When you have had an unhappy Christmas in the past, only you can stop allowing your past to dim the wonder of your current and future Christmas with Jesus.
To have an exceptionally happy marriage, you must partner with Jesus to replace your broken love design with Christ’s exceptional love design. Unless Christ’s love design is the origination, foundation, and compass for your individual love and marriage, you will continue to use hurtful words and unloving attitudes. You and your spouse will continually fight and be frustrated. You will be vulnerable to fall into the cycle of domestic abuse and to pass the devastating behaviors of abuse onto your children.
It’s time for Christ’s disciples to seek to know the true love design of Jesus and to know the types and signs of domestic abuse so that we are not caught unaware. Because we live in this broken world where the devil has influence, we must prepare ourselves with the knowledge of his schemes.
Until we discover how to let Christ’s perfect love flow in us and work through us, we can be easily deceived into thinking we just need to find our “perfect love,” in another person.
The first step to changing your design of love is to realize that your design is broken and unhealthy. The next step is to find a love design that is pure, respectful, and honoring and to live in this design.
I never realized God created the perfect recipe, design, and aspects of love until I was in my thirties. No one ever told me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told you. After several abusive marriages ending in divorce, I began to study the life of Jesus. He showed me his love is not a feeling. His pure love “is” the substance of all of God’s goodness and it “does” everything to honor Him, others, and yourself. Just as I needed the right ingredients to successfully bake mom’s cake recipe, I needed to know Christ’s recipe for love to live in each aspect.
Christ’s characteristics, words, and actions helped me understand what my thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions will look like when I love as he does. It also revealed what a marriage looks like in his design with gentleness, kindness, and selflessness. His love revealed the flaws I had unknowingly created in my definition of love.
One of the hardest things for me to accept and practice was the reality that this list was meant for me to follow and it is also the standards for which I was to receive love from others. God’s second commandment for me to love others as I love myself placed the loving relationship between two people on equal standards.
Abuse is NEVER Pure Love
Jesus NEVER allowed anyone to abuse him until he gave himself to be the sacrifice for our sins. Being Christ-like is to imitate him. We are not called to let people abuse us but to love us in the pure substance of Christ’s love living in and flowing through us.