Saturday, December 22, 2012

AAEVS - Putting Together a Christ-centered Community (Part 3)

Unrestrained Love/Respect

This is not hippy, wishy-washy love that is nice and rosy but the love that, as John Piper put it, “joyfully meets the needs of others.” By “Unrestrained” I don’t mean affection that goes outside of moral or etiquette boundaries, but brotherly love that is not kept back by a form of stoicism; The kind of stoicism that says, “I must not express love to anyone in word or action because that would be awkward or shameful.”

However, love will physically look different person to person, one may expect words and another may expect gifts. Gary Chapman in his book series, “The Five Love Languages” categorizes five different expressions (or “languages” as he called them) of love in this order: