He doesn't love me because he doesn't do stuff, he doesn't clean up the kitchen, he doesn't wash up, he doesn't sweep up, why doesn't love me? And Max would say, "you know Martha never sits down, she never stops, she's always doing and rushing, she never has time for me." It doesn't matter how much Martha does for Max and it doesn't matter how much time Max spends with Martha, neither of them will feel loved, neither of them will feel fulfilled in their marriage relationship. They can do what they do until they're blue in the face but the other one will still feel unloved. Let's get a revelation! That's because they're doing and giving the type of love that they need, instead of the type of love that the other one needs. Hello are we listening? This is so blindingly, glimpsingly obvious isn't it? But we all naturally get this thing wrong. We all naturally try and give the type of love ...
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