DOING RELATIONSHIPS GOD’S WAY CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS A RELATIONSHIP? (INTRODUCTION)
RELATIONSHIPS ARE ROADS THE THREE CORE ISSUES OF LIFE SAFETY RIGHTEOUSNESS RESPONSIBILITY CHAPTER 2 MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MYSELF ENVIRONMENTAL BOX INVENTORY THE BASIS FOR EVERY OTHER RELATIONSHIP SELF FORMING MY SELF-CONCEPT MY SELF PROFILE HEALTHY, HAPPY, HOLY RELATIONSHIPS WHAT HINDERS ME FROM KNOWING WHO I AM? THREE R’S FROM HELL DIVISIBLE AND SET UP IN OPPOSITION TO MY OWN SELF FORGIVING MYSELF AND FORGETTING THE PAST UNLEARNING LIES THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST THE TAKEOVER DISSECTING YOUR OWN THOUGHTS P.S. ON SCHIZOPHRENIA THOUGHT INVENTORY – POSITIVE AND NEGATIVES WHO AM I? TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ABIDE OR HIDE CHAPTER 3
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
MY CONCEPT OF GOD IN DEFENSE OF JUSTICE DEFINING GOD THE ABC’S OF CREATION A GOOD HEART THE SNAKE PIT THE TIDE OF EVIL THE GOD OF MY FATHERS GAPS IN THE PICTURE EARTHLY FATHERS FATHERS BUILDING CONCEPTS OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD AS A FATHER OBSTACLES IN OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR FATHER/ BROKEN PROMISES HINDERED PRAYERS DISTRUST AND DO IT MYSELF SUMMARY WHAT CAN GO WRONG WITH A FATHER & HIS CHILDREN?
BUT THE TRUTH IS… FATHER SCRIPTURES CHAPTER 4
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH SIN
ALL HAVE SINNED SINS OF OMISSION, COMMISSION, ASSUMPTION, AND PRESUMPTION SIN BREAKS THE LAW OF LOVE WHY DO I SIN? BASED ON FEELINGS ALL ABOUT ME AM I A SAINT OR A SINNER? DEPRAVED OR DECEIVED IT’S HIS FAULT DEPRAVITY GLORIFIES RELIGION DID JESUS HAVE A DEMON? ANGEL OF LIGHT TO CONSIDER AND EXAMINE CHAPTER 5
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHERS
PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS IT’S NOT FAIR TRUE WORTH JUSTICE FOR ALL RATING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WORDS AND DEEDS THE WORD INVENTORY SELF-ACCEPTANCE LIBERATED TWO OPINIONS ISSUES IN OUR RELATIONSHIPS UNFORGIVENESS CONDITIONAL LOVE ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, AND STRESS INDECISIVENESS WALKING IT OUT WHAT DO I DO WHEN I AM FREEDOM FROM THE FEAR OF MAN PLEASING GOD THE TESTING GROUND FOR LOVE LOVE CHAPTER 6
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE
WHEN LOVE FAILS CODEPENDENCY CODEPENDENT CAR RIDE DRIVING ALONE I CAN CHANGE HIM (HER) TRUTH AND ERROR BORN UNDER CONTRACT EMOTIONAL/ ENVIRONMENTAL INVENTORY 2
COMMUNICATION WHAT WENT WRONG? HURT PEOPLE GOD’S FILTERING SYSTEM COMMUNICATION IS… COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS A TIME TO SPEAK CONTROLLING OTHERS SILENCE DON’T LET HER WIN REBELLION FEAR – THE ABSENCE OF LOVE LOVE IS… LOVE IN MARRIAGE WHEN LOVE FAILS HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS HOW CAN UNKINDNESS HELP LOVE SUFFERS ABOUNDING LOVE ADD YOUR OWN REASONS OBSTACLES TO LOVE DOING RELATIONSHIPS THE RIGHT WAY MAKE A LIST OF INJUSTICES CHAPTER 7 MY RELATIONSHIP WITH DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES TRIALS AND HARDSHIPS SURVIVAL IS YOUR LIFE DROWNING IN THE CARE OF ITSELF? GOD’S GOOD IDEA WHEN GOD DOES IT DIFFERENT ADVERSITY IS GOD’S UNIVERSITY CHANGED THROUGH CIRCUMSTANCES REALITY VS. TRUTH FIGHTING TO STAND GRIEF TO THE TENTH POWER FAILING CHILDREN DIVORCE WRONG ANSWERS CHAPTER 8
HOW DID JESUS DO RELATIONSHIPS?
WHEN WE SEE JESUS FORGIVENESS IS EVERYTHING HOW MANY TIMES? CHAPTER 9
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GOSPEL
SLOW TO SPEAK WHAT IS THE MESSAGE? THE SIN OR THE SON GOD’S GREATEST TRUTH
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A note to the reader: You will find the word Satan presented throughout this manuscript spelled with a lower case “s”. This is done as my deliberate preference so as to give our Enemy no special honor. You will also find references to the Enemy capitalized to emphasize to the reader that this is not a casual use of the word “enemy”. Our Enemy is a real, disembodied being that cannot be overlooked or dismissed. Relationships are the source of our greatest blessings and the place of our greatest pain. I realize I have only touched the surface lightly in this matter and surely have not presumed to explore the depths of your pain. It is my prayer that the words on these pages will encourage and inspire you to prevail against our Enemy who has come to steal, kill and destroy us at the very root and core of our essence and existence. Please read and let the Holy Spirit give you wisdom as you fight for those you love, and may the Lord God grant that we all be filled with “the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”(Col 1:9).
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Chapter 1
WHAT IS A RELATIONSHIP – INTRODUCTION
What is a relationship? Life is full of relationships. Life is relationships. Life cannot be defined outside of the context of relationships; those connections with other people, places and things that bring meaning to our lives. The dictionary defines relationships simply as “a connection; a significant connection or similarity between two or more things, or the state of being related to something else”. Our connections with people, our need to love and be loved; to know and be known, and be in meaningful relationships, is the essence of life itself. Even as love cannot exist without an object to love, to live life without relationships is not to live. Our connections with each other are formed through words and deeds as expressed in our feelings and behavior toward one another. Relationships can be the source of our greatest joy and the place of our deepest sorrows. Relationships can be established through birth, marriage, covenants, and words, and are formed in the context of family, country, church, work, business, and civic duty. Though the dictionary adds nothing to our understanding of relationships in terms of moral obligation or forgiveness or the difficulties that can spring from them, the Bible does. It is the textbook on relationships. Within its pages are described almost every kind of relationship, with every kind of emotion and response, in almost every context one could experience or imagine, both good and bad. It has much to say about what happens when the law of love is broken; and we fail to “owe no man anything but to love one another”. It describes the way justice interacts with love and charges us to live peaceably with all men, as much as is possible, as we endeavor to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”. Even in the midst of this present darkness, relationships have always been one of the Enemy’s biggest targets and greatest opportunities for testing the hearts of people. Our greatest efforts have been of little effect against his onslaught. Multitudes of international summits and self-help books and talk-shows and counseling sessions have not been able to stop him or resolve the conflicts and bring lasting peace to individuals or nations. Only the Word of God can show us how to live and give us the courage to love. We invite you to join us as we look into what the Bible has to say about “Doing Relationships God’s Way”. RELATIONSHIPS ARE ROADS Relationships are not often as simple or straightforward as we would like to believe. There are no short cuts or quick fixes in relationships. They require work and because they are living, they will die without attention. There are not always easy answers to some of the problems they present, but if we could simplify a relationship, it might look like a road. Roads connect things, in this case, people. Relationships are roads that connect individuals with each other and with other elements in their environment that are essential to the life of the individual and the community he or she lives in. Those relationship roads provide for the exchange of goods and services upon which 5
families and communities and nations are built and, ultimately, form the foundation that ties together the family of man. If the path between the people who use that road is strewn with broken promises, cruel words, shattered dreams, and hope deferred; walking on them will be painful and destructive. In Hebrews 12:13 the Bible tells us to “make straight paths for our feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.” Injustices and inequity break down the spiritual, emotional, and physical fabric out of which souls and bodies are made. If our relationships cause us pain, we will seek out different ways to get our needs met, ways to avoid the pain and protect us from more difficulty. We may try to manage pain levels by doing things ourselves or by trying harder to please. We may seek to isolate ourselves from criticism by rebelling or by submitting to the will of others. We may strive to master our feelings or hide them, trying to survive our relationships, only to be worn down and end up being controlled by them. Families are the basic building blocks of society. One of the Enemy’s top priorities and major strategies is the destruction of the family and all that it represents. He works to divide our house and conquer our soul. His plan is to destroy the family and separate us from one another and the love of God. And, though the Bible clearly says “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood,” (Eph. 6:12), we are constantly looking at each other as the enemy, and for a way to prove our point; never recognizing the bigger picture or the depth of the spiritual battle all around us. If relationships are roads, they are roads built with words. Words and actions become the building blocks that form and shape our self-concept and our worldview. As basic and beguine as those words and actions may at first appear, they have the power to give life or destroy it, even to the place of causing some to be lost forever. Words and deeds have the power to tear down and build up, both kingdoms and lives. Words can bath our life in hope or drown it in sorrow. Words cut down grown men and shape the souls of children, precious, irreplaceable souls first knit together in the matrix of a mother’s womb by the gentle hand of God. What deadly and unimaginable power He has put into the hands of those who will first care for those children; to think that their eternal destiny and well being, as determined by how they see themselves, will be based on the data they gather from those around them. THE THREE CORE ISSUES OF LIFE The basic questions we must all answer that form the core of our life’s work in relationships can be reduced to three primary issues. The three basic tasks in life are to resolve the issues of safety, righteousness, and responsibility. Whether we acknowledge it or not, those issues become the driving force and motivation behind our words and actions in our connections and exchanges with others. By very virtue of being alive on the earth, each of us must address the need for personal safety, the establishment of our individual righteousness, and answer the question of whose responsibility is it. Because we will solve these problems using information we have learned from our parents, peers and early caregivers, our solutions will be circular and very similar to those we have learned them from. 6
This means nothing changes much from one generation to the next unless there is a divine intervention of truth that alters and adjusts the information to match the truth. If the information we received is flawed or false, our abilities to solve the challenges of life will be unsatisfactory and unsatisfying. To complicate the matter, each of these issues is presented to us in the context of fear or faith. Both faith and fear make a compelling argument in an effort to persuade us to embrace their version of the story life tells us. The power of faith and the power of fear both demand to be fulfilled and insist they be heard. Both would persuade us they bring the truth and offer us the best solution to the problem. A clear-cut choice must be made between them. Using a sloppy combination of the two only creates doubt and inconsistency in our words and actions that make it difficult to untangle the messages or understand the motives we send and receive in our relationships. SAFETY The issue of safety springs out of our desire to live and thrive. Survival is a motivating force found in the soul of every living, breathing thing, God created. Human beings are no exception. Because we are born fragile and defenseless and forced to depend on others for the provision of our every need, infancy and childhood can be an extremely dangerous and difficult time. The urgency of securing food, warmth and love create pressure in the “environmental box” that shape and control our lives as we struggle to stay alive. Our little self is like soft clay, still wet and impressionable and extremely vulnerable to the pressure at work within the box. We feel anxious and alone, and begin to strive, to manage or make-do. The Enemy of our soul uses our innate divine nature that hates sin and injustice, to get us to try harder to be good. We are caught between feeling guilty for sinning and feeling justified in trying to do better only to be overcome by failure and condemnation. Eventually, many of us give up and settle into an agreement with death in any one of a number of ways he seeks to write the contract. We begin to experience our lives in the context of another’s pain and dysfunction. We take on their hurt and anger and try to fix them so our lives can be safe and fulfilled. As unfair and unfortunate as that is, our lives are more determined by the dispositions of those around us than by any specific decisions we first make about a matter. Children pick up the mind-sets and behaviors of their early caregivers and suspect nothing amiss. And as wrong as those given circumstances might be, they set in motion the dynamics that define the child’s belief systems and mold him or her into who they are; things they will spend the rest of their lives trying to forget and undo. RIGHTEOUSNESS Our second task is to establish our right to be here and our worth. Included in the right to be here is the right to be loved and be seen as righteous. Our relationships including our actions and reactions and intentions are judged within the context of our need for honor and acceptance. Often times, our desire to establish our goodness becomes tangled up with trying to “be good” and getting other people to acknowledge that goodness. Establishing our righteousness reflects our struggle over the loss of our position and life’s effort to re-establish our divine nature as made in the image of God; the revelation of which was severely compromised in “the fall.” We wrestle with questions of goodness and morality. How do I establish my righteousness in the midst of a fallen world where sin and depravation rule in the 7