The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
When Love Means Something Different Than You Think
You use the word love every week — in prayer, in leadership, in marriage, in parenting, in how you describe what God means to you. And yet if someone asked you to define it — not with a verse, but with the working definition you actually lead from — you might pause longer than you expect.
Most Christian professionals carry a working definition of love that was shaped more by culture than by Scripture. It sounds like one of these: love means making people feel good. Love means being nice. Love means giving people what they want. Love means never causing discomfort. Love means the warm feeling I get when a relationship is going well.
None of those are evil. But none of them are what God means when He says He loves you. And the gap between your working definition and God’s actual definition is quietly shaping how you lead your team, how you parent your children, how you love your spouse, and how you receive what God is doing in your life — especially when what He is doing does not feel loving.
This week’s anchor is designed to close that gap. Not with a theology lecture, but with a practical framework that names five counterfeit definitions of love, replaces each one with what Scripture actually teaches, and gives you a practice for each one that changes how you show up in real rooms this week.
If you read one Saturday anchor this month, let it be this one. Because the version of love you are quietly leading from determines the quality of every relationship you have — with your team, your family, and your God.
How God’s Love Meets You Here
There is a quiet lie that runs underneath most Christian professionals’ understanding of love: love is primarily a feeling, and when it stops feeling good, something has gone wrong.
That lie shapes everything. It makes you avoid hard conversations because “love would not do that.” It makes you resent God when He allows pain because “if He loved me, He would not let this happen.” It makes you measure your marriage by how connected you feel on a given Tuesday instead of by the covenant underneath the feelings.
Scripture demolishes that lie at the root:
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10, ESV).
Love is not defined by your feelings about God. Love is defined by what God did — at the highest cost imaginable — while you had nothing to offer Him. The cross is God’s definition of love. And the cross was not comfortable, not nice, and not what anyone in the room wanted in the moment. It was the most loving act in the history of the universe — and it looked like the worst day anyone had ever lived through.
Paul reinforces this with the most misquoted love passage in Scripture:
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7, ESV).
Notice what is not in that passage: love always feels warm. Love never causes discomfort. Love gives people what they want. Instead, Paul describes love as patient when it would rather quit, kind when the other person does not deserve it, truth-rejoicing when a lie would be easier, and enduring when everything in you wants to walk away. That is not a feeling. That is a commitment shaped by the character of God Himself.
Here is how God’s love reshapes this for Christian leaders: When you replace your counterfeit definition with God’s actual definition, every relationship in your life gets recalibrated — not because you try harder, but because you finally understand what you are aiming at. Love stops being “make them feel good” and becomes “do what is genuinely good for them, at my own cost if necessary, because God did the same for me.”
The five counterfeits below are the ones I encounter most often in the Christian professionals I work with. Each one sounds right. Each one will cost you if you keep leading from it.
Five Counterfeit Definitions of Love — and What Scripture Actually Says
Counterfeit 1: Love Means Making People Feel Good
This counterfeit says: if someone feels bad after an interaction with me, I failed to love them. It turns every hard conversation into a threat, every boundary into an offense, and every act of correction into evidence that you are unloving.
What Scripture actually says: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:6, ESV). God’s love wounds when wounding serves healing. A surgeon who refuses to cut because the patient might feel pain is not compassionate — he is negligent. The same is true of a leader who refuses to name what is broken because naming it might cause discomfort.
- A CEO avoided giving direct feedback to his VP for two years because he did not want to hurt the relationship. When the VP was eventually let go by the board, he said: “I wish someone had told me sooner.” The kindest thing the CEO could have done was wound faithfully two years earlier.
- At home, a father who never corrects his children because he wants to be the “fun parent” is not loving them — he is protecting himself from their displeasure at their long-term expense.
Practice for this week: Identify one conversation you have been avoiding because it might cause discomfort. Ask: is the avoidance protecting them, or protecting me? If it is protecting me, that is not love — it is self-preservation dressed in kindness. Schedule the conversation.
Counterfeit 2: Love Means Giving People What They Want
This counterfeit says: if I really love someone, I will give them what they are asking for. It makes you a people-pleaser in leadership, an enabler in parenting, and a resentful spouse in marriage — because you keep giving what they want while quietly dying inside because no one is giving you what you need.
What Scripture actually says: “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6, ESV). God does not give you everything you want. He gives you what you need — and sometimes what you need is discipline, correction, or a closed door. That is not the absence of love. It is the proof of it. A father who gives his child everything the child demands is not loving — he is abdicating.
- A team lead who always says yes to her direct reports’ requests — even when those requests undermine the team’s mission — is not leading with love. She is leading with fear of disapproval.
- A husband who agrees with everything his wife says to avoid conflict is not loving her. He is depriving her of a partner who cares enough to be honest.
Practice for this week: Name one place where you have been giving someone what they want instead of what they need. Ask God: what does real love require here — and am I willing to pay the relational cost of providing it?
Counterfeit 3: Love Means Never Causing Pain
This counterfeit says: if my actions cause someone pain, I have sinned against them. It makes suffering the ultimate evidence that love has failed — and it makes God’s allowance of hardship in your life feel like betrayal.
What Scripture actually says: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4, ESV). God’s love does not promise the absence of pain. It promises the redemption of pain. He uses trials — not despite His love, but because of it — to produce steadfastness, completeness, and maturity that comfort alone cannot build.
- A leader who was passed over for a promotion spent six months questioning whether God had abandoned him. When he finally received the role a year later, he realized the waiting had built a steadiness in him that the earlier version of himself could not have carried. The delay was not God’s absence — it was God’s love building something his ambition would have skipped.
- A mother whose child went through a painful season asked: “Where was God in this?” The answer — revealed over years — was that God was building resilience in her child that no amount of parental protection could have produced.
Practice for this week: Name one painful season you have been through — or are in right now — where you have interpreted God’s allowance of it as evidence He does not love you. Read James 1:2-4 and ask: what might God be building through this that comfort cannot produce?
Counterfeit 4: Love Is Primarily a Feeling
This counterfeit says: I know I love someone because I feel warm toward them. When the feeling fades, the love must be fading too. It makes marriage a hostage of chemistry, parenting a hostage of mood, and your walk with God a hostage of emotional experience.
What Scripture actually says: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12, ESV). Jesus commands love — which means love is something you can choose to do regardless of how you feel. You cannot command a feeling. You can command a commitment. God’s love for you is not an emotion He sometimes experiences toward you — it is a covenantal, sworn, unbreakable commitment to your good that does not fluctuate with His mood (because He does not have moods).
- A husband who waits to feel connected before he initiates kindness toward his wife has the equation backwards. Kindness produces connection. Love is the decision to move toward someone before the feeling catches up.
- A leader who only invests in team members she feels drawn to is not leading with love — she is leading with preference. Real love invests in the difficult team member too.
Practice for this week: Identify one person you have been waiting to feel loving toward before you act lovingly. Reverse the order. Act first — with one specific kindness — and trust that God reshapes feelings through faithful action.
Counterfeit 5: Love Means Agreement
This counterfeit says: if I disagree with someone, I do not love them. It confuses unity with uniformity and makes honest disagreement feel like betrayal. It is the counterfeit that most damages team culture, church relationships, and marriages — because it silences the very honesty that real love requires.
What Scripture actually says: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15, ESV). Truth and love are not in tension — they are married. God’s love speaks truth precisely because it aims at growth, not comfort. The most loving thing you can do for someone you disagree with is tell them the truth with genuine care for their good — not pretend to agree to keep the peace.
- A board member who privately disagreed with a strategic direction but stayed silent because he did not want to disrupt unity was not loving the organization — he was protecting his standing. Real love would have spoken the truth in a way that served the mission.
- A wife who never voices her perspective because she equates submission with silence is not honoring her marriage — she is depriving her husband of the partnership God designed.
Practice for this week: Name one relationship where you have been equating love with agreement. Ask: what truth am I withholding that this person actually needs to hear — and how can I deliver it in a way that serves their good, not my comfort?
CHEW On This: Practice Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart
Clarity
Which counterfeit definition of love have I been leading from — and where is it costing me the most: in my team, my marriage, my parenting, or my relationship with God?
Hear
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10, ESV). God defines love by what it costs, not by how it feels. He moved toward you at the highest price the universe has ever known — not because you made Him feel good, but because He committed to your good. God reshapes every relationship in your life when that definition moves from head to heart.
Exchange
If I really believed God’s love is defined by the cross — a love that costs, corrects, endures, and commits regardless of feeling — how would that change the way I lead the most difficult relationship in my life right now?
Walk
Choose one of the five counterfeit definitions you identified in the Clarity step. This week, practice the Scripture-based replacement in one specific relationship. Write down which counterfeit you are replacing and what the real definition demands of you. Put it where you will see it Monday morning. If this is the only thing I do from this blog today, it is enough.
Worship Response: Turn Gratitude into Worship
Father, I worship You as the God who defines love — not by the world’s shifting standards, but by the cross of Jesus Christ. Thank You that Your love is not a mood. It is a covenant. It is not nice. It is good. It does not flinch from wounding when wounding serves healing, or from disciplining when discipline produces maturity. Thank You that the most loving act in history looked like the worst day anyone had ever lived — and that You chose it anyway, for me, while I had nothing to offer. Reshape my definition of love from the inside out. Where I have been leading with counterfeits — comfort-seeking, people-pleasing, conflict-avoiding, feeling-dependent, or agreement-demanding — replace them with the real thing: a love that costs, commits, speaks truth, endures, and reflects who You are. In Christ’s name, amen.
With you on the journey,
Ryan
If you had to put this into one sentence for today, what would you say God is inviting you to rest in or return to?
Let's Explore If We're a Fit
If you lead people — at home, on a team, or across an organization — and you want confidential, Gospel-rooted counsel, let's see if we're the right fit.