Healthy Relationships

It’s often said that a friendship is the foundation of a healthy relationship, I beg to differ. God is the foundation for a healthy relationship. This foundation isn’t limited to intimate or romantic relationships, this applies to friendships, work relationships family relationships and neighborly relationships. Your personal relationship with Christ sets the foundation for all these areas in your life

(My Son and I after Church)

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In order to have a strong personal relationship with Christ you must seek him. You must constantly seek after The Lord. Being a child of God and wanting to live for him, we want more than to just be saved. We want God to be our savior and our Lord. We want to seek his face diligently, we want more of him. To me seeking God’s face is to be conscious of him, the bible says in all things acknowledge the Lord. Jesus came and broke the veil, so we will always have access to God, but access doesn’t mean relationship. This is the part where the luke warmness comes in. People are happy to be saved, but don’t want to have God as Lord. They don’t want a relationship with him. This is for those who want to have a relationship with Christ!

A relationship requires communication. You can’t be in a relationship with someone you don’t talk to. A healthy relationship with Christ requires communication and fellowship. We communicate to God with prayer, in our praise, our worship, our studying and reading of the bible. We have to be in constant fellowship with Christ. Saying grace can’t be all the communication you have. I think people don’t realize how simple yet powerful prayer is. Praying doesn’t have to include huge words, or some whole production. Prayer is have a conversation. (Notice I said communication and not just talking to God) A conversation is a two way street. You talk then you listen for a response. The problem is people just talk and do whatever they want rather than being still and listening to God. If you be still, you will hear God speak back. (Not necessarily audibly, but he will speak to you in some way) You can tell God any and everything, NOTHING is too small to take to God, and nothing is too complex for God. Whatever concerns you, God cares about, and we are to give him our cares (1Peter 5:7) He wants us to trust him enough to take to him our problems and our happy moments. It’s a relationship! He wants to be a part of our lives. God is such a gentleman he will not force himself upon you, that is why you have to seek him, you have to want him to be your Lord, you have to want to be obedient and then obey!

Everyone knows you can’t have a healthy relationship with someone you don’t trust. In order to have a healthy relationship with God you have to trust him. You have to have a fixed firm faith in him. You have to know that he is going to keep his word; he is going to do exactly what he said he will do. He is a God that cannot change. You have to believe God! Often times in our Christian walk, something happens and we are faced with trusting God, or letting this issue become so huge we lose our trust in him. If you’re honest with yourself, you can recall a moment in your life where you lost faith in God. Remember how chaotic that time was? Nothing was right, you felt helpless, you felt hopeless, and you didn’t know what to do, because you have no faith. When a person loses faith in a person the whole dynamic of the relationship is off. We cannot let life, our circumstances or the devil throw our faith in God off track! We have to know that we know that we know what we know about Christ. It has to be unshakable!

In order to have a healthy relationship with Christ you have to have all 3 of these areas. You can’t excel in one area and be lacking in the other, this is a 3 in 1 (literally) combination. If your relationship with Christ isn’t healthy, your relationship with people won’t be healthy. When my relationship with God is healthy, I can love the people that hurt me, I can love the people that wrong me, I can do for those that took from me. When I’m submitted and committed to The Holy Spirit, I know it’s not about me, it’s about him, and so I’m obedient to his word and to his way, including loving others. (This includes, family, friends, coworkers, strangers on the street)

On an intimate relationship level, like husband/wife or in a courtship when the bible talks about being unequally yoked (2 Corinthians 6:14) I believe having a healthy personal relationship with Christ is included in that. Judges 13 shows an example of how a couple both needed to have a healthy personal relationship with Christ. To paraphrase the chapter, Manoah and his wife (Samson’s parents) were barren (meaning they couldn’t have children), but an angel went to the women and told her that she would have a child. Now if she didn’t have a personal relationship with God she may have questioned it, and had her husband not had a personal relationship with Christ he took would have questioned it. Another example; Joseph and Mary, Mary was a virgin, and although she was married to Joseph, she was a pregnant virgin. Joseph could’ve had her stoned, or divorced her, but due to his personal relationship with God, God was able to speak to him through his dream. In both of these stories an angel went to the woman, and the man either believed her or God spoke to the man himself. For God to speak to them, that would require a relationship. There are going to be time in a relationship were God may go to one person first, and the other person is going to have to trust God for themselves seek him for themselves talk to God for themselves. Both people involved need to know God for themselves, being equally yoked require both parties having a healthy relationship with Christ.

Ladies, men; this is why we can’t get into relationships with people that are “trying to get to know God”. Jesus broke the veil we have access there is not “trying”. Either you have a relationship with God or you don’t. We can’t be involved with people that just want Jesus because he saved them, but don’t want him to be Lord of our life. When it comes to these yokes, you’re either all in, or not in at all, no half stepping!!

So before we get into a relationship with one of God’s children, let’s make sure our personal relationship with Christ is healthy, and make sure their relationship with Christ is a healthy one as well.

If you love someone tell them

I love you

Destaynee