Seen. Known. Loved. - York Moore

The love languages and your relationship with God.

That's coming up today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. I want to tell you, the love of God can break down the walls of hostility. The love of God can fill our hearts with hope when there is none. The love of God can even raise the dead. And so there really is nothing greater that we can put our hope in than the love of God. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Our guest today spent many years running from God and showing anger to Christians.

That changed when he realized the truth about God's love. You'll hear more straight ahead. This is the first in our summer best of series from this past year. And our guest today is York Moore, who has said, quote, within every person is an undeniable longing we can never totally shake. That longing will cause people to search for a way to fill the void.

Here's the good news. You're seen, known, and loved. That's the title of today's featured resource by Dr. Chapman and R. York Moore, Seen, Known, Loved, Five Truths About God and Your Love Language.

Find out more at fivelovelanguages.com. Well, Chris, I'm excited about our conversation today because the message York has for us is the answer to a lot of the questions in our culture today. Well, let's meet him again. R. York Moore is a speaker, revivalist and abolitionist. He serves as executive director of Catalytic Partnerships and as national evangelist for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA. York became a Christian from atheism while studying philosophy at the University of Michigan. He also has an M.A. in global leadership from Fuller Seminary. He's the author of several books. He lives in the Detroit area with his wife and three children.

And you can find out more about him and his latest, Seen, Known, Loved at fivelovelanguages.com. Well, York, welcome back to Building Relationships. Well, it's great to be back on.

Great to hear your voice. Last time you were with us, we walked through your story and the home you grew up in and how that shaped you. But why don't we begin with a review of that chapter of your life so that our audience gets to know you just a bit before we begin our discussion. Well, for sure, I'm probably the least likely person to be talking to people about how to have a relationship with God. I was raised by atheist parents, so we were homeless off and on throughout my childhood. But when we were not homeless, we lived in a home where my parents attacked on a sign in the front of the house, the Moores, the atheists, and we had a barrel for burning vitals and other religious propaganda as my parents referred to it from time to time. And when I went to the greatest university in Michigan, I don't know if I mentioned that, the University of Michigan go blue, my nickname in my fraternity was Satan because I persecuted Christians and wrote papers against Christians. Then I became one, a miracle of all miracles. Now my great passion is to help everyone around me know how they can experience the love of God for themselves. That sounds like a similar experience to a guy that I read about in the Bible once, by the name of Saul. It's funny that you mention that, because I remember returning, I became a Christian between semesters in my third year at Michigan, and I'll never forget coming back after the long break, and all of the Christians that I had persecuted, when I began to defend Jesus in the classrooms, they all looked at me, and that's exactly what they referred to me as, the Saul to Paul kind of conversion. Yeah. Would you ever believe that you'd be doing what you're doing now, when you were growing up?

No, absolutely not. I thought maybe an astronaut or a police officer, and never an evangelist or author or speaker, but I'll tell you what, Gary, I'm living my dream. There's no greater honor than to speak well of Jesus, there's no greater privilege than to open the door for people to walk into a relationship with God, and so it's our high honor.

There's no greater honor than to serve the Lord. I think I know the answer to this, Gary, but I want to know how you and York got together to write this book, Seen, Known, Loved. As I tell the story, it's about a year and a half ago, a member of your team, Dr. Chapman, came to me and said, you know, we'd really love to create an evangelistic resource, and Gary cares deeply about lost people and would love to write something with an evangelist so that we could actually create a resource so that women and men could actually begin a relationship with God. And so what we tried to put together in this Seen, Known, Loved book is what I call the more than the carpenter for an emotionally sophisticated and curious generation. Just like that book impacted millions of people's lives in the 70s and 80s, what we're hoping to see Seen, Known, Loved do is really open the door for people to have a first time step into a relationship with God through Christ. Yeah, well, you know, I had forgotten really who initiated the very first thing, but yeah, I knew Moody was involved in it, and I didn't know if you contacted Moody publishers or they contacted you, but I'm glad they brought us together because it was a good experience working with you, and I really do believe God's going to use this in a powerful way. As a matter of fact, you know, my wife read this after it was published, and she said, Gary, this is a good book. This is going to help people.

Yeah, and she's my editor, you know, on most of my books, so she just hadn't read this one before, but I was glad to hear her response. Amen. Amen. Well, let's get into the subject. Why do so many people struggle to feel loved today?

What do you think, York? Well, you know, there are a couple of reasons, the biggest of which is sin. We have this disease that's floating around, it's more ubiquitous than the COVID pandemic. Every single woman and child, every man has this disease that we call sin, and sin prevents us from experiencing love, from giving love, it warps our sense of love, and so obviously that is the biggest reason why people don't experience love. You know, I think one of the things that I've been deeply impacted by your writing, Gary, through "The 5 Love Languages" , is that we also don't experience love because oftentimes we're receiving love in the way that we weren't wired to receive it. And I'll never forget being a young married guy 23 years ago, my first year of marriage, and I'm trying to love my wife well through my love language. Now, I had never heard of the love languages at that point in time, and so I was greatly helped, but my love language is words of affirmation, and I'll never forget my wife getting irritated day after day because I would park her in. I would park my car behind her car, and she had to go to work before I had to go to work, and so she'd have to move my car every single morning.

Now, this went on for weeks before I realized, and so when she finally told me that I was parking her in, my solution was to encourage her with words of affirmation. You know, you're doing a good job, and well, that wasn't going to fly because my wife's love language is an act of service, and so she wanted me to get my hiney out of bed, move that car, or maybe even better, not park her in in the first place. And so oftentimes people don't experience love because people are giving us love in the way in which we're not really wired to receive love. I have three kids, and each of them have a different love language. My oldest one is a student at the University of Michigan, and his love language is quality time.

And so all he wants to do is hang out back, tinker with his project car, and for me to watch him. Now, I could love him well by just giving him a few attaboys and be on my way, but he wouldn't receive that love. So at the end of the day, so oftentimes our conception of love is broken, we don't understand what love is because of sin, and then when we do understand love, oftentimes we're not receiving it because people are trying to give it to us in a way that we weren't meant to receive it.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think everybody's seeking love. I mean, most people agree it's their deepest emotional need is to feel love by other people. And why do you think that's the full explanation, or is there more to why this looking for love in other people often kind of leads to an emptiness?

That's a double-edged sword, isn't it, Gary? I mean, you've seen this throughout your teaching and your marriage retreats and conferences. You know, oftentimes we were designed to give and receive love, and there's a human element in that, but what we do in our brokenness is we subvert human love and we substitute it for the divine love that we were intended to experience. And what I mean is this, that human love, love between a husband and wife, a father and a son, even friends, that's all by design to mirror our love relationship with God. In other words, we experience the love that God has for us by experiencing love through others. But so oftentimes what we want to do is we don't want to have anything to do with God, because that comes with obligations and life change and submission to His rules, which are really rules to lift us up and help us to live our best life. But in reality, what we want is the quick and easy love that's on our terms, and so we substitute God's love with human love. And at the end of the day, we can't experience love the way it was intended to be experienced unless we're actually experiencing it first and foremost through our relationship with God. Yeah. Is that why you think we often have lack of motivation or whatever to really love other people?

Well, you're the expert on that, but I would say, you know, in my experience, yeah, absolutely. Because what happens is we get into these cycles of disappointment, cycles of disillusionment. We take the risk to love a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a significant other, and inevitably they let us down, because they have this disease that we call sin.

Inevitably the cycle ends with heartbreak. And over the course of time, because we haven't filtered our understanding and our experience through our relationship with God through Christ, we've only settled for the human expression of love, and we've found it empty time and time again. And so over the course of time, we give up on the idea of love. In fact, somebody just emailed me or messaged me through my website this week and said, you know, I just don't believe in love. I've settled for sex. That's his idea of the ultimate expression of human existence. He said, I've given up on love. I haven't experienced it.

I don't believe it exists. Well, I believe that's because he hasn't experienced first and foremost the relationship with God through Christ, and he's settled on human expressions of love to substitute for that. Yeah. York, what can we learn about God through "The 5 Love Languages" ? Well, I think God is fluid in all love languages.

That is to say that they're hardwired in what it means to be human. I think that's part of the genius of your writings and why it's been so influential all over the world is because it intuitively connects with the human heart. There's something inside of us that tells us that we were wired to love and to receive love in the way in which we have been created by our Creator.

Now, even if you're an atheist, as I was, even if you deny the existence of God, there's something in us that longs for that. And so these love languages help us make sense of why so oftentimes we struggle to give, to receive love. And when we connect with our love language, when we get it, and there is something just electric watching somebody go through your book or take the test and for the first time. It's a rare thing that I meet somebody who hasn't taken the five love language test, but I was getting my hair cut a few weeks ago and I was in the barber shop there and there was a young girl and an older woman there waiting on me. And I said, you all have taken the love languages, haven't you? And to my surprise, the younger one lit up and said, I just took it. The older one said, I had never heard of it. But when you have taken this test and you discover who you were created to be, it opens a window of understanding for the self and it allows us to change our behavior so that we can actually begin to walk in love and experience love.

Yeah. Well, you know, on the human level, I talk about meeting the emotional need for love. It's feeling loved, you know, by the other person that we long for. But what does it mean to feel God's love? You know, I don't think God is interested in us just having a sound theology of love, the right doctrine of love. You know, if you've been in a love relationship and I've been happily married now for 23 years and so I've experienced love now in a profound, deep way, no one had to tell me at the beginning of my story with my wife that I was in love. I felt it.

No one had to convince me they didn't have to write a treatise. You know, and so I think that oftentimes, especially Christians, which is just heartbreaking, we think we check the mental, doctoral, theological box on what love is. We know the right Greek word for what love is and therefore we can pass through and we can get on to other things. It's interesting, isn't it, Gary, that God defines himself by love. God isn't just merely a being that loves. God is love, the scripture tells us, and so love in some ways is everything. It's all that we were created to be. It's the penultimate of what we were created to experience. God is love and being made in the image of God. We are at our best, we are at our most fulfilled when we are living into love and that means feeling it. Not just knowing that we love, we are loved, but feeling that we're loved. Yeah, yeah. And when we do, I mean, it makes all the difference in the world.

Absolutely. Well, how has social media complicated things when it comes to understanding love in our culture? I think first things first, we need to acknowledge that the online world is a real part of our lives.

It's not an escape from reality, it is itself reality. And it's opened the door for us to live a kind of life that, throughout human history, has been absolutely beyond imagining. You know, to say that I have best friends in Germany or Italy through my gaming behavior, I mean, it's opened up relationships for my children. Some of my children's very best friends are people that they've never met that live a world away, that they've been in relationships now with for five, ten years through online gaming. And social media has definitely opened that door as well. Now, the dark side is that we were never intended to experience love through merely virtual experience.

That is to say that in-person relationships, face-to-face relationships, are how we have been designed by our creator to experience this idea of love. Social media augments that, it supplements that, but I think in this generation what has happened is that it has replaced it. And so you think about young people in your life, Chris and Gary, you know, you might have nieces or nephews or grandchildren, you know, they would rather talk to somebody virtually on chat or through text message. Try to get them to actually make a phone call or walk up to the person at the counter and have a face-to-face conversation.

It's almost impossible. And so there's a way in which social media has actually replaced our expectations of what in-person relationships look like. When we did the field testing for this book, what Gary and I found was that the social media chapter in Seen Known Love had the greatest impact on millennial and Gen Z readers. That they found themselves repenting and realizing how they had substituted their online life for their in-person life. Yeah, that whole issue is a huge issue in our culture and around the world, really, in terms of looking for online relationships to satisfy the longing of the human heart.

And of course it doesn't. But let's move to the love languages and let's talk first of all about words of affirmation. What are some of the common struggles faced by those who have words of affirmation as their love language?

Well, you know, that's my love language. And so when I first took your test, it opened my eyes to so many things in terms of why I felt unloved in some contexts, why I felt loved in others. And I think for people whose love language is that words of affirmation, what their heart hope, that cry of their heart, their great ambition is to be seen.

Right? A word of affirmation person, when you give us that attaboy, when you recognize something, you know, your wife reads the book and says, oh, that's really well written. And that word of affirmation sinks deep in my heart because it helps me to believe that I've been seen by somebody. And so I think deep in the recesses of our heart, we're driven by these heart hopes.

And these heart hopes have a correspondence with these love languages. And so, for instance, a person whose love language is acts of service, they're really asking the question, you know, am I having an impact? Am I going to leave a legacy? What difference is my life making? A person whose love language is gifts, oftentimes what she's asking is, am I worth anything?

Am I living a worthwhile life? And so for me, as a word of affirmation person, it really helps me when somebody affirms me verbally, it helps me to believe that somebody sees me, that I'm not invisible. Yeah, I think anyone who has words of affirmation can identify with exactly what you're saying, because it's true. So how does hearing God's words of affirmation differ than when we hear words of affirmation from another human? Well, this is really the privilege and honor of being a follower of Jesus, right, that we get to praise our Creator with the words of our mouth, we get to lift Him up and give words of affirmation to Him. But I think for those on the receiving end, when we get a word of affirmation from God, when God says, I see you, I know your name, when God says, you're not invisible to me, when we read His word and He tells us the things that are true about us, that we have a heavenly inheritance that isn't dependent upon the whims and the failures of this world, it does something in us that no word of affirmation from a human being can ever do, not even from a spouse, not even from somebody that we deeply love and trust. When God affirms us with His word, it changes everything.

It changes how we define ourselves, it changes how we define our sense of worth, what our goals and our ambitions are. And so let me tell you, the most important thing that any single person in this world could possibly do is to invest themselves in the study of God's word. It is the greatest thing that anybody will ever do because as we invest ourselves in the word of God, we actually hear those words of affirmation. We spend quality time with God. God gives us the gift of His presence. Every single one of our love languages is answered as we sit before the word of God. You know, one of the words that I turn to again and again, because my love language is words of affirmation also, is Isaiah 41, 10. Fear not, for I am with you.

Don't be dismayed. I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Wow! Man, that's affirming. And the Bible's filled with that. And as we read it and listen to God, we do sense those words of affirmation. Now, you alluded a little bit to this, but we also then, if this is our love language, we tend to express our love to God through words of affirmation.

So how does that play into this? Well, that seems a little bit more natural, especially in a church setting. We have scheduled it in, and so we sing God's praises when we tell God, You are beautiful. You are glorious.

You are worthy. You know, what we're doing is we're speaking those words of affirmation. And God doesn't need any reminding. You know, when I tell my wife at the end of a long day, I love you, honey. I give her a cup of coffee. She doesn't need to be convinced that I love her. She needs to experience that love. And our relationship with God is just like that. God desires to experience our love to Him, and one of the ways that we can do that is through words of affirmation. For those who have the primary love language of acts of service, how do we continue to fight for a better world when we're just so tired and feel like the act is simply too much? It's overwhelming.

I'm never going to accomplish anything worthwhile. Talk a little bit about that love language and the person that has that as their primary love language. Well, you and I get into that in this book, Seen, Known, Loved. We get into that quite a bit, actually, and we're living in an age where the acts of service people amongst us are filling our streets on the left and the right. They are filling our streets for causes that seem to be multiplying day by day. At the end of the day, I believe deeply that people who are driven by this acts of service love language, they're driven by this great ambition to make a difference in the world, to have an impact, to leave a legacy. And certainly these are trying times, whether we're talking about civil unrest, whether we're talking about race relations, the political season that we're in, the pandemic that we're in, and all of the obstacles that places in our everyday lives, these are very, very difficult days. But what an opportunity for somebody who's loved language, it's acts of service to actually get out there and to make a difference.

In small ways, in large ways, there are lots of ways. I think, Gary, it's harder, however, for people who are acts of service people to be receiving love during these days. And so oftentimes, our acts of service requires communal expression, congregational gatherings, large groups. And we aren't supposed to be doing that.

It's happening anyways, but so oftentimes it's coming at great peril, at great risk. And so it's very, very difficult to give and receive love in a variety of ways, but I think particularly for acts of service people, these are challenging days. Well, let's touch on receiving gifts. How do we keep from falling into the trap of basing our worth or our value on whether we receive gifts or have successful gatherings, to use another phrase? Well, there's a beautiful chapter in See No Loved about this, where we get into this, that oftentimes people who are gift givers, it's not the gift itself. It's the thoughtfulness of the expression.

It's the consideration. My second child, Addison, just moved out to California over the weekend. She's doing a year of missions in California before she starts college, and her love language is gifts.

And it was really telling. We just had a going-away party for her, and she pulled out this treasure chest, Gary, of gifts that I had given her and her mother and I have given her over the last five or ten years. Some of the things that she treasured, I had forgotten. They were almost inconsequential.

I didn't think much about them. But for her, those were moments in time that marked her life, and she pulled them out as treasures to mark this new chapter in her life. And I think oftentimes for gift givers, what they're doing, the reason why those gifts find such a place in their heart and mark their stories is because they tell that person, you have worth. You're valuable to me. I'm expressing my consideration, my acknowledgment of you by this tangible gift. The gift in some ways is inconsequential.

It's the consideration behind it because it expresses our value for them. York, with your past, even your name, R, is for Ayn Rand, and coming from an atheist perspective, isn't it wild for you to be talking about five love languages and this concept that's come out of Dr. Gary Chapman's ministry over these years? Yeah, I mean, if anybody ever doubts that God has a sense of humor, just take a look at my life.

I'm the least likely person to be doing what I'm doing. But again, it's just such a privilege and honor to know Christ and to help make Him known to others. Yeah. We all look back and recognize that we are who we are by the grace of God. Amen.

Absolutely. Along this matter of gifts, you know the story in the New Testament of the prodigal son. What does that teach us about the love language of gifts and God's perspective on giving gifts to us? There's so much in that chapter. I've preached on that chapter now for over 20 years, and God's great love for the older son.

We could take a whole show and just talk about that. But when the younger son is finally restored, when he comes to his senses and says, How many of my father's hired hands had more than enough to eat? He makes his way, hat and hand, back to his loving father, expecting, with good reason, that he would be offered some meager, lowly, stable boy job. And instead, what he gets to his surprise is a running, falling, full embrace kiss as his father welcomes him back. And welcoming him back didn't stop at the embrace. The embrace itself was itself a gift. It was a gift of grace.

It was a gift of acceptance. But the first thing the father does, he says, Bring out that fattened calf. Bring out that robe which would have differentiated himself from the hired men.

Bring out the signet ring which would have been the credit card of the day. He establishes him financially, familially. He establishes him in all of these ways, but he does it with the tangible gifts that would have been associated with his state as a son, not as a hired hand as a son. It's such a beautiful story. We could spend a whole show just talking about how the love languages play themselves out in that story, but at least that's how I would read it, Gary. Yeah, and when we think about what God has given us, I mean, the whole, everything, you know, life itself, and then forgiveness, and then eternal life, and oh, man, he is a gift giver. Well, let's think a little bit about physical touch, because I think people often don't think about, well, God's going to touch me physically.

If that's your love language, how do you experience God's love through physical touch? You know, the invisible God becomes visible to us in so many ways, and in the chapter that we talk about this in Seen, Known, Loved, we talk about a dark period in the history of Israel. They were in exile, they were sure that God had forgotten or given up on them, and they were in a desperate, desperate place. They cry out to God, and the way in which God answers them is this role, it's very meaningful, it's very purposeful, and we get into this in this chapter, but I want to tell you, every single person can experience this in their lives, even right now. Maybe listeners driving in the car, they're listening to this on a run, and their earbuds or whatever it might be, and maybe you're in a difficult spot, and you wish this invisible God could become visible to me. You wish you could experience a hug from God, and I want to tell you that that's possible every single day of our lives.

You know, the things that we're surrounded, Gary, around by just common life experience, a sunset, a sunrise, a passing smile from a child, a warm hello from the barista making our latte, whatever it might be, these common experiences. What the Holy Spirit does is he takes these common experiences in our lives and he impresses them upon our soul at the right moment. And I'll never forget, driving into college, I was very discouraged. I had become a new believer, and I was facing a difficult, difficult time with my family. They were rejecting me because of my newfound faith. I was the first believer in my family of atheists, and I was on my way to college. And I thought for sure that God had abandoned me to work it out with my family on my own. And I also felt alienated, like I had lost my family as a result of following Christ. And I'll never forget turning the corner, driving up to the university, and all of a sudden this beautiful sunrise just crushed the hill, the top of the trees, and I had seen that sunrise every single time I had driven in the campus at that day and time. But at that moment, it was as if God reached into the car and grabbed hold of me and said, I'm your family.

I'm your Father. And right now, whoever you are, whatever you're listening to, God can reach into your life in the same way and physically, tangibly, in that same way. It's actually greater than a hug. In that moment, in that car, I felt as if I was receiving a dozen hugs. And so there's a way in which God can touch our lives that is more powerful than the physical touch that we experience through others.

Yeah. You know, a guy shared with me some time ago, whose love language is physical touch, his own encounter with God. And he said, Gary, I didn't go to church, but I went to church with this friend of mine, and I heard this pastor preaching, and he said, I was just sitting there trying to not be obvious to anybody, and he said, my body started shaking. And he said, tears came to my eyes.

And he said, before I knew it, my whole body was shaking. And I just said, God, God, God is here. And not everybody has that kind of experience, but if you're a physical touch person, you may well have that kind of experience, because you will sense God's presence physically. We talk about being hugged by God, you know, and in the book we say that you're being hugged by God right now, whether you know it or not.

What do you mean by that concept? God is always at work in our lives, and you know, when I first became a believer, I was an honor student in philosophy, wasn't looking for God, I actually went to take my life, and the moment of conversion, it's a much longer story than we have time for here today, God used a simple poem called Footprints in the Sand. I had read it before, I didn't think much of it. It's a simple story about how God is at work in our lives, even when we're unaware of his presence. During the difficult times, the low times, God is at work in our lives, carrying us even. And you know, it was during those times where I didn't know God was at work, he was at work the hardest. And so oftentimes we don't see what God's doing. But if it weren't for God's activity in our lives, no matter how bad our circumstances are, they would be way worse. God loves us, his angels working on our behalf, he has the Holy Spirit working on our behalf. God is at work in our lives to help us experience his love and to be saved from sin and from damnation and these kinds of things. And so God is actively at work, but because of our sin, we don't see it all the time. You know, God is hugging us right now, even though we might feel as if we've been abandoned. God is hugging us right now, even if we feel as if we've been forgotten. God is never done with us, he's always striving with us, working out a plan so that we can actually come to a knowledge of him through Christ.

Yeah, I think often we see God's hand when we're looking back on our lives, that we don't see it in the present, but we look back and say, oh, God was in that, I see now, and that turned me in a different direction, that experience, whatever it happened to be. Well, once we become believers in Christ and we accept his gift of forgiveness and eternal life and a relationship with him, how does participating in worship help us experience or feel God in his presence? Yeah, so often we don't feel God until we actually start exercising our faith, and one of the simplest ways we can do that is by singing his praises.

These days of COVID have been hard for everybody, myself included, and I found myself walking around my property. We had just moved to a 10-acre farm here just a few days before lockdown here in Michigan, and I was separated from my team in ministry, I was separated from my church, and not feeling very close to the Lord, reading his word but not really sensing his presence. I said to myself, I'm going to make the decision to praise his name. I'm going to make the decision to worship him until I feel it. Now, that might sound artificial, and the naysayers and the doubters out there might say, well, of course, you're manufacturing these feelings and those kinds of things. That's okay.

That's okay. Sometimes we actually need to put the cart before the horse. Sometimes we actually need to exercise our faith before we feel it, and worship is probably the simplest way that we can begin to do that. Oftentimes we're having a bad day. We go to wash the dishes or pick up our kids' clothes or do some mundane task, and a worship song pops in our heart, our mind, and we just begin to hum it a little bit. Then eventually we begin to sing the words, and then eventually the Spirit of God floods our heart, and we begin to realize that we're deeply loved by God. Worship opens that door. Worship opens the door to feeling God's presence, to feeling God's love.

Yeah. You know, I often experience that, York, when I'm driving down the road, and I have on Christian radio, and a song comes on. Sometimes it's a song I've known. Sometimes it's a new song, and I'm just listening to the words of that, and in the middle of all of it, I just physically sense God's presence. You know, I mean, it's just a warm feeling, and sometimes I just say, Yes, God, thank you.

Amen, my privilege. Yeah, it's a relationship. Well, one of the other topics we discuss in the book is this whole issue of loneliness, and in our culture, loneliness has reached an epidemic level, not only here, but in other countries. In fact, you mentioned this in the UK, and I had not heard this until I saw it in the portion you wrote in this book, that the United Kingdom even now has a minister of loneliness. What's led us to this reality that we see such a deep sense of loneliness today?

Yeah, I mean, imagine that. A minister of loneliness with a staff team and buildings all working to end the pandemic of loneliness, and certainly that's what it is. It is a pandemic that is more deadly than COVID, in my opinion.

It is a pandemic that has impacted families deeply, marriages deeply. Loneliness is something that we can experience when we're in the middle of a large crowd, when we're in the middle of a happy family. Loneliness is all around us, and I think part of the reason why we're experiencing such loneliness is, you know, certainly COVID has accelerated that. We're living behind closed doors and behind masks, and we're not able to embrace. But even before COVID, we were on our way to a global pandemic of loneliness, and I think a large part of that is our substitute of online interactions, which are quick, oftentimes can be biting.

You think of how often the internet is filled with just a cantankerous, unloving, ungraceful speech. We have substituted this online world for in-person community. Furthermore, I think true community happens when God is at the center of that community, and I think about the best times of my life. We're all in communities where Jesus was the center, where we're studying His word, we're on mission, we're praying with one another, we're sharing life with one another, carrying one another's burdens. That's when we are at our best, when we're not only in relationships with others, we're in relationships where Jesus is actually the center of those relationships.

But the world doesn't get that. The world says, well, I can just substitute sex or online or whatever it may be, and over the course of time, what that produces in our hearts is just an absolute vacuum. And God is standing by ready to fill that vacuum with Himself, ready to fill us to the brim as we open our hearts to a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. You know, I was reading the other day an article talking about Harvard University and the tremendous sense of loneliness that so many of the students experience there. They come from all over the world, they're highly motivated, and so they dig into the studies and all of that, but there's no community there. And right after I read that article, I was talking to a father who has a daughter who went to a secular university here in North Carolina, and he said, you know, there, she met Christians, she got in a Christian study group, and that was several years ago, she's now a medical doctor, she still keeps up with those gals that was in that Bible study group. He said, and that was in a secular university. It's not the educational setting, it's whether or not we know God and we are working with God's people, we build those deep, deep relationships that's the opposite of loneliness, so yeah. Well, our relationship with Jesus must be the primary relationship of our life.

If we have a relationship, it will be the primary relationship. But what's the difference between being a fan of Jesus and being a follower of Jesus? I've been an evangelist now with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for 25 years. I've toured the country, I've spoken in large churches, small churches, back of churches, parking lots, you name it. And, you know, I really do think that many religious people in America today are nothing more than fans, meaning that they get excited about, you know, the things of religion, they go to church for a variety of reasons, they enjoy Christian music and read Christian books, and even go to Christian conferences, but they're not actually following Jesus.

They're taking all of the goods and services that this religious industry has to give them. And there are a lot, you know, when we think about the concerts and the conferences, and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, those conferences and conferences are oftentimes places where people meet God in deep and profound ways, and you and I are oftentimes speakers at those events. But a lot of times people are at these events and they're reading these books and listening to this music simply because it makes them feel good. Now this might be, you know, counterintuitive to some of the things that I've said earlier in the show, but our relationship with God isn't merely about us feeling good.

God cares about our feelings and He wants us to feel loved, but He wants our whole lives, He wants our submission to His Lordship. And the difference between a fan and a follower is a fan receives all the good things without paying the price. A follower of Jesus pays the price. She wakes up every day and says, Lord, your ways, not my ways.

Lord, what will you have for me today? And she listens to the voice of the Holy Spirit, she obeys the words of the Scriptures, and she lives her life according to God's ways. Fans don't do that. Fans hop down the rabbit trail and they take any good thing that they possibly could, but eventually there is a reckoning. Eventually fans are asked to pay the price and very often that's when they actually turn away. They were never followers to begin with, they were merely fans.

Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the practical ways of following Him is spending time with Him and whether or not quality time is your love language, as believers in Christ we want to spend time with Him. What are some practical ways that you can spend quality time with God?

Well, this is why I'm so thankful for you, Gary. Your writings have really had a deep impact on me because if there is such a thing as an anti-love language, quality time would be it for me. And so, you know, I really dislike spending prolonged time with anybody. I'm somewhat of an introvert. You know, everybody is surprised because I'm an evangelist. But, you know, in my mind everything can be handled in five minutes.

Just a couple attaboys to get the work done and then, you know, retreat to your own quarter. But quality time is such an important, you know, thing for many people. My firstborn son, you know, that's his love language. And it took me a long time, a very long time, unfortunately, to realize that. And, you know, when he was asking me to spend time on the floor doing some kind of puzzle or watch him build a YouTube site when he was a little bit older or now work on his project car behind the barn, for him it's not about the activity and not at all. And that's what I couldn't understand. Let's just finish the puzzle.

Let's just fix the car and then we'll be done. But for him it was about the journey. It was about spending time.

And so I'm incredibly thankful for you and your writings because that opened the door for me to understand how to receive and how to give love rather to my own son. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's face it. Our entire world and certainly our country is experiencing challenges today that we haven't experienced in decades.

How can what we're talking about today, how can love, and particularly loving God, help us through these times? Well, what else do we have? I mean, literally, what other solutions are there? Another economic stimulus? Another political leader?

Another best-selling book? None of those things. None of those things are going to change the maladies that we have in America. Only the love of Christ. Only the love of Christ.

People are putting their hope in a political leader or a vaccine or a stimulus check or some changed policies that are going to erase the past injustices. They're going to be holding their breath for a very long time, but I want to tell you, the love of God can break down the walls of hostility. The love of God can fill our hearts with hope when there is none. The love of God can even raise the dead. And so there really is nothing greater that we could put our hope in than the love of God. For those of us who are believers in Christ, what, I don't want to nail it down to one thing, but what do we need to be doing during these crisis times? Well, we need to be staying close to our Father.

That's first and foremost. Because anything else that we do from that, if we're not actually walking with God ourselves, it's just going to be empty work. And so we're in the middle, many people don't realize this, but we're in the middle of a global campaign called the Year of the Bible. 2020 was designated in late 2019 as the Year of the Bible. And we're challenging people across the world to actually read the Bible through cover to cover or maybe it's their first time to consistently read the Bible. And so we've built this massive coalition around Bible reading.

And so for Christians, oftentimes we're going on fumes. We're living our Christian life based on a conference we went to 20 years ago, a book we read a month ago, but we were invited into a day-by-day relationship with God. And so the first and foremost thing that I would say to Christians during these times of just transition and upheaval is to stay close to your Heavenly Father. And the number one way you could do that is to get into the Word. If you've neglected the Word of God in your life, can I invite you to open it up today, and make a plan to actually be in the Word every day so that you can hear the voice of God and He can lead you in the way that you should go? That's by far the number one thing. If Christians would read the Word of God and they would obey the Word of God, how different would our churches, our communities, our schools, our universities, our workplaces, we could literally change the world if we could take the Word of God seriously.

Well, York, I certainly agree with that. I think spending time in the Scriptures, realizing that God speaks to us through the Scriptures, and then empowers us to do what we read in the Scriptures. Well, this has been a delightful time talking with you, York, and I do hope that many people will read this book and then see it as Christians read it, and then see it as a tool to give to non-Christians and just say, hey, read this and tell me what you think about it.

Because I think it will strike a note with those who are not Christians. So thanks for working with me on this book, and thanks for our conversation today. God bless you. God bless you.

I appreciate you. Seen, Known, Loved, Five Truths About God and Your Love Language. Find out more about that book at fivelovelanguages.com. Our guest has been R. York Moore.

Again, go to fivelovelanguages.com. We hope you've enjoyed this Best Up broadcast from November of last year. Next week, instead of running from pain, what might happen if you begin embracing uncomfortably? Dr. Deb Gordon will join us. Don't miss the conversation in one week. A big thank you to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Ton. 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.