“He was so nice and charming when we first met. Now, all he does is criticize me.” This statement is too common among the thousands of women I have talked to over the past thirty years. Women are genuinely surprised when they thought they found their prince, only to witness him turning into an abusive beast.
How We Are Deceived
We all form our definition and design of love from our experiences, beliefs, and fantasies while we hope to find our true love. One of the primary needs of a woman is to feel loved, cherished, and wanted. Although God created us to be nurturing, we are not born knowing God and Jesus’s pure love.
Because we are unaware of God’s pure love, we form our imperfect definitions and concepts of love from our experiences, fantasies, and beliefs. We also grow up thinking that the people we love are operating from our unique definition and design of love. Our assumption creates a tug of wills between our imperfect love and the other person’s imperfect love designs.
The enemy also confuses us further by keeping us locked in our emotions and desires to “find true love,” so we don’t go to God for His answers. Many of us are also subjected to various types and forms of abuse that we are not aware of or taught. The enemy uses all of these confusing realities in our imperfect human condition to keep us searching for true love while keeping us blind to Christ’s guidelines to identify healthy love.
14 Characteristics of Healthy Love
As disciples of Christ, we’re instructed to examine the fruits of a person, especially those we let into our hearts. The healthy or unhealthy fruits of a person are their attitudes, words, and actions over time. The fruit they show us reveals the health and motive of their hearts. Their attitudes, words, and actions must be consistently healthy, or they are not healthy trees. Their fruit reveals their integrity, morals, and heart.
Jesus tells us. “A tree from good stock doesn’t produce scrub fruit nor do trees from poor stock produce choice fruit. A tree is identified by the kind of fruit it produces. Figs never grow on thorns, or grapes on bramble bushes. A good man produces good deeds from a good heart. And an evil man produces evil deeds from his hidden wickedness. Whatever is in the heart overflows into speech.” (Luke 6:43-45, TLB)
The apostle Paul helps us see the characteristics of Christ’s pure love in the following verses. These characteristics reveal the health of the person’s heart that we are considering sharing our heart and life with. We must pay attention.
No one is perfect. But don’t excuse bad or unhealthy words or behaviors. A person’s fruit tells you who they are. You will not change or fix them with your love. Make sure you check the health of a person’s character from God’s list. Don’t make this one-sided where you follow God’s guidelines, but you don’t hold other Christians equally accountable.
- Love is patient,
- Love is kind.
- Love does not envy,
- Love does not boast,
- Love is not proud.
- Love does not dishonor others,
- Love is not self-seeking,
- Love is not easily angered,
- Love keeps no record of wrongs.
- Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
- Love always protects,
- Love always trusts,
- Love always hopes,
- Love always perseveres.
Choose Wisely
Only we can choose who we let close to us. As Christ’s disciples, even if our emotions or hormones are drawing us toward an unhealthy person, we must choose to obey Christ’s guidelines first. As we go through the list and choose to live according to God’s standards, we can avoid getting hurt or abused.
If we have been unaware of Christ’s love design, abuse, or the other points in this blog, we may have been drawn into an abusive relationship, like me. We can’t change the past, but with the truth and help of Christ, we can change our present and future. We can live in healthy love when we know what Christ’s pure love looks like, what it says, and what it does.
When Jesus lives inside of us, what we allow others to do to us, we allow others to do to Christ. According to God’s guidelines, we are responsible for learning how to identify and choose healthy people and love in our lives. If you are questioning the health of your relationships, please go to this free resource.
https://godstransforminggrace.com/signs-of-healthy-unhealthy-and-toxic-or-abusive-relationships/
The easiest way I learned to evaluate the health of the fruits of a person (their attitudes, words, actions) was to ask myself if Jesus would have that attitude with me, use those words, or behave that way with me. If the answer is no, then don’t allow others to treat you that way. Walk away and keep looking for the good healthy trees that bear the healthy fruit of Christ!
Find encouragement and more answers about love by joining my private Facebook group Growing Through God’s Transforming Grace.
