Deeply Loved | Bill & Kristi Gaultiere

Well, what could happen to your relationships if you learned the power of empathy? Empathy is about going deeper. It helps us to feel and know that we are deeply loved by the person who is caring for us and ultimately by the Lord who's caring for us through that person. God has created us in such a way that our brains are actually wired for empathy. And there's so much good psychology that fits with all that scripture teaches us.

Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Our guests today believe many people want to experience deeper relationships with those around them, but they feel unseen or stuck in life's struggles. Authors and clinical professionals Dr. Bill and Dr.

Christy Galtier say the answer lies in one word. And that word is, wait for it, empathy. But that concept is often misunderstood and in today's world kind of maligned in a way. We're going to talk about a new resource titled Deeply Loved: Receiving and Reflecting God's Great Empathy for You. You can find out more at the website buildingrelationships.us.

And Gary, I think empathy is your superpower. You relate to people's struggles. You're able to kind of climb into their shoes. How'd you learn to do that? You know, Chris, I think anyone who seeks to counsel other people Have to develop this skill.

Otherwise, you know, they don't. have the sense that you really understand their situation. And so I think some of it is I'm a natural listener, you know, and I like to ask questions and listen carefully to people.

So I am really excited about our discussion today because this book is going to help a lot of people. Because it's not just our empathy for others. Really, it kind of starts with this whole concept. God has empathy for me?

Okay, so I'm excited about our discussion today.

Well let's meet our guests, Dr. Bill and Dr. Christy Galtier, have been counseling and ministering for 30 years. They're the authors of Journey of the Soul, Healthy Feelings, Thriving Faith, and a featured resource today, Deeply Loved. They are founders of the nonprofit Soul Shepherding, and their podcast is Soul Talks.

You can find out more about them and our featured resource, their book, Deeply Loved, at buildingrelationships.us.

Well, Christy and Bill, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you, Gary. It's a delight for us to be with you and Chris and all your listeners.

Well, before we get to the topic of empathy, why don't you tell us a bit of your love story? How did you meet, how did you know he was the one, Christy, give us a little background on you, Christy, and your relationship with Bill.

Well, Bill and I were blessed to go to a Christian university together, and I heard his name for quite a bit before I ever met him. His reputation preceded him. He was a leader on campus, and it was actually through his cousin and his sister, who were also students at the same university at the same time we were there, that I would hear all these wonderful things about Bill Galtier. It was a year later that I finally met him, and I was surprised how handsome he was. I had heard so many great things.

And one of the things that struck me right away when I met him was how attuned he was to me. Just on a short introduction, he really was listening to me. He was really looking at me. He was really showing me interest. I was.

Just a stranger to him. Then, as I got to know Bill, it was his great love and passion for Jesus. And his ability to really be present to God himself. and me and other people At the same time. And I have so appreciated and respected Bill's relationship with Christ, but then also the way that he overflows from that in love in his relationships with others.

And I've been a great benefit of that.

So it sounds like Bill's empathy was a pretty big part of your sensing, hey, this is the man I'd like to spend my life with.

Well, it was because he oozed God's grace. He was definitely gentle with weakness and listened with a sincere interest to understand.

So, Bill, what is your perspective on all of this that we've been talking about here?

Well, I'm blessed, so blessed to know Christy. I admired her from afar, was attracted to her. She didn't know that. I was so thankful when we got introduced, and I acted on that. Asked her out on a date, but she was booked up.

She had a lot of guys that were pursuing her that she was going out with.

So it took a while for me to get in there. And so I was so thankful when the Lord provided that opportunity. And at one point early on, we asked each other, you know, what was your favorite book? And we both had the same favorite book, The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer.

And that speaks to how intimacy with Jesus has been central even before we were married. And I've always admired Christie's love for Jesus and her discipleship to the Lord. And she is the most empathetic person I know. and everything that I've learned about empathy, not so much in my PhD training. Of course, I learned the skills and all that, but Christy lives it and I I am a blessed man to live with someone who really listens to me and cares for me.

So you both have been counseling and ministering to people for more than 30 years, as Chris said. What are the big changes you've seen in that time in marriage and family relationships?

Well, years ago there were l especially within the Christian community, there were the the male-female roles were more traditional and it was less common to have both spouses working. Outside the home. And so that's been, you know, a huge change. Obviously, for couples to balance work and marriage and family is more tricky. And we've also had huge changes in our culture just with the sort of the saturation of media and worldly values.

And so Christian morality is not as strong as it used to be in our culture. And so there's quite a war against marriage and the family because of that. And so it is more and more difficult, I think, for couples to really prioritize their relationship with God and with each other. And out of that, then to parent the kids and live their lives together. I think too, we live at such a fast pace, and there are so many distractions in our world today.

Now, the positive side is there's also more resources to help us in marriage, and things like your five love languages, your writings, and the test. And these are very helpful tools, and some of the resources we provide at Soul Shepherd Union. I think those are a real grace that God has given and is using in marriage and family relationships. Yeah, I I I identify with that. You know, back when Carolyn and I got married, I don't even know if they had books on marriage, but I never saw one, you know.

And I never heard the word premarital counseling. You know, we had one session with the pastor and it was about the wedding. But now, you know, there's a lot of emphasis on premarital counseling, that sort of thing.

So, well, now let's talk about the book, The Power of Empathy.

So before we go further, can you give us a working definition of that word? Tell us what empathy is or isn't. Yeah, empathy is seeking to understand someone's emotions. thoughts and experiences Help them know that they are deeply loved by God. We're getting inside their skin, the skin of their soul, if we could, walking around in their shoes, walking around in their life to see things as they do and to understand what it's like to be them.

Well, Bill and Christy, recently two Christian books came out against empathy. One is about toxic empathy. And the other talks about the sin of empathy. Unpack that for us.

Well, they're really talking about something different. They're not talking about biblical empathy. They're talking about situations of enabling people to do whatever they want, being selfish around what we feel, what we desire, and catering to other people, coddling people. They're really talking about codependency, where empathy is a false form of empathy that is not attached to God's truth and personal responsibility.

So, in our book, Deeply Loved, one of the ways that we explain what empathy is, is we give a formula, the formula in quotes here, but we give a formula for growth. You know, how do people grow? We all want to grow. We want to grow to be more like Jesus. We want to grow to be more loving and caring and empathetic for our spouse.

We want to do good in our work and improve our skills. What does it take to grow and really change in a personal level? And what we say is empathy. Plus truth. Plus responsibility.

equals growth.

So, if empathy is not connected to truth, the truth of God's word, the truths that we can understand in science, and just the reality of the environment around us, if empathy isn't connected to truth, it's going to be distorted and it's going to be unhelpful. And if empathy is not connected to personal responsibility, if it doesn't help me be motivated and take action in a constructive and loving way in my life, it's also not going to be helpful.

So, empathy is not true empathy when it's toxic. It's this form of like codependency, and it's enabling people to just. Do whatever they feel like doing, even if it's not loving and respectful to other people. Or it's a way of listening that just indulges people and they don't take any action, they don't take responsibility for their life.

So biblical empathy is very much in tune with the compassion of Jesus. In fact, you don't really get true loving compassion without empathy because empathy is what enables compassion to really dial into, well, what does somebody else actually need? What's going to be most helpful to them? What's going to raise their dignity?

Well, your new book, Deeply Loved, talks about emotional barriers that hold some people back from flourishing in their relationships. What are some of those barriers?

Well, there's so many barriers, and one of them is that we don't know that there will be somebody who would listen to us with empathy, who would really join Jesus' love and empathy for us. And so even we project this lack of empathy onto God, and we can think that we need to just be pleasing him and doing everything he tells us to do, which is true. We do want to obey his commands and have respect for God. But we miss the empathy of God, and it can cause us to settle for shallow relationships, both with God and with other people. It also can cause us to...

Experience great judgment for ourselves and other people, and to miss God's deep love and grace for us. This was true for me growing up in the church. I was blessed to grow up in the church and to be raised where a church that taught me the Bible and scriptures and God's commands. But I got this sense into which it was all about me trying to meet those and achieve those and attain those and earn God's love. And I did understand about Jesus dying on the cross and his forgiveness, and I was grateful for God's forgiveness, but I also felt this strong sense of, and I better not ever need it again.

And this caused me to judge God as harsh. And myself as ineligible to be worthy of his love, which we are in and of ourselves. But that self-judgment kept me in a place of shame, shame before God and shame before others. I wasn't able to really agree with God's grace. And we find this really important that we come to be able to see Like scripture shows us, God is a God who loves us even while we were sinners.

God is a God, as we read about in Hebrews 4:15, that we do not have a high priest that's unable to empathize with us. But one who empathizes with us in every way. I mean, think about God's empathy and willingness to become human in the incarnation and come and live on earth and experience all the trials and temptations and pains that we experience in our life. The incarnation shows us beautiful empathy. And then taking on our sin.

I mean, talk about empathy there. To feel the pain. and the and the shame of that sin and to suffer under that. and yet to not judge us. but to be a mediator of God's grace.

and deep love for us. Boy, I think when we experience that on a regular basis. It has tremendous impact on how we live, right? Yeah, we say that empathy is oxygen for your soul. I mean, without empathy, we can't breathe very well.

And, you know, the way empathy works is that it's kind of like if you grow up in a smoggy city, you're accustomed to it and you're getting some oxygen, but it's not real great. It's not good for your health. But if you happen to get out into the country and breathe clean, fresh air with no smog in it, you just like you breathe in deep and you go, Ah, oh, wow, this is amazing. And empathy is like that. You have to experience it to really understand how powerful it is and how the empathy of Jesus is embedded throughout the New Testament, the empathy of God throughout the Bible.

And it is so fundamental to what it means to be human that we would be in relationships with, you know, when the Lord tells us to love one another, his new commandment. Embedded in that is empathy, just as with compassion. Unconditional love is going to include empathy, the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's a rule of empathy. Considering what other people need and what they want, and what's going to be best for them.

And so, when we learn how to experience empathy, that then helps us share it with others.

So, we're meant to beginning to be learning to receive this as a child, you know, in our family and how we grow up. And, but some of us come out of childhood, well, all of us to some extent, with some empathy deficits or wounds, and it really impacts us. And so, we end up living in surface relationships where we don't really know how to communicate well and deeply. We don't really know how to resolve conflicts. And so, empathy is central to all this.

Could you share a personal story from your own experience or a client that you've worked with? that illustrates this transformative power of empathy. Yeah, I'll share a story just from the other day, Gary. I was. Approaching Weekend where we were going to be going to a memorial for my brother-in-law, who recently.

Died of pancreatic cancer. And there were a lot of people in our family, decisions that needed to be made, and people that I cared about, I wanted to love well. And as I was trying to make plans and trying to figure out next steps, and a lot of decisions that needed to be made, I found myself just feeling weary, tired, overwhelmed, shut down, having a hard time making decisions, and having a hard time distracted in my work, being a little bit slower and taking more energy to get my normal work done. And Bill noticed this and he asked me, he invited me, he said, Well, Christy, you know, would you like to talk about? Your plans and what you're feeling about the coming memorial and what's stressing you and what's overwhelming you with your workload today.

And I so appreciated his invitation for me to begin to share with him some of what was going on inside of me. And as I began to just share with him all the different pieces about how I wanted to love each of these different family members well and where I wasn't sure which was the best decision with a number of the decisions I needed to make around the logistics of the weekend. I just began to feel his empathy for all I was carrying on top of the grief. And as he listened to me, and as he helped me to know that he understood that it was a lot I was carrying, as he helped me to. know that he understood that I was grieving.

As he helped me to know that he understood that I felt alone with it, I just became so empowered and so energized and everything became so clear for me. And I was able then to move forward in the loving actions and decisions that I wanted to be able to make. But before I had shared that with him, I just kept trying to repress my emotions about it. I was trying to repress my grief because I didn't have time to grieve. I needed to get work done.

And I was trying to repress the anxiety I was feeling about it. It didn't seem like there was a good way that. would love everybody as well as I wanted to love them that would really work well for all of my family members. And as I was anticipating some conflict might come up or I might disappoint somebody. Trying to keep all of those emotions repressed was sapping my energy.

But as Bill gave me the gift of being able to listen and seek and to understand, my energy was restored. And I was able then to see more clearly and to feel God's presence more fully with me as well. And so often I see this to be true for people that I journey with. I'm thinking about a friend that I was with recently, and she was having a hard time making a decision about what to do for her son who was suffering. And she was kind of locked up with some in her thinking and As we began to invite her to share that fear and to To be able to bring it into the light of God's love and presence in our relationship.

And she did that. We said, well, if you found that happened, if you took that action and that was the consequence that you're afraid of, Could you see that we would be here for you and we would be here to listen to you and to support you and to empathize with you and to pray for you? And she just couldn't believe that. And she was like, oh, yeah, well, if I have that support, then I can do this. I can proceed in what I need to do next.

So, so often it's just that sense of needing somebody to mediate God's presence and love through the power of empathy. That frees us and energizes us and empowers us to do that very thing he's leading us to do.

So Bill, would you say that questioning people, asking people questions is maybe the early steps of uh showing empathy, your your the fact that you want to hear what's going on. Oh, yes, Gary. I'm being curious is a central part of empathy. Just wanting to understand.

So in Deeply Love, we of course teach the listening skills and empathy skills. One of them is asking open questions where your heart is soft, your eyes are soft, you're interested. You're concerned. You want to understand. Empathy is about going deeper.

That's what we call our book deeply loved. That's the effect of empathy: it helps us to feel and know that we are deeply loved by the person who is caring for us and ultimately by the Lord who's caring for us through that person. Bill, what I often experience myself is I want to show empathy for somebody and I'll ask a question, I'll get an answer, and then I want to fix them. And with the fix comes the judgment. Oh, you shouldn't do that.

You ought to do this. Why are you doing that? That's a stupid thing. You know, that kind of thing.

So it's empathy removes the judgment from the person who's trying to listen well. Would you agree with that? Oh yeah, yeah, Chris. I think that so many of us struggle with that temptation to jump in with advice. I mean, I know better.

I'm a psychologist, but I have that temptation because actually my primary gift is to be a teacher. And so, yeah, when we're with people over coffee, with a family member, yeah, we really want to resist that temptation to give advice because even if it's good advice, the person hearing it will often tend to feel judged by it. And there are some people that they just seem to want advice, and so that gives us permission, but it's not really what's most helpful. Because even if there is some thought that's needed or some action step that needs to be taken, or some piece of wisdom that's missing, that's going to be secondary because people don't care what we know until they know that we care. And so the way that we listen, the way that we care, the kinds of questions that we ask, and just having a heart that wants to understand and wants to support, that does so much to build up other people.

And then the insights that they need will come spontaneously. I mean, actually, it's the Holy Spirit speaking the truth of God's word into our lives. But it's often been called, like in psychotherapy, it's been called the talking cure. Just by talking about my life, as long as it's in a personal, vulnerable, and meaningful way, with someone who's really listening and wanting to understand that interchange, that relating and bonding that's going on there, it's curative, it's healing. And spontaneous insights and understandings come from that process.

You know, Chris, I appreciate you sharing that because I too, even though I value empathy and I know and I see how much God uses it to. Help people feel his love. I miss at it sometimes, also.

Sometimes I'll slip into fixing, especially if I'm at a place where I haven't been receiving God's love and I haven't been receiving empathy. Then I want to protect myself from feeling the other person's pain. And I want to fix them because I don't want to have to co-suffer with them. But I would also say that it helps me to remember how it's felt when I felt fixed. And I remember early in our marriage, Bill and I were learning some of these communication skills and new habits and ways of loving each other.

I was really overwhelmed. We were both getting our doctorates in psychology. We were youth pastors at a megachurch. We were working other jobs to put ourselves through school. It was a crazy time in our life, and I was utterly overwhelmed.

And I remember beginning to tell Bill some of the emotions I was having. And he began to respond out of this, you know, mindset of, oh, I can help you, Christy. And he began to give me some great ideas and some great wisdom and some great things I should do. And I remember stopping him and saying, you know, I feel insulted. I know what to do.

I just need to know you care. I just need to know I'm not alone. And I think that it often will help me to remember how that felt, the insult it felt to have him give me advice or to tell me what to do when I hadn't asked for that. And so, one of the things we write about in Deeply Loved is the importance about taking that responsibility to ask for empathy. I remember we were with some friends and we were sharing and lamenting some decisions that one of our children had made.

And they were responding to us with some reassurance and some cheerleading, and oh, yeah, but it's all going to turn out in the end. God's got this. And it wasn't satisfying to us. We were grieving. And at the end, as they began to drop us off, we were in the backseat of their car.

Bill said, Well, you know, I guess I just wanted some empathy. And right then, our friends said, Oh, empathy. Yes, I'm so sorry. We were not empathetic to you. And from that point on, I saw a marked difference in those friends and how they responded to us.

And our relationship grew much more deeper in trust as we were able to be a much more safe place for each other, a place of grace in our relationship, and be a place where we could be emotionally honest in our relationship. And that's one of the gifts that we give people when we offer them empathy. But some people are better at this than others.

Some people are more natural empathetic.

So if you have a spouse who's not and you get really frustrated with them, is this is empathy something you can learn and grow in? Empathy is totally something that we can learn and grow in because I'm not naturally empathetic. I mean, I was practically raised on the football field. You fall down, you get a scrape, you get a hurt, you just rub dirt on it and you move forward. And so I'm the oldest of five kids, and there wasn't room for my emotions and my needs.

So I grew up into adulthood. I was not aware of what I felt until in college when I was studying psychology. And I had a Christian professor who was not only a book smart from learning psychology in graduate school, but she was also a Christian counselor. And so I was really blessed to learn from her, and I asked to be her teacher's aide. My return for that was I got to meet with her every week.

And so I was going to be mentored by her.

So the first time I sat down with her, I said to her, Oh, Kara, I'm so honored to talk with you. I want to learn from you about being a Christian counselor. Tell me what it's like. And she says to me, Oh, Bill, we can get to that later. Let's start with you.

How are you? How are you feeling? And I swear, I'm like looking over my shoulder. Like, wait, wait a minute. Me?

What do I feel? I don't know. How are you feeling? I wanted to switch the focus to her because I could maybe listen to what she was feeling, but I didn't have any idea what I felt. And so she would ask me more questions and, you know, these curious questions like we were talking about with a soft heart.

And she's like, well, tell me more about that. And she said, well, it sounds like you're feeling stressed. Like you've some really difficult things have been happening here.

Well, I guess I am feeling stressed. And then we continued. And well, it seems that you feel anxious. Like maybe there's some gurgling or some butterflies in your stomach. Start tuning into my stomach, and there's uncomfortableness in there.

Oh, that's anxiety. Yeah, I guess I do feel anxious. You see, so what was happening was she was feeling my emotions before I was because she was self-aware and she was empathetic. And so I learned the language of emotions. In that conversation.

And that was before I met Christy, or she wouldn't have had that story about me.

So I was beginning to learn empathy and getting deeper in this. And so, if I can learn empathy, I'm a type A thinker and doer. I'm not like a natural empathetic person.

So if I can learn it, anybody can learn it. This is the Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman podcast. Bill and Christy Galtier are joining us. They're the authors of the featured resource, the book Deeply Loved, Receiving and Reflecting God's Great Empathy for You.

Find out more at buildingrelationships.us or go to fivelovelanguages.com.

Well, Bill and Christy, we often think of extending empathy to others. But we might not think of experiencing empathy for ourselves So why is self-empathy important for our emotional and spiritual health?

Well, it's so important we call self-empathy in our book Deeply Loved. Agreeing with God's grace. And without self-empathy, we don't appreciate The empathy that God and others give us, we spoil it. See, we have these unconscious resistances to needing empathy. Maybe we're afraid that it's self-pity.

And we don't want to sink down into this poor me, feeling sorry for ourselves, stirring up negative emotions, playing the victim. Those are things that are part of self-pity, but that's not empathy. And so we have a chart where we compare these in deeply love. Self-empathy also we might avoid because we think maybe it's a self-help project. But self-empathy is not, it's not hugging ourselves, it's not finding answers within ourselves, it's agreeing with God's love for us.

And one of the things that taught me this was: I remember at one point I was sharing with Bill.

Some grief that I was having after my grandma died, and I had unconscious resistance to this grief. We were headed somewhere. It was an inconvenience time to be hit with a grief wave. I didn't want to feel the grief. But Bill was responding to my grief with empathy and And it wasn't getting through to me.

I was resisting it because inside I felt shame for my emotions. I felt shame for having needs. And I remember Bill saying to me, Christy, it seems like you're having a hard time really receiving my love. Right now, it seems like you're having a hard time internalizing God's care for you in your grief. It seems like you might even be feeling shame.

And it was so helpful to me because I was not aware. that I was totally and completely blocking his love and God's love. Because I didn't have any empathy for the grief that I was feeling in myself. That self-empathy. And what we write about in Deeply Love is that we really need three-way empathy.

We need to receive empathy from God. We love because God first loved us. We empathize because God first empathizes with us. And then we need it mediated from others. People who are in our life who can show us.

God's care, His empathy, His love, His compassion, His presence. But we've got to agree with it. We can refuse it. And if we do, it's not going to change us. It's not going to help us to grow and to get it in us to then be able to.

overflow from this well of God's deep love. One of the ways that we refuse or deflect or spoil empathy and that component of God's grace is when we're self-critical. Or we have these high self-expectations, or we're saying to ourselves in our self-talk, well, you know, I shouldn't need this, or I'm just being a burden, or I'm too emotional, or I should be stronger than this. And these sorts of thoughts and attitudes within us end up siphoning out the empathy and the gentle loving kindness and wisdom that the Lord is ministering to us through our friend or through our spiritual director that we're meeting with. In Soul Shepherding, we train spiritual directors in our Soul Shepherding Institute.

And spiritual directors are great at listening to people and listening prayerfully. And so we all need this in our life, this kind of a relationship. And we can learn empathy from talking with a spiritual director or a counselor. And when we learn to receive it that way, that's what really helps us get better at giving empathetic love to the people around us because everybody around us in every situation, obviously in our family, our friends, our church, also our places of work, empathy is embedded in emotional intelligence. Intelligence.

And emotional intelligence is essential to success in our work and into loving relationships and also in our faith. Our faith is stronger as we grow in emotional intelligence. What are people who have no empathy for themselves like? I mean, how how do they act? and and and daily life.

Well, they have trouble connecting with their emotions, as has been true in my story. And it took me a process over some time to learn to feel my emotions and learn the language of emotions, like I was talking about. And when we're disconnected from our emotions, that affects how we relate to other people. And to be really tuned into others in a way that is most helpful to them, we need to have some self-empathy. And so we define that as an expression of God's grace, saying, well, we need to agree with God's grace.

Of course, God's grace is more than empathy. It's the forgiveness of our sins. It's unmerited favor. It's power for doing good and for loving people. But empathy is embedded in that.

And so if I'm not receiving empathy from God and from other people, there's going to be a lack of graciousness in my life. And probably like what I was talking about earlier with struggling with self-criticism or unrealistic self-expectations or thinking that I'm just too sensitive and too emotional. And there's shame associated with that. Lacking empathy, we're lacking that oxygen for our souls, and there can be a depressant that's on our life. We also mentioned earlier about how, in our culture, Christy was saying, how we can be so hurried.

And that's one of the problems when I'm lacking empathy for myself: I can be just running helter-skelter so busy, but not really grounded, not really centered in God's love. And I don't, the relational centers in my brain aren't on.

So I'm not really tuning into the beauty and goodness of God in moments. I'm not tuning into God's blessings that are coming to me through other people and the opportunities in different situations to be a blessing to other people. Both of you are Christians. You're biblically based, but you're also trained in psychology.

So this book blends both a biblically based and a psychologically sound approach to life. Why are both of these perspectives necessary for us to thrive? We'll both reveal God's wisdom. Certainly in scripture, we've got God's wisdom and his truth. And yet, not all of God's truth is in the Bible, like the calculus tables.

And so, we need to understand that God reveals himself also through the science that studies his creation, including us, his people, and that God really wants us to understand him as well as people and relationships, including our emotions.

So, in Deeply Love, we draw on dozens of research studies in our book. And we recognize that God has created us in such a way that our brains are actually wired for empathy. God has given us mirror neurons, and our mirror neurons fire when we see others feeling emotion. And this helps us to be able to tune in and to reflect back the thoughts and feelings other people are having, attune to the significance of it for them. Even we read about mirroring in the Bible in 1 Peter 4:8, which says, above all, constantly echo God's intense love for one another.

This is one of the psychology pieces of empathy that we can read about in Scripture. And there's so much good psychology in Scripture as well, and so much good psychology that. fits with all that scripture teaches us. We also have things like Jesus' golden rule. To treat others as you want them to treat you.

Empathy is key in that, and being able to understand what other people need and our own desires, our own needs also help us to connect with others and to empathize with other people. We have over 100 empathy scriptures in our book, Deeply Loved, because so many students of the Bible miss that empathy is embedded everywhere throughout the Old and New Testament. The word empathy is not used, particularly in the old versions, but in the newer versions, empathy is used sometimes. And the Greek word for empathy in Hebrews 4:15, which we referenced earlier about Jesus being our high priest who's able to empathize with us. And the word empathy is used there.

The Greek word there means fellow feeling, to really feel with and for other people. But there's just empathy in so many places. Psalm 56, verse 8, you have collected all my tears in your bottle. Back in Genesis 16:13, the Lord talked to Hagar. She began to use a new name for God.

She said to him, You are the God who sees me. She said this because she thought, I see that even in this place, she was in a hurting place where she'd been banished from the home, she and Ishmael. And she says, even in this place, God sees me and cares for me. The ministry of Jesus. I love how the Disciples Literal New Testament describes Matthew 20, 34.

having felt deep feelings of compassion. Jesus touched their eyes. and they immediately saw again, and they followed him. Paul in Romans 12, 15, be happy with those that are happy, be sad with those who are sad. I mean, we could go on and on.

There's so many scriptures that are teaching us to have empathy for one another and to trust that God's love for us, God's truth, is empathetic. You know, Bill and Christy, I think one of the really strong points of this book is what we just talked about before we took our break, and that is it's biblically based, it's psychologically sound, because we know that psychologists make an effort to really emphasize empathy, but to see how this is in the Bible so strongly is really a strong point in this book. Uh you teach the four A's. of empathy. Can you walk us through these steps and show how they help us in our relationships?

Yeah, so the four A's of empathy are: you know, you ask good questions, you attune to emotions, you acknowledge the significance. Of what somebody's experiencing, and then you affirm the strengths.

So, just briefly to unpack those. And you can work these. We unpack the four A's. Actually, we refer back to them throughout the book because obviously they're guides to help us listen well to others, to be caring and compassionate and prayerful as we care for other people. But it also relates to how we meditate on scripture and how we pray and how we listen to the Lord and to receiving God's empathy for us.

And it relates to like Christy said earlier in the conversation that I can ask someone who's safe for me to listen to me. I can ask for empathy.

So, the first day, you know, we ask, you know, how are you feeling? Or if I'm needing empathy, I can say to somebody, do you have time to listen to me and care for me?

Now, some of you listening might sound kind of selfish.

Well, gee, you're talking about, you know, asking for what I need, but our ability to get our own needs met helps us love other people. It's why Jesus taught us, you know, again and again, one of his most basic foundational teachings. You know, ask, and it'll begin. Given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. And he's talking about our relationship with God, but also our love, one another, relationship.

So that goes both ways. And as an empathetic person, for Christy, every day I seek to ask her, Well, tell me about that. How did you feel about that? Just last night, we were taking a walk around the lake, having a conversation. And I asked her, Tell me more, how are you feeling?

And so, the second day of attuning to emotions, that's Christy was talking about those mirror neurons in our brains. And that's what we're doing when we're attuning. We're paying attention to other people and tuning in to the, as we said earlier in our definition of empathy, not only to the emotions, but also to the thoughts and the experiences and the needs, really to the inner person. And then we're reflecting back: well, it seems that you're feeling this, or what I hear you saying is that. And these basic listening skills, it's like we're vowing a tennis ball back and forth over the net, and I'm hitting the ball back to the person I'm listening to because I want to invite them to share more.

And as I'm asking for empathy, I can be attuning to my emotions too with the person who's listening to me. And then acknowledging the significance. This is important because whenever we're talking in the realm of personal opportunities, hopes, challenges, hurts, conflicts, stress points, emotions are always running deeper. And so we want to say to people things like, well, I see this is significant for you. This has been a challenge for you.

We want to use feeling words that accurately describe the depth of the experience.

So we don't want to just say, you're frustrated if someone's actually angry. And so we say, well, it sounds like you're angry. This has been deeply upsetting for you. We're acknowledging the significance because usually when we're in a struggle place, we feel alone with that emotion. And so empathy is helping us not to feel alone.

And acknowledging this significance is saying, look, I can sense that this is you're carrying a heavy weight here. This is a heavy burden for you. We're coming alongside, like Paul says in Galatians 6, carry each other's burdens. And this way you'll fulfill the law of Christ. And the word for burden there is like a boulder.

It's like. This crushing, overwhelming weight. I can't carry it on my own. And empathy is what helps us to fellow feel and help to carry that burden for someone. And then that fourth A of affirming the strengths.

This is really important that we affirm, that we encourage, that we have positive things to say to one another. But sometimes we make the mistake of, with good intentions, of jumping in to give people that affirming word, be the reassuring cheerleader like Christy was talking about earlier. And if someone is in a place of hurt or stress or emotional need, and we jump in with it with a Bible verse or encouraging words, or oh, but you can do this. I know how strong you are. It actually shuts down the emotions.

And so that's why affirmation is the fourth A in the four A's of empathy. Because after someone has been vulnerable and you've been listening in these ways, attuning the emotions, acknowledging the significance, asking good questions, then when you come along and say, you know, I really admire your perseverance as to how you've been trusting the Lord in this situation. Probably that person is not feeling like they've got a lot of faith when they're struggling and processing difficult emotions that are hard for them. And so, when we can see the good in that situation, or gee, I really appreciate your courage. That is so it really builds people up.

The way you use those four questions throughout the book, I think, is very, very helpful to people. Say just a word about uh married couples. Can you give them one way they can love better in their marriage relationship, show more empathy?

Well, I think really to learn and to grow in this understanding of empathy so that they can better. understand their spouse, how their spouse thinks and feels and perceives things is probably different than how they do. And that's one of the things I love so much about your love languages assessment and the work that you're doing is so important because it helps us to Identify these differences, these different ways that we experience the world, and to really have an understanding of that, and to be willing to ask curious questions, to listen, to seek to empathize with, and then to check out what, you know, what is it that you're perceiving? Check out your empathy, see how accurate it is. Are they feeling what you think they're feeling, or maybe not, and give them the respect to be able to clarify and invite you to a more accurate understanding?

But it's really helpful when we can spend time really seeking to understand our spouse and then using our words to let them know we're understanding. Putting it in our own words reflects back to them.

So we have this sense of shared meaning between each other. I think there are a lot of married couples. that never ask each other. How are you feeling? So that's a good starting place.

That's good. How about single adults? How can this book help single adults? Yeah, we all need to know that somebody is listening. And so you know someone that's single in your life to tune in and say, you know, how is your day going?

And to be curious and have a soft heart. What a blessing that is to someone who maybe lives alone. We all need to know that there is someone here who is interested in me, who sees me. We all need to be seen, heard, and wanted. And so it's so important in our relationships to find when I walk into a room, which we often do as we travel places and speak and so forth and different situations, I always pray, Lord, who needs a blessing?

guide this guide me into the conversation with someone that I can listen to and care for. The research shows that 74% of people don't feel belonging. And empathy Really will help people feel a sense of connection whether you're married or whether you're single.

Well, this book is a very practical book.

So what are the practical tools that you provide in the book, Deeply Loved, to help readers develop healthier, more loving relationships?

Well, it's one of my favorite things in the book Deeply Love. We have 10 different empathy practices to help people with this. One of them is connecting with Jesus' emotions. We did a study of the New Testament and we found 39 Greek words. of Jesus having emotions.

Jesus felt anxious, for instance, in the Garden of Gethsemane, angry, clearing the temple. He cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me on the cross? He's grieved in the synagogue for the man with a withered hand. We see times when he felt love and joy and peace, positive emotions too. And as we connect with Jesus' emotions, it helps us also to connect with his empathy for us.

We also have an empathy prayer. This is one of my favorite tools personally. I use all the time to help me connect with Jesus' empathy for me when I'm struggling. We have a great tool that helps us use empathy to pray with others. Empathy is great at helping us join God's heart for others.

and an intercession. We have many different tools in the book of charts comparing things like false empathy versus true empathy, comparing worry versus anxiety. We have assessments on worry, on anger. We've got different cycles, cycles of emotional triggers and stresses and hurts. We have a whole chapter on the difference of how we can care for others without our soul getting drained.

This is one of the things that keeps us from holding back in the ministry of empathy: we're afraid of our soul being drained and we can slip into codependency. And so we compare the difference between empathy, healthy empathy, and codependency. And we talk about the healthy boundaries that we need to have and take inspiration from Jesus and his boundaries there.

So the book is full of tools to help you to grow and being able to receive empathy. and give empathy. We want to see you grow to be whole and healthy and holy.

Well, you know, I think this is one of the strengths of the book, these practical things, because this is what readers are looking for, you know, practical things to put this into practice.

So I want to thank you for being with us today. I want to thank you for writing this book. And I really do believe it's going to help lots of people become more the kind of person they want to become, that's caring and loving and reaching out for others and as Christians recognizing that we are God's. Agents in the world to show his love for other people.

So, thanks again for what you've done, and not only in this book, but the other books you've written as well as the ministry you have.

So, God, may God continue to bless you and guide you and give you wisdom. And I pray, Father, that you would also use this book to touch the lives of many, many people. In the name of Christ, I pray. Amen. Thank you very much.

Amen. Amen. Well, our goal for today's conversation was to encourage you to move toward empathy for others as well as yourself. And if you go to buildingrelationships.us, you'll see that featured resource, Deeply Loved, Receiving and Reflecting God's Great Empathy for You. It's by Dr.

Bill and Dr. Christy Galtier. Just go to buildingrelationships.us. And next week... Just a few days before Christmas, a conversation about connecting our hearts with those who have gone before us.

We'll talk about how to remember in one week. Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Backing. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.

Love Moody Radio?

Now you can stream our internet stations right into your living room with the new Moody Radio Smart TV app. Uplifting music plus our live programming. It's free to download on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and Android TV.