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Last Friday we finished our 6 week series on “Love I didn’t know before.” We talked with our youth about love and it’s many expressions and various ways of demonstration to others.

We all agree that there are many ways of expressing our love and appreciation to others. So we have spoken and discussed together all of these: speaking and using the words of affirmation and encouragement; spending a lot of quality time together; serving others in meaningful ways; giving gifts and physical symbols of love; showing love through physical contact like touching, holding and hugging, etc.) To great extent we were inspired by Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages, for which we are very grateful.

While we agree that there are various forms of showing love, we don’t always realize that some of the forms and expressions of love are more important for some people than for others. To say it in another way: some acts of love speak louder to some than to others.

For example: Joe can feel more loved and appreciated by hearing many words of encouragement and appreciation, while somebody else, let’s call her Jane, can feel more loved when people do something for her; when they serve her in some meaningful way.

When we understand what their primary ways of expressing and receiving love is, we will do accordingly. That is, we will try to show our love to them in the way that they receive as most loving.

The problem with us is, we don’t do so often. We try to love others sometimes genuinely as much as we can and it still doesn’t seem to be enough. Maybe the problem is that we are expressing love to them in our way not in theirs.

Imagine this: Joe and Jane from our example are husband and wife. She loves him genuinely and he loves her just the same. But they both don’t feel much loved by the other. Why is that? Maybe Jane tries hard and always does something for Joe. She goes shopping, she cooks, cleans the house, etc. But Joe doesn’t seem to feel loved much by it. You know why that is! He maybe needs to hear more warm and loving words than to have a warm meal every night for dinner. He maybe needs to hear more words of affirmation than to see the house always perfectly clean.

On the other hand, Joe does his best in trying to love his wife, Jane. But she doesn’t feel much loved by him either. Why is that? Because, in the words of Jane: “he is only a big mouth with sweet words, who never helps…” Joe tells her always how much he loves her, he showers her daily with the words of appreciation, he always encourages her when she returns disappointed from her work, etc. All that is nice and good. But she would appreciate it more if he sometimes did something at home. Or, if he surprised her sometimes with a dinner (doesn’t need to be anything fancy, you see). That would show her the love that she needs so much.

Both try to love the other as much as they can, but ineffectively. When they learn what the other partner needs the most they can be more loving the next time. Joe can learn to do more things for Jane and serve her more and Jane can learn to speak more lovingly using words of appreciation and encouragement when talking to Joe. Both will feel more loved in the end.

So, does this mean that we stop communicating our love in all the various ways God created it? Not at all. It only means that sometimes we can learn to be more “tuned” to peoples needs and to ways in which we can show our love to them more effectively. We can learn to love them the way that is important for them, not for us.

This simple principle can help us to express more love in our friendships, marriages, churches, working places and communities. It only requires from us some desire to learn more about others. When do the people around us feel most loved? How can they be shown love in the best possible way?

If we learn that we won’t need to endlessly try to show our appreciation and love to someone in a way that doesn’t “speak” or communicate love to them. Instead, we can learn what makes the other person feel loved and we can apply it the next time!

In the end, isn’t that what we all are after? More love!

So, do you know when the people you are close to feel loved the most? Do you show them your love their way? Just start today!

We are thankful to Miriam, who designed and created this poster advertising our new series.

When we were thinking last year about what kind of activity we can do as young Christians that would be attractive to our non-Christian friends, that would be also fun and a relationship-building activity at the same time, we came up with the word “Soccer”! Soccer is very popular in Slovakia, so we thought that naturally many of our friends would be interested in joining us.

So since December, some from our youth group have been playing soccer every Sunday night. And as we all quickly realized, it fulfilled our desired goals:

1.) We are spending more time together as brothers and sisters and friends in the church, who have some interests in common. It’s not only a good time of sport, but also a good time of many laughs, smiles and heartfelt situations that are spontaneously generated among brothers and sisters.

2.) We started to invite our friends that don’t come to the church yet. And they started to come! Through this enjoyable activity we are gradually getting to know them better in very informal manner.

Also, most of us stay after the game for a cup of kofola and a good talk. If you don’t have any experience with kofola, one of these days you may try it! (It is a very traditional Czecho-Slovak soft drink that comes from the era of Communism. The taste of the soft drink can lightly remind you of Coca-Cola.) The additional talk after the game can give us more opportunities to share our lives with our friends as well as our faith.

Interestingly, after playing a few matches of soccer in December we switched to volleyball in January and the number of our visitors grew rapidly! Who would have thought that in a country so “addicted” to Soccer, Volleyball would be more popular?! We are happy about the new friendships and new opportunities to share our lives and faith!

Please keep this new relationship-building (and also to some extent evangelistic) activity in your prayers!

Here are the results from the survey that we took in May and June among the University Students in Bratislava. (You can read more about the survey at this link.) This was an “open-questions” survey without answers to pick from. So the students had the opportunity to give multiple answers. For example: a person answered on the first question with three words: love, money and health. All of these answers were counted. We counted how many times each word was given by all of the students. Then we calculated what percentage it is from all of the students we talked to. Therefore, if you would add up all the percentages in the first question, you will not end up with 100%. So, here are some of the questions and results:

What does a man need in life in order to live it meaningfully?

47.17 % Love
43.40 % Friends
32.08 % Family, happy family, good family background, background
20.75 % Money, material things and values
16.98 % Health
13.21 % Boyfriend/girlfriend, partner, someone with whom I can share                   everything
11.32 % Happiness
09.43 % Faith
09.43 % Goal, purpose, passion for something

What is worrying/troubling you in life?

22.64 % School, studying, tests, not prospering in school
20.75 % Relationships among people, in the family
20.75 % Injustice, arrogance, indifference, individualism, selfishness,                       unwillingness to help, wars and cruelty
15.10 % Finances, money for an apartment to live in
07.55 % I don’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend

What gives you joy in life?

39.62 % Relationships, friends, people
18.87 % Success, everything that I achieve by my own strength, success               in school
15.10 % Nature, good weather, living in beautiful Slovakia
13.21 % Boyfriend, girlfriend
11.32 % Family
11.32 % Love, knowing that someone loves me
09.43 % Helping others, when I can help someone, when I can be useful
07.55 % Entertainment

Are you a believer?

58.49 % yes
32.08 % no
09.43 % sometimes or syncretic

Those who considered themselves believers, we also asked:

What do you like about a church?

16.13 % God, I found God there, faith in God
12.90 % I was raised there
09.68 % Fellowship, family atmosphere
09.68 % I found peace there
06.45 % I found meaning for life there

What do you dislike about a church?

19.35 % Too institutional, too far from people and their struggles
19.35 % Hypocrisy
12.90 % Too much talking about politics
09.68 % Preaching morality without preaching Christ
06.45 % Affairs, celibacy, paedophilia
06.45 % I didn’t feel welcomed, I didn’t create relationships there
03.10 % Not enough self-sacrifice

So, how are we going to use the results? How are they going to help us in our youth and University ministry? Well, there are at least a few things we can do:

First, the results serve us as a reminder that we really can be and need to be genuine, honest, loving, caring, forgiving and trustful friends to those who come to our assemblies, our classes and various activities.

Second, when we teach about Christ we can show Him especially through these subjects that are so crucial to these young people. We can talk about true love, genuine friendships and humanness according to God’s image (seen so beautifully in Jesus), etc. They need to see Christ in us, in all our actions.

Third, we can learn their “language.” Young people are not shallow and they are able to “name” some of the problems around us calling them with the right names. We can learn how to use their “language” (some specific expressions they use) to communicate the gospel to them.

We’ll be thinking and praying about other ways that we can use the knowledge about these young people. May our good Lord lead us in doing so. If you have any good idea, please let us know!

Great thanks goes to Miriam for being courageous enough to go with me and ask these students questions in our survey. And also the greatest thanks especially to our good Lord. “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

Oh, and by the way, what would be your answers in our survey?