2 John 1:6 // Summer of Scripture

Welcome to Summer of Scripture on the Naked marriage podcast. For 66 days in a row, we are releasing a daily devotional episode for your marriage. And over these 66 days, we're going to pull out one scripture from each of the 66 books of the Bible and talk about how it applies to your marriage. So if you listen to every single one of these episodes, you're going to have a comprehensive understanding of God's plan for your marriage. We encourage you to listen to everyone. Let's dive into today's scripture.

Hey there. Thank you so much for joining us for Summer of Scripture. We are on day 63, you guys. We're in the home stretch. We're in two John, chapter one, verse six. It says this. Love means doing what God has commanded us. And he has commanded us to love one another. Just as you heard from the beginning, basically saying, like, listen, it's always been about love.

Always, always, always, always been about love. The Beatles were right. All you need is love.

I know.

Who knew?

I love it. And I mean, God is love. The Bible says God is love. And it's like, we love God because he first loved us and then we love others.

It's true.

It's that simple.

In fact, it was John who said that just one book before 1 John 4:8. God is love. It's that simple. And so what does that look like practically in our lives? Well, it's a lot things that we've already talked about to live out love. And the Bible says what love is? Love is patient and kind. It's not boastful or proud or rude. We've learned that love is a commitment and not a feeling. It's an action. We can show it to one another through service, through priority.

We haven't talked about priority. Why don't we talk about that?

Yeah, by making your spouse a high priority. You got so cute. You got in this cute little posture like, let's talk about that. I'm like, oh, I'll talk about whatever you want.

I love it. Well, you know, Jimmy Evans has a great book, the Four Laws of Love. And one of those laws is a law of priority. I love how he simplified this. And obviously there's scripture around this, but I love how you describe it. Can you talk about that? Sweetie?

I'm just mesmerized by your eyes. I don't know if I can even.

You're so silly.

Focus. Well, the law of priority. You know, again, Jimmy outlines this great in his book, but it's God first, then your spouse, then your kids. Then your family, everybody else. But the priority. We show it through our time. We throw it through intentionality. We show it by giving the best of ourselves to our spouse and not our leftovers. We show it by just our love and tenderness and affection for one another. We show up by speaking our spouse's love language and study what theirs is. Is it acts of service, quality time, physical touch, gifts, words of affirmation. Find out what really speaks love to them.

Can I share a story about that?

Yeah, do it.

Okay. So he talked about love languages. That's. Gary Chapman came up with that. He is a brilliant man, I'm telling you. And if you have not read the five love languages, it's just really.

I wish I would have come up with it. I know paying for college would have been a lot easier.

Oh, my gosh, it would have been. But it's just so brilliant and telling and even people who are not Christians go to this book. It's pretty amazing to me, but it's very much a Christian book. It's awesome. But we took this test years ago. But before we took this test and read the book and understood what our love languages are and were back then, I. I really. Neither one of us is much of a gifts person necessarily. Like, that's actually the lowest on both of our lists, even though we do appreciate gifts very much. But it's not like.

Yeah, it's not really our thing, though.

But even so, you know, we enjoy giving gifts to each other. And I remember one year we didn't have very much of a budget, but it was like our anniversary. And I was like, I'm gonna make Dave something because I'm a maker. Like, I love. I'm crafty, I love making stuff. Do you remember this? Okay. So anyway, I found. I went to the craft store, I bought a wood burner, okay. Which is like this instrument that burns stuff into wood. And I got this little box, and I thought, you know what? I'm going to, like, put this. Is. This is going to age us again, too. I'm going to put the CDs, the letter C and D. Okay. CDs, compact disc of Dave's sermons in this box. And like, his. Also his notes and stuff where he can keep, like, a special box dedicated to his sermons. Okay. You were kind of a newer pastor at the time, and I was, like, so proud of you. And I wanted you to be able to have a keepsake. So I have this box. I get my wood burner instrument, wood burning instrument, and I start. I put in These different verses. I draw stuff on it. I have his name on it. Sorry. And I mean, I went to a lot of effort. It took me a lot of time. Then I painted it, certain parts of it. And then I also made you a clock for your office. Okay. I got a little clock making kit. I did some wood burning on that. And I even got the little contraption made, a clock. And it was like, special for his office. And. And I wrote you this real nice card. Like, I remember I wrote out all this nice card and like, all this keepsake stuff. And anyway, so I gave it to you, and you were very sweet. You're always very like, oh, I love it. You know, And. And I gave it to him. And then I want to say I ended up finding it later on, like in a closet, like in our closet, hidden underneath clothes or something. Like, he had never taken it to his office. I think the clock was broken. Cause it got knocked around by something because you forgot it was under there.

Oh, I felt. I felt bad.

And the.

And you're like, don't worry. I will never make you anything ever again.

Well, anyway, I got kind of offended because it wasn't immediately after. It was like, I thought this whole time you would put it in a special place somewhere in your office or whatever. And anyway, so I find it and I'm just like, what the heck is this? You know, like, I went to all this trouble and I was just like, so, you know, like, what in the world? And you're like, listen, I really. I really appreciate it. I kind of forgot about it myself. I put it in there, but, you know, it was over the weekend. I was thinking I'd take it to the office, and then I just never took it. And I'm so sorry. You know, he's like, I'm going to use it now. I'm going to use it. And with the clock being broken too, I couldn't fix it. And I was just like, forget it. And the card. So I found out. We ended up, you know, finding out our love languages. And Dave's number one is acts of service. Okay. Gifts is like number five. Like, it is not high on the list. I think your number two is quality time. My number one is physical touch, but it's more of a foot rub. Language.

I got excited prematurely, but it wasn't what I wanted it to be.

It was, oh, my goodness.

Loves.

I love a back rub.

You love being massaged?

I do. I love a good massage, but so it's physical touch and then quality time also is my second one. So we have high value on quality time together. But gifts was also my number five. And it kind of a light bulb went off and I was like, oh, he's not a gifts guy. And also, I realized, too, I love. Even though I'm not, like, a gifts person, I think words of affirmation must have been number three for me, because I really value, like, anything you write me. Like, I still have the letter you wrote me on our engagement day. And actually, I want to put it in a little frame, but I used to still have it. But. But you. It's not. You don't really care about that stuff. Like, I'll be honest with you. Like, even a Facebook post, you're not one to go into flowery language. Like, you're not going to be that guy. Like, you're. You're going to tell me. You'll tell me, like, one to one on one, but you're not going to be the guy that gives me the letter of that. You're not going to make a public display of it on Facebook. You're not going to. You know what I'm saying? Because that's not a high value to you. And it's really not my number one value either.

I'll do it if you like it.

No, no, no. But I'm saying, like, I realized in that moment, it was, like, it made sense to me because I don't. I mean, no wonder. It wasn't because he didn't care about this gift. It's just he's not a gift guy. You know, you appreciate a good shirt or whatever. But, like, really, you know, the best gift to give you is concert tickets to see Weird Al. Like, I did years ago. That was like, you were. Or Elton John. We got concert tickets to Elton John. We went to a comedy show. We've seen Seinfeld several times. We saw another comedy guy. Like, I know we want an experience together because you have a high value on the quality time together.

Yeah.

And then acts of service. You're number one. If I can just take care of stuff. Like, whatever it is.

Yeah. If you take care of it gets me going.

Like, whatever it is, it could be anything. And so it's like understanding that. But I stopped writing notes to you because you don't care about them. And you were like, don't waste money on a card. Like, I literally don't care just what you. So. I know, but you're like, tell me. Like, tell me, but I don't need that written down. Like, it doesn't I mean, you think it's nice, but it's not like a high value thing. And I think that we could all benefit from knowing more about this because then you're not mad about it. You're like, oh, they're just wired differently.

Yeah.

Yes.

So, hey, thank you, Dr. Gary Chapman, for helping bring in some clarity to all that. And thank you to the Apostle John for being an instrument of God to create these great books of the Bible through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And thank you for listening. It's been fun, and we'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Day 64 will be in the book of third John.

Yay.