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The Love Language of a Child
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Once upon a time… it may have even been February, Jesus gave the children
around him a Valentine party. In the history of the ancient world there is
nothing recorded that happened like this. As a matter of fact in the rest of the
New Testament there isn’t anything that happens like this. It is unique to
Jesus. Jesus said, allow the children to come. Don’t keep them away. And then he
added, if you want a ticket to the kingdom you have to learn how to respond like
children respond.
Here’s how it happened. People were coming as they often did to see Jesus.
Because the children were small they made their way up to the front. And the
disciples who were Jesus’ closed friends but didn’t always understand what he
was about. The disciples said get out of here. See C. S. Lewis once said that
the most common thing about human groups is that they develop an inner circle.
And Jesus’ inner circle was the disciples. But they also thought they had an
inner circle who could see Jesus and who couldn’t. And the strong word that the
New Testament uses is rebuke. They rebuked the children. The Lord is too busy
for you. Get lost. And then comes a word that is equally as strong as the word
rebuke. The Bible, the NIV translation, indignant. Jesus was indignant. It’s the
only time in the whole New Testament, the gospels, that applies, that it is used
by Jesus. It means an intentional correction. And Jesus indignantly called them
down and said don’t you do that.. Let me paraphrase. This is my inner circle.
The children are my inner circle. And all of you grown ups out there in case you
don’t know your ticket to the kingdom of God is to become like they are and to
respond like they do.
What a Valentine party. To be made part of God’s inner circle. How bout you?
If you’re a believer you are a child of God. Do you really believe that God is
at work within you and that you are part of his inner circle. What is the love
language of the inner circle? Let’s make it A, B, C.
A - acceptance. Acceptance and receiving are the same word in the New
Testament. Very often they are translated one way or the other, same word. John
1:12 says as many as received him. You could say as many as accepted him to them
gave he power to become the sons of God even to the ones who believe on his
name.
Few tragedies happen worse than when a child is rejected. When a child is
abused. When a parent has no time for the child and will not accept that child
as that child is. In one of Lynn Austins’ novels one of the main characters
describes his boyhood in terms of his father’s rejection of him. He reported
three of us brothers grew up together on the farm. Johnny was the youngest, I
was the oldest, and Simon was right in the middle but Johnny was my father’s
favorite. Johnny knew it too and he lorded over us. And while Johnny was his
favorite my father could barely stand to look at me. I never understood why.
Hard as I tried I could never please him. My youngest brother won his love by
doing nothing at all. While I seemed to earn his wrath by just existing. Now
friend, be honest with me. Is there a shadow in the back of your mind that
that’s the way God treats you? That just because you aren’t perfect God has no
place for you and that he ignores you. Acceptance is the key here. And you know
what faith is? Faith is the acceptance of God’s acceptance. Do you really
believe that you are accepted and acceptable to God even with all of your flaws?
Max Lucado speaks of a gardener giving a seedling to a friend who is an
orange grower and he said this is my gift to you. An orchestra conductor
presented a package to her favorite cellist in the orchestra and said I love
what you do for our orchestra. The third was a gift given was a gift given to a
plumber by a grateful homeowner who was an artist. So the orange grower, the
cellist, and the plumber unwrapped their gifts. The orange grower discovered a
plant which he planted. And it began to grow but it didn’t grow like an orange
tree. It grew like a bush. And no matter what the orange grower did, it didn’t
make any difference. It grew like a bush. Put on it orange growing fertilizer.
And used orange tree bug spray and even poured orange juice on the soil
Laughter. No help. Whatever the orange grower did it just grew like a bush. And
is didn’t grow oranges it grew tomatoes. Very distraught he let the tomatoes dry
up on the vine. Obviously he wasn’t from Hanover County. The cellist opened her
gift only to find an accordion. And she took her bow and ran it over the keys.
It made noise but not music. And she took the accordion and put it in a corner
and left it there. The plumber unwrapped his gift and lo and behold there were
paints and a pallet. He scratched his head and he decided what he was supposed
to do was to paint the pipes. Isn’t this interesting? That the givers determined
the value of the gift by what they expected not the intent of the giver. It is
so easy to do that with one another.
Each year God gives millions of parents a gift. A brand new baby and they
tend to expect oranges and cellists and wrenches. And instead they get tomatoes,
an accordion, and paint brush and canvas. And they don’t know what to do with
it. You know the reason? Is because they’ve decided what the child is going to
be before the child ever gets here. And the whole issue is whether we make
children in our image or in God’s image. Let me ask you a question. Here it is
in black and white. Can we accept our children as God accepts us? And can we
accept our children for what he wired into them instead of what we have wired
into our expectations?
B stands for Bless. To bless your children. It says in the scriptures that
Jesus took the children in his arms and put his hands on them and blessed them.
Do you deeply believe if you’re a parent that God is working in your children?
Now we do not know when little ones are little ones exactly how God wired them
but by the time they’re two and three we know, if we watch. You see even at an
early age Jesus held them and blessed them because he knew what God was going to
do with them. And I love some things Charles Swindoll has written in the little
book, You and Your Child. He says, in every child God places in our arms there
is a bent, a set of characteristics already established and the bent is fixed
and determined before he has ever given them over to our care. The word receive
and the word accept, the same words as you bring those words to your child bring
them yourself because you are a child of God. I have quoted Myron Madden when he
defines blessing another as sparkling on them. Believing and blessing means you
sparkle on somebody. You sparkle on your children as deep down you hope God
sparkles on you.
C stands for communication. God is the God who communicates. In the opening
words of John’s gospel, Jesus is described as the Word. Listen to it. In the
beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And in
verse 14 it says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that is Jesus the
Lord, who was the Word, who came to communicate to us what God was like and what
we could become. Our world has lots of words but little unity. Lots of syllables
but little togetherness.
Robert Putnam in his exhausted research on communication and community is
perhaps a little too skeptical but he writes, “Dependence on television for
entertainment is not merely a significant predictor of the decay of community
and family it is the predictor.” And he adds this chilling sentence, “a major
commitment to television viewing such as most of us have come to have is
incompatible with the development of community and family.” Here is the truth.
God wants to communicate with us and wants us to talk to each other. You know
maybe we need to set some boundaries how much is viewed.
When our boys were home as teenagers going in all directions each with their
own separate interest, Shirley and I decided we would try something new. We
decided we’d have a family council. And we’d bring everybody together once a
week and we’d find out what everybody else was doing. The boys were not exactly
ecstatic about it. We said, well, I’ll tell you what you can do and turn to the
one who had a driver’s license and said you can leave your car at home or you
can come to family council. And to the others you can be grounded or come to
family council.
You know parents have to set boundaries. To believe in your children is
essential. To set boundaries is also essential. And to be able to say you know
we just don’t talk like that at our house. Or we don’t act like that at our
house. That’s a boundary. My oldest son is now about the same age as I was when
I became your pastor. And guess what he remembers. I wish I could say that he
remembered all of the hours I spent watching him play sports. And all of the
miserable corny dogs I ate watching him in Little League. And that he would say
to me, oh you sacrificed and I’m so appreciative. You know what he says? The
thing after all of these years that I remember the most and I appreciate the
greatest are the family councils. When we sat around a table and shared what one
another was doing. And you prayed, Dad. You prayed.
Let me tell you something. Communication is not an alternative. It isn’t for
God and it isn’t for us. If we don’t talk to each other we shrivel. And we just
become less and less what we were meant to be. And we become spectators and you
can’t be a spectator and follow the Lord Jesus.
And what are the casualties when we don’t communicate? It’s the D and the E.
Delight and encouragement. You wind up with a life that has no joy and you don’t
have anyone patting you on the back saying, atta boy, atta girl.
At the end of the movie, Apollo 13, three astronauts and a space ship from
earth their lives in the balance. And all that connected them with a safe
landing in an unknown territory on a trip that had never been made before, all
that connected them was the ability to communicate with Central. You may
remember the movie about it. And it looked like they were close to tragedy.
There was no way of knowing whether they would burn up when their spaceship hit
the earth’s atmosphere. And you may remember those four gargantuan, humongous
minutes, silence. And one of those in Central said I fear we have just
experienced the greatest tragedy that NASA has ever had. But another one put his
shoulders back and said I disagree. Don’t mean any disrespect but I believe we
have just come into our finest hour. The minute went on until finally with the
static almost overwhelming they heard the words, this is Apollo. The three were
alive. And those scientists who wouldn’t know an emotion if they saw it on
Interstate 95 started jumping up and down, and shouting and cheering. And if you
saw the movie you remembered that even though we all knew how turned out, we
were crying and we were cheering. Why? Communication happened. Life restored.
It’s a model. It’s a parable. It’s us. And God comes to us this day and says
talk to me. Talk to me. Talk to me. And you remember when he took the little
ones in his arms and blessed them. They talked to him. Will you? C. S. Lewis
says God can stand anything but our silence. On this day talk to the Lord. Let
him have your life. And move out with him on your side and his blessing upon
your life.
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