OUR RELATIONSHIPS

GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF JESUS:



Many of us go years worried about finding a relationship with the perfect mate, and although I now have that relationship I have always wanted it still is not perfect.  It may have all of the qualities that I think I have always wanted many times my relationship is not what I thought it would be because it does not always fit perfectly into what I want to happen.  That is primarily because of me and not any other person. I may need to adapt to that person as well as they to adapt to me, and as individuals, we don't catch that part of life too well.

I think it is time that we revisit some of these individual things that cause difficulty in any of our relationships and then ask ourselves questions that relate to our own behavior as to whether we are being successful or not in life?

  Of course one of the things we will look at eventually is our relationship with God, but even before we can truly build on that most important relationship we need to look at self in the most honest way possible. As we look for this self-identification our journey must become both physical as well as spiritual. It has to be a journey that you take all by yourself first. It is taken for yourself and not because you are trying to build a relationship with any other person or for any other cause; that is the only way that you can be gut-wrenchingly honest with yourself.  This begins by looking at yourself by taking a mental snapshot of who you think you are right now. I am not talking about who it is you wish were standing there, but who in truth you really are.  There is not the time for you to go look into the mirror for a while or contemplate an answer that includes a good excuse for what you see or time to blame anyone or anything else for what you may find when you look at the picture you take.  It is time for you to discover who it is that you really are on the inside, and so the outside appearance has very little to do with what we are looking for here.

  I want for you to take a long and detailed look at what you see in that picture by looking at your likes, dislikes, motives, desires all in the same way as a third party would be able to see things or the way you would be able to see someone standing there.  I want for you to take the time to look at the whole picture so look now at the experiences, the beliefs, and the prejudice that you have developed in your life and the ways they have been brought about.  Now just take a moment and think about the reasons that you feel the need to look more deeply inside of yourself because it all has to do with the values that you are holding inside deep within yourself right now.  As you look at all of this...and in spite of some peoples thinking it is not that hard to do this; explore those things that make you who you are right now start to think about the attitudes and what makes up those people you most admire in someone.  Do you fit together with those things that you see there?  If not then you are starting to see the reasons I want to deal for a time with our relationships.

 This series is not to put anyone down or to make anyone feel bad about themselves, but to give each of us a chance to get real with ourselves again; some of you perhaps for the first time in your life. I want this to be a way for you to begin a process that may make a big difference in your life; if you let it.  The first area we want to look at is the relationship we have with ourselves. May you richly bless God through your life in Christ.



THE UNWORTHY SERVANT