Day Five Forty Days of Focus: Relationships

As we begin to understand that God is love and that His love can be shared with us, it helps us to get a better picture of how we can navigate relationships with skill and enjoy what once may have frustrated and drained us. Imagine that when you were born into the world, you were like a new sponge fresh out of the plastic wrap that new sponges come in. When you open them they are moist and flexible, bright and clean. As time goes on though, they get dried out unless there is a source of water for them to get hydrated again. This is part of why God gives us parents. They give us love so that we never dry out. As we grow, we find that friends and family keeps loving us and we stay hydrated. However, this assumes that all parents, family and friends are loving. In fact, they are not. Many kids grow up dry and longing for love. Their desperation for love will drive them to poor decisions, poor relationships and more dryness. Even in good families it is possible to have too little love. In fact, in our world, there is a great shortage of love. People will give, but only if they receive. Rarely do you find people who will love others when they have nothing to love back with. That is why God makes such a big difference in relationships. He allows us to have a relationship with Him where He give us love and we can share it with others. He never runs out. We can come and get love from Him over and over and over. We can give it freely to others. A person who can love not only the lovely but the unlovely, even enemies is a person in right relationship with God, the source of love. Good relationships with others comes from good relationship with God.

Day Four Forty Days of Focus: Relationships

Relationship help to the rescue. Because God is in eternal relationship with Himself, He has experienced relationships from eternity past. He is all knowing, all powerful and everywhere present. There is not one thing He doesn't know about relationships and there is not one thing He cannot change or control. But one of God's greatest eternal attributes is His love. Because of love, His relationships tend to put a huge value on loving others unconditionally. The old testament word for this kind of God-love is "Hesed." It's loyal love. Without God, relationships do suffer. There are only two possible paths and both are frustrating and leave us wanting. However, in God we discover that what is keeping us from loving perfectly and being loved perfectly is a sin nature which has sway over us and keeps us from our potential. In 1 John 4:7-8 we read, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." From these verses we learn that (1) "Love comes from God" and that (2) "God is love." With these two truths in mind, let us consider the impact God's eternal nature on our relationships. Tomorrow's reading will explore the implications and provide us with the third way, which is the best way, to relate to others.