Godly Success In Marriage

Keeping the Love Tank Full

The Need for Love
Love is the most important word in the English language - and the most confusing. The apostle Paul said that in the last scene of the human drama, only three characters will remain: “faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Yet, love is a most confusing word. Our purpose is not to eliminate all the confusion, but rather to focus on the kind of love that is essential to our emotional health: the need to feel loved.

Running on Empty
I liked the metaphor the first time I heard it: “Inside every child is an ‘emotional tank’ waiting to be filled. When a child really feels loved, he will develop normally, but when the love tank is empty, the child will misbehave. Their misbehavior is a misguided search for the love they did not feel. Many of their parents also suffer from an empty love tank, and much of the misbehavior of married individuals grows out of an empty love tank.

Speak Their Language
The need to feel loved by one’s spouse is at the heart of marital desires. I believe this need can be met in any marriage, if each of them will discover the primary love language of their spouse and speak it regularly. There are only five love languages. Your spouse desperately craves one of them. Make it your goal to discover it and speak it, and their love tank will be full.

Love is Learned
Marriage is designed by God to meet our deep need for intimacy and love. Again and again I have heard the words “Our love is gone, our relationship is dead. We used to feel close, but not now. We don’t meet each other’s needs.” Their stories bear testimony that their emotional love tanks are empty. Can these marriages be reborn? Absolutely! Because love is learned.

"Lord, What Can I Do?"
Could it be that deep inside hurting couples exists an invisible “emotional love tank” with its gauge on empty? If we could find a way to fill it, could the marriage be reborn? I believe the answer is “Yes.” God made us with a capacity for giving and receiving emotional love. Nothing is more important to the emotional climate of your marriage than asking God to teach you how to effectively love your spouse. Learning his or her primary love language and speaking it regularly will make you an effective lover.

Excerpt taken from The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. To find out more about Gary Chapman's resources, visit www.fivelovelanguages.com.