Spiritual Languages

Patrick and I are currently in a marriage class at our church. We are going through a book entitled I Love You More, and each chapter discusses different ways to improve our marriage. This past week we talked about our time spent as a couple with the Lord. Most Christian couples recognize this time with the Lord as one of the most important aspects of a healthy marriage, but they find themselves most dissatisfied with their progress. One of the reasons for this is that we as people have different spiritual languages.

Many people are familiar with the five love languages, or the five ways that we show love to one another and recieve love from them. According to Gary Thomas, the author of Spiritual Pathways, we also have spiritual languages, or ways that we relate and feel most energized toward God. Listed below are the different languages and a very brief description.

Tradition: loving God through rituals, sacraments, and symbols
Vision: loving God by dreaming a great dream
Relationships: loving God by being around other people
Intellectual Thought: seeking God with the mind
Service: loving God by loving others
Contemplations: loving God in a quiet pursuit
Activism: loving God by warring against injustice
Worship: loving God through joyful celebration

Each person will find that he or she feels most energized spiritually when loving God through one or a few of these avenues. Recognizing that you and your spouse have unique spiritual languages is essential in spending quality time together with the Lord. For example, Patrick and I had really been struggling at feeling spiritually unified as we studied the Bible. He had been intellectually spending time with the Lord by reading theology books along with his Bible. He was feeling so spiritually energized through them that he wanted me to read the theology books with him. It did almost nothing for me in terms of closeness to the Lord because I feel closest to God in contemplation.

We were clashing in our spiritual paths--both wanting the other to conform to our way of meeting with God. After we assessed our spiritual pathways, we discovered that we both feel close to the Lord when in nature and through musical worship. With this knowledge, we are now able to spend quality time together with the Lord in unity.