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Reading Level: Gratifying

This is the fifth article in our series in answer to Readers’ Questions.

First, since God is the source of love, focus on demonstrating His characteristics to those in crisis.

For some of us this will be easier than others, depending on your knowledge of God’s character. If you grew up in a religious culture of misinformation that portrayed God as unforgiving, unkind, basically inhumane, you may not have as much knowledge in that area to draw from. You may want to read through or listen to some of my previous posts on that topic, such as, “Healing by an Understanding of God’s Love” and “A Love that Isn’t Earned.” God describes Himself as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, having mercy (undeserved favor) that is everlasting, forgiving, patient, comforting, encouraging, protective; this is just a partial list. These characteristics of God are all traits that each of us need in our lives. We were created with the need to receive these emotional, spiritual, relational exchanges with God. In the same way, we were also created with the need to share or live out these character traits with each other. Usually, life is so busy that pouring these traits of God into each other’s lives gets set aside. It is worth mentioning that most all of us need to restructure our lives so as to have the time to consistently invest in this valuable and necessary exchange with each other, but we most certainly must focus on expressing God’s loving aspects with those who are in crisis. If you are already in the habit of living this way, it will be easier, but if your life has been too busy and you’ve neglected fine tuning these traits, God will still help you and honor your efforts to bless the person in crisis by living out His loving characteristics to them in their time of need. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Impassioned

In continuation of our series, this is another reader provided question. I wasn’t sure if the person was asking about God’s love or human love, so I thought we’d cover both aspects.

First, let’s focus on a general principle of love. Love, whether given freely or earned, can be damaged or destroyed depending on our responses to it.

Someone can choose to love you completely unearned or unmerited, such as with new emotional love, which is based on the person they hope you to be, since they haven’t been acquainted with you long enough to actually know what you are like so as to commit to the relationship rationally. If your actions are unloving, selfish, and/or inconsiderate, obviously that will damage that relationship and eventually destroy the unmerited love as you demonstrate more and more that you are unworthy of it. Emotionally or physically harmful behavior will destroy it even more quickly.

Love that is earned in human relationship is actually, per say, more stable.

It may begin as emotional love or acquaintance or friendship and develop into a stable, lasting love as your attitudes and behavior show over time that you can be trusted to be a loving person through the variety of life’s circumstances. This is what I term rational love, a love in which the person has a sound basis of long-term experience with you which has developed a high level of trust. This trust based on experience then provides Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

A reader asked, “Define harmful behavior.” There are many ways one can define or recognize the harmful behavior of others in your life, or even behavior of your own that is harmful to others or yourself, but the easiest way is to evaluate the results.

God says that real love does not do harm to another person, so living according to real love causes a person to completely obey all the laws of God due to living a loving lifestyle (Rom. 10:13). Thus, a person who truly loves you will not consistently live a lifestyle that brings harmful results in your life. Granted, we all lose our tempers at time and say or do things that later we have to apologize for, but the key difference is whether or not a person brings more harm than good.

Let’s take a look at how to evaluate behavior by the results. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

The most basic desire of every heart is to be loved solely for your intrinsic value. Though it may be difficult to consistently find people who will fill this void, God’s love can fill that need for true, consistent love on a permanent basis.

People’s attitudes, actions, emotions, and commitment levels toward us vary greatly depending upon physical attributes, personal perspectives, illness, stress, hormone fluctuations, and on and on the list goes. It takes a person who is fairly self-disciplined and firmly committed to the relationship with us to demonstrate consistently positive responses in spite of outer stimuli or inner health variations. If one does not have such a person, or a good number of this type of people, in his or her inner circle, it creates the feeling of a great void in the need for love, often affecting one’s self-worth, peace, joy, and even job effectiveness. However, God’s love for us is based solely on our intrinsic value; in other words, because we are, we are of infinite value to Him. We do not need to feel pressure to earn His love, favor, kindness, or help. This realization can bring great relief from the guilt and lack of closeness that many people carry in their relationship with God Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Impassioned

Please read Recognizing Real Love Part 1 before continuing this post. It contains all the foundational points for the illustration I will be covering below.

It is not God’s desire for any person to come to the end of his/her life having never experienced truly loving relationships on a consistent basis. However, many times religious beliefs or a compliant personality cause many people to endure long-term, emotionally unhealthy relationships because they suffer from an unrealistic guilt about getting help and/or getting away from the abusive relationship.

The abuser frequently tells the submissive person that he/she loves them, but then lives a lifetime of behavior that causes emotional and even physical harm to the other person. For a compliant personality type, the extreme contradiction in words and behavior is not enough to compel them to get help or make a change to bring the necessary healing to their lives.

Again, let me emphasize, infrequent, low-level hurtful behavior does take place in healthy relationships. However, allowing another person to treat you with consistent, immensely hurtful behavior will have lasting effects, deepening harm to one’s emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being the longer it is allowed to continue. If you are having difficulty in dealing with such a relationship in ways that will bring definite healing to your life, finding a reputable counselor is must. As the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior are not always clearly defined in our minds, we utilized a detailed definition of real love in Part One. A good starting place for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, between healthy and destructive relationships in your life, is using Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Impassioned

Recognizing real love can empower you to bring about needed emotional, physical, and spiritual healing. It enables you to distinguish truly harmful behavior in your relationships from typical, daily personality conflicts.

I have several friends and relatives who have gone through repeated, emotionally and physically traumatic experiences due to emotionally unstable family members who either refuse to take medication or are not helped by it. However, we all must, from time to time, handle the type of emotional hardships common to unstable or purposely hurtful people, whether in a situation on the job, in the neighborhood, or with relatives. While talking with a friend about recent stresses with a bipolar spouse, it became apparent that some of the difficulties I have seen myself, friends, and family experience in unhealthy relationships stem from an unclear view of what real love is.

The inability to identify real love causes some people to devote the years and effort of an entire lifetime to relationships that continually bring them harm when they could learn to identify and develop the truly loving, healing relationships in the realm of their existence. It is not God’s desire for any person to come to the end of his/her life having never experienced truly loving relationships on a consistent basis. The more of a clear, definite understanding that one has of real love, the easier it is to know where to draw the line Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »