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Dr. Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages Website
Dr. Gary Chapman’s Podcast
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
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Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:17] <music>
Laura Dugger: Leman Property Management Company has the apartment you will be able to call home with over 1,600 apartment units available in Central Illinois. Visit them today at MidwestShelters.com or visit them on Facebook.
Well, this is an extra special episode because I've hoped for an opportunity to chat with this guest for decades now. Dr. Gary Chapman is the New York Times bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages, in addition to so many other wonderful books.
Today we're going to discuss what a marriage can look like for couples who actually speak each other's primary love language and how we can do that.
Here's our chat.
Welcome to the Savvy Sauce, Dr. Chapman.
Dr. Gary Chapman: Well, it's great to be with you.
Laura Dugger: Your work has impacted millions of people, and I would love to just start by having you take us back to where this idea originated for the 5 love languages. [00:01:23] So will you just share that journey with us?
Dr. Gary Chapman: Well, that goes way back. I remember, I don't know how many years ago it was, but pretty early in my counseling, a couple came in and she said, "I just feel like he doesn't love me." And he said, "I don't understand that. I do everything I can to show her that I love her. I don't understand why she wouldn't feel loved."
So after that, I heard similar stories over and over again, where one of them didn't feel love and the other thought, Well, I'm loving you. Why wouldn't you feel loved? It was 12 years I heard these kind of stories and I knew there was a pattern to it but I didn't know what it was.
Eventually, I took time to sit down and read several years of notes that I made when I was counseling people and asked myself the question: when someone sat in my office and said, I feel like my spouse doesn't love me, what did they want? [00:02:24] What were they complaining about? And their answers fell into five categories, and I later called them the 5 love languages.
So I started using that concept in marriage counseling that if you want her to feel love, you've got to speak love in her love language. And if you want him to feel love, you've got to speak love in his love language. So I would help them discover their language and then challenge them to go home and try it. And sometimes, Laura, they would come back in three weeks and say, Gary, this is changing everything. The whole climate's different.
Then I started using the same concept in small groups of couples and the same thing would happen. And probably five years later, I thought, you know, if I could put this concept in a book, and write it in the language of the common person so people could understand it, maybe I could help a lot of couples I would never have time to see in my office.
Of course, little did I know the book would sell now over 13 million copies in English and be translated in over 50 languages around the world. So that's where it came from, out of my counseling over a number of years. [00:03:27]
Laura Dugger: That's incredible. And yeah, I believe the book came out in 1992 and last I checked, it is still on the New York Times bestselling list.
Dr. Gary Chapman: Yes, it has been for a number of years now. You're right.
Laura Dugger: Taking it back even further, is it right that you studied anthropological studies?
Dr. Gary Chapman: I did. I did an undergrad and a master's degree in anthropology, the study of cultures. That really surprised me when other cultures wanted to translate this because I was very sensitive to cultural differences. I think the Spanish was the first ones. And I said to my publisher, I said, "I don't know, does this work in Spanish?" And they say, "Well, they've read it and they want to publish it." So we gave them the rights. Last I heard, they'd sold over three million copies in Spanish.
Laura Dugger: One of the many things I appreciate about your book is that it is full of God's timeless truth. Whether this is a new concept or someone just needs a reminder, what are the five love languages and how can we identify which is our main one? [00:04:32]
Dr. Gary Chapman: Well, let me just go through them quickly. Number one is, in no particular order, but number one is words of affirmation — using words to affirm the other person. You look nice in that outfit. I appreciate what you did. There's an ancient Hebrew proverb that says life and death is in the power of the tongue. So words of affirmation bring life to people.
Another love language is gifts. It's universal to give gifts as an expression of love. My anthropology studies have found that we've never discovered a culture anywhere in the world where gift-giving is not an expression of love. It's universal to give gifts.
Then there's quality time — giving the person your undivided attention. I do not mean husband and wife sitting on the couch watching television. Someone else has your attention. I'm talking about sitting on the couch with the TV off, looking at each other, talking to each other, or taking a walk down the road and talking to each other. [00:05:30]
Then there's acts of service —doing something for the other person that you know they would like for you to do. In a marriage, that would be such things as cooking meals, washing dishes, vacuuming floors, washing cars, mowing grass, walking the dog, changing the baby's diaper, anything that you know the other person would like for you to do. You remember the old saying, Actions speak louder than words. It's true for these people. If this is your love language, actions will speak louder than words.
Then number five 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. Long before the baby understands the meaning of the word love, the baby feels love by physical touch. So the basic idea is that out of those five, each of us has a primary love language. One of them speaks more deeply to us emotionally than the other four. And if you don't speak the person's primary language, they won't feel loved, even though you may be speaking some of the other languages. [00:06:35]
So how do you discover your primary love language? Well, you can go online and take a free quiz at 5lovelanguages.com. You answer 30 questions. It will tell you what your primary love language is, your secondary, and right down the line. So that's one option.
But here are three informal ways to discover a person's love language. First of all, observe their behavior. How do they typically respond to other people? If they're always giving people pats on the back or high-fives, physical touch is probably their language. They're touching others because they want to be touched. Or if they're always giving gifts, then that's a clue. That's probably what they want.
A second question is, what do they complain about most often? If your spouse continues to say periodically, "I just wish we had more time together," they're telling you, they're complaining that we don't have enough time. They're complaining about quality time. [00:07:31] Or if you go on a business trip and you come home and they say, "You didn't bring me anything?" they're telling you gifts is their language. So what do they complain about?
And the third question, what do they request most often? If they're saying periodically, honey, can we take a walk after dinner? They're asking you for quality time. Or if they say before you go on the business trip, be sure and bring me a surprise, they're telling you that gifts is their language. Or if they say, Honey, could you give me a back rub? They're asking you for physical touch. You put those three together and you can pretty well figure out a person's primary love language and your own love language by asking those same three questions about yourself.
Laura Dugger: You teach this with such clarity. But I know I've met people who have asked what their love language is. So how do you answer people who can't identify their main language, especially if they think that they're all of them? [00:08:29]
Dr. Gary Chapman: Well, first of all, I ask them, have you taken the quiz? Sometimes they have, sometimes they haven't. And I say it's free, okay? 5lovelanguages.com, go take the quiz. But if they take the quiz and say they all came out even, there's two kinds of people that have difficulty discovering their primary love language and all of them are just about even to them.
One is the individual who grew up in a home where they always felt loved. From childhood, they felt loved. Their parents spoke all five of these languages. And then later on, they got to be adults, they got married, and their spouse spoke all these languages. So they've just always felt loved. And they don't know which one is more important than the other, because they feel loved.
To those people, I say, don't worry about it. As long as you feel love, don't worry about it. If you ever begin to feel like, no, they don't really love me like I wish they did, now you need to discover what is it that's missing, okay? [00:09:28]
But then the other extreme is the person who never felt loved. They didn't feel love growing up. They went through a lot of emotional struggles as teenagers. As adults, they don't feel loved in any of their relationships. And they're not even quite sure what it means to feel love, because they've never felt love.
This is more difficult, of course, because it's an emotional scar coming from their past. Can they come to feel love? Yes, I think they can, if they will open their hearts. And if someone chooses to genuinely love them, even though their love might be rejected from time to time, that person can be healed from that. And especially the healing of God can bring healing to the person who's never felt love. But for most people, they can pretty well figure out what their primary language is.
Now, some people do tell me that two of those are equal for them. And my response to that is, fine, we'll give you two love languages. We'll call you bilingual, okay? [00:10:28] Either one of those is gonna speak deeply to you. So whatever your... if it's marriage, whatever your spouse does, which of those two, you're gonna feel loved.
Laura Dugger: Which might be great, because then their spouse has two different ways that they could show them their love.
Dr. Gary Chapman: That's right.
Laura Dugger: I'm curious, have people ever told you that their love language changes in different seasons, or does it stay the same throughout life, typically?
Dr. Gary Chapman: Once in a while, people do tell me that they think their love language has changed. I think that the love language tends to stay with us for a lifetime. Now, having said that, I do agree that there are certain seasons of life and maybe certain circumstances where another love language may jump to the top momentarily.
For example, a mother that has two preschool children, acts of service may not be her primary language, but during those years, it may well jump to the top because she's overwhelmed with all the work that she has to do. And so I think there may be seasons in which another love language may become more predominant. [00:11:31] But once that season is over, it'll flip back to your primary.
I think another time, if you're getting enough of your number one and number two is very close to number one, and often that's the case, you get enough of number one, you may begin to think, Oh, I don't know, I think number two has become number one. But if they stop doing number one, you'll quickly know, oh, no, no, no, no, no, that's still my primary. So I think those are occasions, and I would say this too, maybe situations.
For example, let's say your spouse gets word that some family member has died. Physical touch may not be their language, but at that point, you're holding them, and letting them cry in your arms is probably the most powerful thing you can do to communicate to them "I love you and I'm with you in this". So I think there may be situations where, you know, just momentarily a love language may change.
Laura Dugger: That's fascinating. But that also makes sense because you're not saying to only love your spouse or your children or your friends with one love language. [00:12:37] You can still do all five. There's just one that's most meaningful. Is that right?
Dr. Gary Chapman: That's right. And what I say especially to parents, because you can discover a child's love language by the time they're four years old, just observe their behavior. If my son was that age, I'd come home in the afternoon, he'd run to the door, would grab my legs and climb all over me. He's touching me because he wants to be touched.
Our daughter never did that. At that age, she would say, "Daddy, come to my room. I want to show you something." Her love language was quality time. They're grown. It's still their love language. So it develops very early and I think tends to stay with us throughout a lifetime.
But I say to parents, please don't hear me saying that you only speak the primary love language. No, you give them heavy doses of the primary. 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. Most of us did not receive all five, so we have to learn some of these as adults. [00:13:39] But no, you give heavy doses of the primary, sprinkle in the others, and you get extra credit for that as an adult.
Laura Dugger: That is such wise counsel. And from your experience, Dr. Chapman, do couples often marry someone who is the same or different from them when it relates to their love languages?
Dr. Gary Chapman: Very seldom does a couple have the same love language. It can happen, but it doesn't happen very often. And even if they have the same language, they will often have different dialects within that language. For example, one wife said to me recently, she said, "My husband and I have the same love language." And I said, "Great, what is it?" She said, "The acts of service." She said, "But the things I want him to do for me that make me feel alive are different from the things he wants me to do for him to make him feel alive." Same language, just different dialects within the language. So seldom does a husband and wife have the same love language. [00:14:38]
Laura Dugger: And so can you help debunk the myth then that we're off the hook if our spouse does have a different primary love language from us? It doesn't excuse us from giving them love in that way.
Dr. Gary Chapman: You know, I think there's no question about it. If their number one is your number five, it's a learning curve, okay? Let's say their language is words of affirmation, but you never received words growing up. It's not natural for you to give words.
But here's the good news. You can learn to speak any of these languages after you get to be an adult. So I said to the man who told me, he said, "Dr. Chapman, my wife's love language is words. I never receive words. I don't know how to do it." I said, "Here's my advice. You get your little notebook, you write down statements you hear other men say to their wives or something you read in a book or a magazine. Write them down. Stand in front of the mirror, read them out loud to yourself. [00:15:41] Read them often enough that you get some of them down and then you move into the room where your wife is. Maybe she's looking in the other direction and you just say one of them and run." Okay, you broke the barrier. And it's easier the second time and the third time.
You can learn any of these languages. And if you want your spouse to feel loved, you've got to give the effort to learn to speak these languages. I had a man who said to me once, he said, "Dr. Chapman, I read your book. I took the quiz and my wife took the quiz. She tells me that her love language is act of service. But I'm just going to tell you and her, if it's going to mean my washing dishes and my vacuuming floors for her to feel loved, she can forget that." Wow.
I said to him, "That is your choice. If you want to live with a wife who feels unloved, that's your choice." I said, "I much prefer to live with a wife who feels loved." I said, "I've lived with both. Early years of my marriage, my wife didn't feel loved. Later years of my marriage, she has felt loved. Same woman, okay? Just unloved for years and then loved when I finally learned her love language." I said, "I much prefer to live with a woman who feels loved." [00:17:02]
So love is a choice. Once we have the information as to what the primary love language is, we have a choice to speak it or not to speak it. Now, Christians have outside help because the Bible says the love of God is poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So if you're having a hard time learning the language of your spouse, you just open your heart to God and say, "Lord, I know you love her. I know you love him. Pour it into me. Give me the ability. Put it on the front burner of my heart and teach me how to express love to them in a meaningful way." You will learn to speak their love language.
Laura Dugger: That is great advice because He really does have the most creative ideas, if you ask God.
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Laura Dugger: Even if we are sincere in our love for our spouse, you write in your book why being sincere is just not enough. So will you give us some applicable examples for how to love someone well in each of those languages?
Dr. Gary Chapman: Most couples are sincere, and certainly in the early years of the marriage, they're sincere, and they typically are expressing love. They're just expressing it in the way that would make them feel love, and they're not connecting with each other. So that's why we have to learn a different language. We learn the one that connects with them.
Let's say words of affirmation. I just talked about that one and how you learn it. You know, just simple things. "Honey, I really appreciate dinner tonight. It was really good." Or, "Yeah, I just appreciate the fact that you keep our car clean or that you got the bugs off the windshield of the car I drive. I appreciate that." [00:20:20] It's just looking for things you can affirm about the other person.
I did have a lady who said, "Well, you know, Dr. Chairman, I'd like to give him some words of affirmation, but to be honest, I can't think of anything good to say about the man." I said, "Well, does he ever take a shower?" And she said, "Well, yes." I said, "Well, how often?" She said, "Well, every day." I said, "If I were you, I'd start there." "Honey, I appreciate you taking a shower." I mean, there are men who don't. So, words of affirmation.
And then gifts. Here's the way you learn to give meaningful gifts. You listen to your spouse when they say, you know, I'd like to have one of those someday. Or maybe you're watching television and they say, you know, I'd like to try that. Or you're flipping through a magazine and they say, you know, someday I'd like to have one of those. Make a list of all those things and then go out and buy them periodically.
Also, gifts do not have to be expensive. You can go out in the backyard and pick a flower and give it to your wife. You know, if you don't have any flowers in your backyard, check your neighbor's backyard, you know, ask them, they'll give you a flower. [00:21:25]
Or you could pick up a feather when you're walking and take it home and say to your spouse, you know, "Honey, I found this today and I wanted to give it to you because you are the wind beneath my sails. And this feather reminded me of that." Wow, didn't cost you a thing.
So a third love language, of course, is acts of service, doing things for them. Here you can just simply ask, "Honey, what could I do that would make your life easier?" And they'll tell you what you could do. If this is their love language, they will tell you what you could do. It may be taking out the trash before they ask you. It may be washing dishes. It may be vacuuming floors. It may be taking care of the baby while I take a walk. Just something that was meaningful to them. And if you ask, they'll be happy to tell you because that's their language.
And then quality time. This can be, as I said earlier, just sitting on the couch 15 minutes and talking to each other. [00:22:27] Or it could be taking a walk and talking or going out to eat, assuming that you talk. You probably have noticed in a restaurant, you can almost always tell the difference between dating couples and married couples. Dating couples look at each other and talk. Married couples often sit there and eat or pull out their phone and start texting somebody. Ah, undivided attention, quality time.
And then number five is physical touch. In a marriage, that would be such things as holding hands, kissing, embracing, the whole sexual part of marriage, arm around the shoulder, driving down the road, you put your hand on their leg. These are the kind of things that communicate love to the person for whom physical touch is their language.
Laura Dugger: I think you've given everybody a great starting point. Can you just now vision-cast what a marriage could look like for couples who willingly and consistently choose to speak their spouse's love language? [00:23:27]
Dr. Gary Chapman: You know, I think when we get married, all of us want to have a loving, supportive, caring marriage. And when you're in love, you think you're going to have that kind of marriage. Because when you're in love, they're the most wonderful person you've ever met. You know, your mother can see their flaws, but you can't see their flaws when you're in love. It's a super, super high emotion.
But it only has an average lifespan of two years. We come down off the high. And nobody told me that. My wife and I dated two years before we got married, and I could hardly wait to be as happy as I was going to be when we got married. I came down pretty soon after the honeymoon and I began to realize, "Man, there's some things... I'm not real... I don't like that about her.
And before long, within six months, I was feeling like I'd made a mistake. I mean, this is just not what I thought it was going to be. And many couples go through that because they don't know that you come down off that high. They think if you've got the real thing it's going to last forever. [00:24:31]
If you come down off the high, this is when the love language becomes extremely important. And if you choose to speak each other's love language on a regular basis, you hardly miss the high because you still feel loved. But now it's much more intentional and it takes much more effort if you have to learn a new language. But when you do, I say the emotional love tank fills up. And when your love tank is full, you genuinely feel loved by your spouse. Life is beautiful. When the love tank is empty, you feel like they don't love you. You're thinking they wish they weren't married to me. Life begins to look pretty dark.
So it's extremely important that we learn this concept of how to express love in a meaningful way to the other person so that we meet that deep need. Everyone agrees our deepest emotional need on the human level is to feel loved by the significant people in your life. [00:25:30] And if you're married, the person you would most like to love you is your spouse. So this can revolutionize the emotional climate in a home, and then everything else is much easier when you feel love.
Solving conflicts, for example, is much easier when you feel loved by your spouse. If you don't feel love, the differences look bigger and it's harder to solve them. When you feel love, you can hear each other, you can listen, you can affirm each other and you can say, "Okay, honey, I think we understand each other. We disagree on it. How can we solve the problem?" You spend your energy solving the problem rather than trying to win an argument with your spouse. So it makes a huge difference when you're speaking each other's love language.
Laura Dugger: Just to summarize, it sounds like physiologically there is something, usually I think is it between 18 and 24 months, you're talking about that high that you feel that in love experience. And when that does go away, because it will for everyone, there's an option for a more mature, deeper love. [00:26:36]
Dr. Gary Chapman: Absolutely. Because now it's intentional. You know, you didn't do anything to fall in love. It just happens. Certain people you're attracted to and you spend time with them and it just feels wonderful and the more you know them, the more you like them. But when you do come down off the high, now love becomes intentional. Love now is a choice. And then we have to learn how to express love.
This is why the Bible can command a husband to love his wife. Husbands, love your wives. It's a command. And this is why, you know, the scriptures say the older women are to teach the young women to love their husbands. What? You have to have a class in it? Yes, you do. You have to learn.
So it's much more intentional now. If you can command a man to love his wife, then he's capable of doing that. You don't choose your emotions, but you do choose your attitude and your behavior. And love is an attitude which says, "I'm here to enrich your life. How can I help you? How can I help you become the person that you believe God wants you to be?" [00:27:45]
Two people who have that attitude will find behaviors to enhance each other's lives. And that's what God intended, that we each reach out to love each other and help each other. And when that's happening, man, you find deep satisfaction in marriage. And that's what God intended.
Laura Dugger: How did you find out about The Savvy Sauce? Did someone share this podcast with you? Hopefully, you've been blessed through the content. And now we would love to invite each of you to share these episodes with friends and help us spread the word about The Savvy Sauce. You can share today's episode or go back and choose any one of your other previous favorites to share. Thanks for helping us out!
I could just ask you questions all day about marriage, but let's just go back briefly. You talked about one other important relationship. So how can an understanding of the five love languages elevate our relationships with our children?
Dr. Gary Chapman: Well, I think it's extremely important that parents learn this concept. [00:28:44] And that's why I wrote the book, The 5 Love Languages of Children. I wrote it with Dr. Ross Campbell, who is a Christian psychiatrist. He's in heaven now, but we wrote that book together. He'd had 30 years' experience with children.
I say to parents, the question is not, do you love your children? Most parents love their children. The question is, do your children feel loved? And I can tell you, though most parents love their children, there are children that don't feel loved.
I remember the young man sitting in my office. He was 13. He had run away from home. He said to me, "My parents don't love me. They love my brother. They don't love me." I knew his parents. I knew they loved him. But you see, he didn't feel loved. They had never learned to speak his love language. So consequently, he grew up, in their minds, they loved him. In his mind, they didn't love him.
So it's extremely important to learn a child's primary love language. As I said earlier, you can learn that by the time they're four years old. [00:29:45] And then you give heavy doses of the primary, sprinkle in the other four, and that child feels loved, they grow up emotionally healthy. But if they don't feel loved in the teenage years, they will go looking for love, typically in all the wrong places.
So, it really enhances not only the relationship between the parent and the child, it enhances the child's emotional health when the parent learns how to express love to the child in their love language.
Laura Dugger: That's so encouraging and something we can apply today. I'm so grateful that you have so many books available that people can follow up with and learn more about these topics. But also, where can listeners find you online?
Dr. Gary Chapman: You know, if they go, Laura, to 5lovelanguages.com, the number five, 5lovelanguages.com, they will get a little blurb on all of my books. And we have books on many, many different topics. And they will be able to download a radio program that I do every week called Building Relationships. [00:30:51] They can find out where I'm going to be doing marriage conferences around the country. So 5lovelanguages.com, you can learn maybe more than you want to know about me, but hopefully find a lot of practical help.
And as I mentioned earlier, there's a free online profile, it's a quiz that you take that's free, that will tell you your primary love language, your secondary love language. There's one for couples, married couples. There's one for single adults. There's one for teenagers and one for children. And there's a special one for military couples, helping them discover their love language. So all of that is at 5lovelanguages.com.
Laura Dugger: That's so helpful. We will certainly link to that in our show notes and also put the access to that on our resources page. One final question for you today, Dr. Chapman. We are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge or discernment. And so we would love to hear, what is your savvy sauce? [00:31:52]
Dr. Gary Chapman: You know, if I had to pick one, I would say a daily sharing time with my wife, a sit-down time, just like I have a daily time with God in which I sit down and read the scripture and tell God I'm listening and I want to know what he wants to say to me and I talk back to God and we have a conversation. I have a daily sit-down time with my wife.
I say to couples in my seminars, here's the daily minimum. You share with each other three things that happen in your life today and how you feel about them. They don't have to be super things, just three things that happened today and how you feel about them.
My wife and I sit down every day and share at least three things. Usually, we share a lot more than three things, but that's the minimum. And even when I'm gone on the road, and speaking in other places, I'll call her and we'll talk to each other and catch up on what happened today and how you're feeling about the whole thing. It just keeps you connected emotionally, just like the time with God daily keeps you connected with God. [00:32:58] The daily sharing time with the spouse, it's just been super, super meaningful for us through the years.
Laura Dugger: I love that savvy sauce. I actually have one last question. What is your love language?
Dr. Gary Chapman: Mine is words of affirmation and my wife is acts of service. That's why before I leave the house every morning, I take the trash out and unload the dishwasher, all while she's still in bed. And I know when she goes in there, she's going to look at that trash can and say, Man, what a wonderful guy. And she gives me words of affirmation. I wish that I learned all that early in my marriage. That's why I try to help other couples to learn it early so you don't have to go through some years like we did in the early years when you're just having a hard time getting it together.
Laura Dugger: Dr. Chapman, I've admired your work and your attitude for decades now. You're such a humble man, and I'm so very grateful for this time together. So thank you for being my guest. [00:34:01]
Dr. Gary Chapman: Well, thank you, Laura. It was good to be with you, and you keep up the good work of encouraging people.
Laura Dugger: Thank you so much.
One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners and God is perfect and holy, so He cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, we're separated from Him.
This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a savior. But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute.
This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. [00:35:07] This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus.
We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly, Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change their lives now for eternity. In Jesus name, we pray, amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him, you get the opportunity to live your life for Him. [00:36:06]
At this podcast, we are called Savvy for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you're ready to get started?
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision my parents took me to Barnes and Noble to get the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. Start by reading the book of John.
Get connected locally, which basically means just tell someone who is part of the church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too. So feel free to leave a comment for us if you made a decision for Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." [00:37:09] The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
