Relationships
Personal relationships are challenging because they involve individual expectations that can vary from each other. Our expectations are ever changing based on our growth, our journey in life, and our circumstances. We are emotionally vested in our personal relationships and those emotions are greatly affected by our personal expectations.
The fundamental truth is that we, in our human nature, are inconsistent with our expectations. We look outwardly with our expectations and apply them to others not realizing that our internal expectations are not tethered to anything except ourselves. Our very self that is inconsistent and not stable in our own thinking. We must be anchored to a “rock” within our inner bring to deal with life through our outer being. A “rock” that gives us both a stable base to work from and to have a safe spot that we can go to. That “rock” is Jesus.
There is a story about the lumberjack who went into a grove of trees that he was to cut down over the next couple of weeks. As he was about to start, he saw a mother bird trying to build a nest in one of the trees, in preparation to lay her eggs and raise her chicks. The lumberjack knew that if she did that, then in a couple of days they might all die because the tree was scheduled to be cut down. So, he decided to strike the tree with the back of his ax to rattle the mother bird until she went to another tree. When she went to another tree, he followed her, and he hit that tree which she fled to another tree. He continued doing that until she flew up onto a rock and started to make her nest there. Knowing she was finally safe from the danger she didn’t even know was coming, the lumberjack was satisfied.
God places challenges in our relationships to guide our inner self to the “rock” (Jesus) so that our outer self is tethered by our inner self, which is tethered to Him, so that we don’t spin out of control. In this arrangement, our external relationships are guided by the relationship we have with Jesus, and we have Him to go to when our relationships hit or face storms.
If our personal relationships are the center of our life and we are tethered to that, our inner being is subject to careening out of control and at the very least, just careening. Only with Jesus in the center do we give ourselves that stable base to attach to and run to. The beauty about Him in the center, is that when the other person in your relationship is tethered to Him, both of you will have a stable base to scale the mountains of expectations. To make better sense of things and to have a safe place to run to if the storms get too hard.
The sum of the parts with Jesus are greater than the parts by themselves. The relationship with Him makes us the sum of His parts where we are made greater because of Him. Greater not in stature but in who He made us to be; who He is to us; and the plans He has for us in life and in our relationships. Those relationships are designed to be fellowship extension of the fellowship we have with Him. A fellowship where we expand His Kingdom by living out what we are taught by Him for our thoughts, words, and actions.
Our relationships start and end with our relationship with Jesus!
