Relationships

Growing up I considered Christianity to be more a responsibility than a relationship. My understanding was that if I did exactly what God said, exactly how God said, somehow my life’s work would get me to Heaven. Even knowing that my works alone could not free my soul of its sinful burden, a legalistic understanding of the Gospel carried me right through college and into young adulthood. I often held others to a strict standard of law that I myself could not keep.

Fortunately, I have come to a clearer understanding of Jesus’ teaching that frees us from the law and guides us towards the relationship He so deeply desires for us all to share with Him. What I failed to see for far too long is that the spiritual relationship we have with our God and Savior will mimic the personal relationships we have with those in our lives. I don’t believe it is any mistake that when the Spirit was guiding the hands of God’s authors they would dedicate so much time to how we should interact with one another.

If our faith was about law keeping Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would have spent much more time talking about how Jesus fervently kept the law rather than the interaction He had with the people He came in contact with every day. What do your personal relationships say about your spiritual relationship? We are to honor our father and mother. We are to love our brothers (and yes this includes our sisters as well). We are to cherish our spouses; husbands we are to love our wives as our selves: wives respect your husbands. We should help our friends and neighbors as we have opportunity and be neighborly to everyone.

I have struggled greatly in the past with relationships. I have been dogmatic and probably even hypocritical towards those who challenged my beliefs. I failed to teach in love, and likely threw away relationships that could have strengthened my faith. I have not always treated my elders with the respect they deserve and have not always had an open heart of love towards my brothers and sisters (whether biological or spiritual). I have not always shown my wife the love she deserves, and the love that would make it easy for her to respect me. I’m working on all of this; our relationships are something we should always be working on improving. As we improve our physical and emotional relationships we improve our spiritual relationships.

The Lord willing, in the next several weeks we will continue a discussion of relationships looking more in depth at how our relationships on earth have a direct correlation to our relationship with God. Please join me as together we grow spiritually to know our Lord.