A Sixth Love Language

You’ve heard of the five love languages; I believe there is a sixth. Since first publishing his enduring work, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts, author Gary Chapman has raised our awareness to the various ways in which people most deeply and openly receive love. Some of us embrace words of affirmation, while others cherish quality time. There are those among us who experience love through receiving gifts, and still others are moved through acts of service, an intangible kind of gift. And some people feel most loved through physical touch. (Mine are quality time and words of affirmation. No doubt, you have yours, too.) Yet I mentioned a sixth love language, one that I believe belongs to God alone—faith.

Have you ever noticed faith warms God to the core and stirs Him to action? How are we saved from eternal separation from God and united with Him forever? Simply by entrusting our lives to the loving and atoning work of His Son.¹ When the daughter of Jairus died, what did Jesus say to this grieving synagogue ruler? “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”² Who makes up the “great cloud of witnesses”³ that surrounds us, but those who have gone on before us, all of them united by one common trait: faith. With no faith at all it is impossible to please God⁴, yet even faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move the God of all creation to respond to us in great power.⁵

Why does God treasure and esteem faith so highly? We would have to know His mind to understand completely, but we can be certain of this: faith aligns us with what is true—that God is good, that He is worthy of our trust, and that at great cost and in great love He has made us His own. Faith confesses both the unfathomable darkness of the sin from which God saved us and the unblemished purity of God’s holiness to which He has raised us; these together drop us to our knees in humility and praise. In short, faith squares us with reality. So then why is faith such a challenge for us? Why is faith so hard? We’ll be returning to the topic of faith over the weeks and months to come, exploring what faith is, exposing some challenges we encounter along the way, and considering the life lived by faith. For now, though, we rest in this: whether God proclaims His love for us in five languages or a thousand, we return His blessings in a tongue He loves to hear—the love language of faith.

Father, thank You for Your gift of faith. Fill us with Your Spirit and find us to be good stewards of this gift, that it would grow in us and flow from us, bearing much fruit for Your Kingdom. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

¹ John 3:16
² Luke 8:50
³ Hebrews 12:1
⁴ Hebrews 11:6
⁵ Matthew 17:20