Straight Talk About Relationships

Relationships. They are the strands that make up the fabric of life. Virtually every aspect of our lives involve relating to another individual or a group of individuals. To borrow a popular phrase, “Relationships are life, the rest is just details.” Relationships are so important that Jesus said, in John 17, that it would be by our unity, through our relationships as believers, that the world would believe that He came from God! I’d say that makes relationships pretty important! When our relationships in the church are strained, we actually give the world reason to doubt the truth about Jesus.

How we relate to God, and how we relate to one another, is of paramount importance. The Bible talks repeatedly about the way we relate to one another. I Corinthians 13:13 says “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Love is greater than faith! Nothing’s more important in all this world than love. The greatest experiences, the greatest thrills, the greatest joys that have come into our lives have come over relationships and over love.

But there’s also the other side. Because relationships are so important, they have great capacity to build up, or tear down. There are those incredible low points like what is expressed in Galatians 5:15. “If you go on hurting each other and tearing each other apart, be careful or you will completely destroy each other.” Some of us are living right there, right now. We are in danger of completely destroying each other.

Relationships would be easy if we were all perfect. But there’s always the other person who’s not. Relationships would be easy if we never went through struggles. But our lives are filled with struggles when it comes to relationships. What do we do when things aren’t going great? What do we do when we’re faced with frustration and we just don’t know where to turn next? What do we do when we’re overwhelmed by hurt or anger in a relationship? What do we do when we’re filled with apathy? We just don’t care any more.

Fortunately, God in His word gives us some advice for real world relationships, the kind that we live with and struggle with everyday. Anybody can make a relationship work in a 250-page paperback novel. Anybody can make a relationship work in a 110-minute Hollywood movie. But God talks about the kind of relationships in His word that you and I have to live with every day. The real struggles, the real life of relationships. Here’s some practical ideas today from God’s word how to get through the tough days in a relationship.

Some of the greatest frustration that we face in relationships and one of the greatest ways we can begin to build our relationships is to recognize that God made us to be different. Would you agree that parents and teenagers sometimes think differently? Would you agree that men and women, husbands and wives sometimes think differently? This difference is at times the cause of great delight but at other times it’s the cause of incredible agony. God made us to be different. He did it on purpose. At the very beginning of the Bible, In Genesis 1:27, we read, “So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him male and female He created them.” He made us purposefully to be different – husbands and wives – not just physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. We think differently. We work differently. We shop differently. We even watch television differently.

If a group of women are driving to some destination, even a few moments of silence is awkward for them. Something must be wrong. On the other hand, I can drive cross country with a group of guys, and we can be listening to the radio, or reading a book, and hardly talk to each other at all, and not feel the least bit uncomfortable with it!

We are made incredibly different. Sometimes we may use the same words, but are speaking a different language. Even though we all know that, we still get frustrated by the differences. Carol will sometimes be telling me about stuff that is going on in her life, and I’m thinking, “OK, we can do this, and we can do that, and it will be fixed.” Carol doesn’t want me to fix it, she wants me to listen, to understand, to recognize what she is feeling.

What is true of our marriage relationships is also true of our interpersonal relationships. People at work, church and at the grocery store are different from us, too. And it’s not just that men and women are different – individual men are different from each other – and individual women are different, too - it’s like we’re totally different people! Sometimes I say things to people, and I know what I meant, and they know what they heard, but the two things are nowhere near each other! It can drive us crazy – worse, it can drive us apart, if we are not aware of the differences, and are not careful, and diligent to be clear.

We are different. God made us to be different. In fact, He made men and women to be different in a marriage not to frustrate us but to mature us. If we were not different from one another, there would be no need to work at our relationships, and nothing easy is valuable. It is the differences, and the work that it takes to recognize and appreciate them, that makes us grow deeper in those relationships. It’s when we are willing to do the hard work of building the our relationships in spite of our differences that we really grow close.

Romans 15:7 says, “Accept one another then just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God.” We are called to accept one another the way Christ accepted us – He loves us in spite of our faults, our personality flaws, or our mistakes. We are called to do the same. It is when I am accepted by those who love me best, even when they know all the flaws I have, that I feel most loved. It’s good that Carol needs me to talk to her – because if she was just like me, we’d never communicate! But it’s good for me to show her that silence doesn’t mean rejection, it can mean contentment! One of the greatest choices we can ever make is to thank God for our differences. It’s one of the things that makes relationships work.

What about those times when it’s not the differences that are frustrating us, but difficulties? We’ve been disappointed. We’ve been hurt. What do you do then? What do we do when the problem is not us – it really, genuinely is some flaw in another person’s character?

Last week I shared that Ephesians 4:1 had been really weighing on me for several weeks – “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Wow. What a challenge. You know what the next verse says? It says, “Be completely humble and gentle, be patient bearing with one another in love.” The Message translates that last part, “Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.” Sometimes that’s what love does – it makes allowances for somebody else’s faults. That doesn’t mean that we “make excuses for somebody else’s faults,” that’s not what this is saying. Making allowance for somebody else’s faults doesn’t mean you say it’s ok for you to stay in that sin. It means you say it’s ok for it to take time. It does mean that you recognize that it takes time and patience for us to grow.

When you’re disappointed in a relationship what do you do? You go to God with those disappointments. Sometimes those disappointments are over the fact that none of us are perfect. That person you married or that child that you had or that friendship you had, that person is not perfect.

Sometimes it’s the world we live in that disappoints us. Sometimes we’re disappointed by our own image about how things should be. Oftentimes when it comes to relationships we get this perfect image of how a relationship should work. We think we’re going to have a perfect wedding, a perfect honeymoon, come back to a perfect house, a perfect yard and a perfect kitchen, and we’re going to raise perfect kids and they’re going to go off to their perfect lives and we’re going to sail off to a perfect retirement. There’s no such thing. Life is not perfect. Yet we grow up sometimes with this idealized image of this perfect romance. In fact, we’re inundated by images of what a perfect relationship is like. It may be good entertainment but that’s not real. That’s not how life works. What do we do with the disappointments?

We go to God with our disappointments. We start by recognizing that He can meet needs that no one else can meet. One of the reasons we are vastly disappointed in a relationship is we expect people to meet needs in our life that only God can meet. And so of course we’re disappointed. You expect a person to be perfect? Only God is perfect! He’s the only one that can meet that need in your life. You expect a person to always be there for you? Only God can always be there. He’s the only one who’s everywhere all the time. So sometimes we’re disappointed because we’re asking too much. We’re asking people to do things they can’t do. Your husband will fail you. Your wife will fail you. Your kids will fail you. They’re not perfect. You’re not perfect. Only God will never fail.

When you begin to allow God to meet the needs that only He can meet in your life, then you begin to reduce the disappointments with the other relationships of life. When you face the disappointments, a choice hits you. You’re either going to bail out or stick it out. When you said, “I do,” or you had that new baby or you started that friendship, all you thought about was the promise that was in that relationship. But right now some of you are face to face with the disappointment that’s a part of that relationship. What are you going to do now? What about the unexpected surprises of life?

On Thursday of this week the USPS released the Ronald Regan stamp. When Ron and Nancy Regan left the White House in 1988, they were looking forward to a great finish to a great life together. They had done it all, and were anticipating a great season of life. But then the former president was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Can you imagine the disappointment of expecting to grow old together only to not know the person you’re growing older with? Life is quite often filled with unexpected disappointments.

Disappointments can appear in any relationship. Between husbands and wives, parents, siblings, children, at work, church or in the neighborhood. What do we do with those disappointments?

1 Corinthians 13:7 says, “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance.” That’s real life. We face real disappointments. Where are we going to find the strength to not give up? Where are we going to find the power to endure through every circumstance? We go to God with our disappointments. We let Him meet needs that only He can meet in our lives. And we let Him give us the strength and the power to love in a way we’ve never loved before. Life did not, for some of you, turn out at all like you expected. You’re facing it right now. Go to God with those disappointments. Watch Him give you the strength, the strength that only He can give, a strength that you don’t have in yourself right now to not give up. Watch Him do something with that relationship that you would never have dreamed even in the midst of the disappointments. That’s the power He has.

In Lamentations 5: 21, Jeremiah cried out, “Bring us back to you God, we’re ready to come back. Give us a fresh start.”(MSG[i]) Some of us feel like we would like to get a fresh start in our relationships. The friendship we once had has been strained. Feelings have been hurt. We feel wounded, neglected or abused. We would love to have that relationship restored to what it once was, but we don’t know if it’s possible. As God for help. Ask Him for direction.

Some of us need to begin right at that verse – to come back to God. The fact is, your relationships with other humans will never be what they should until your relationship with God is where it should be. God desires to be in relationship with you. He wants to have an intimate, day-to-day, real world ongoing relationship with you. To love you, guide you, comfort you, and direct you. If you don’t have that relationship today – this is the time to return to Him.

He’s the one who invented relationships – marriage, families, friendships – yet sometimes we fail to ask Him for advice when we most need it. He’s willing to give it. James 1:5 (NLT) says, “If you need wisdom, if you want to know what God wants you to do, ask Him and He will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking. But when you ask Him, be sure that you really expect Him to answer.”[ii] Ask Him, “Should we get married or not?” Ask Him, “What’s the next step in our marriage? … How do we get through this problem?” Ask Him, “What should I say to my kids? … How do we get over this block in our friendship?” Ask Him.

Notice the phrase “He will gladly tell you.” He will tell you – no question. The question is How? When you ask Him for advice, how does He let you know what to do next?

First, and above all others, you hear it through this book, the Bible. He wrote it to us to give us advice. As we looked at it today, there’s incredible advice about relationships. This book is filled with advice. Some of it is not easy to take but it’s good advice.

For instance, there’s a place where the Bible says that someone who is a believer in Christ and wanting to follow Him and someone who’s not a believer in Christ, not wanting to follow Him, that those two people shouldn’t get married. That’s hard advice for some to take, I know. “But we’re in love.” I could tell you story after story of couples where being in love was not enough. You need more than that to build a life on. Why would God give this type of advice? Because He knows if two people aren’t heading in the same spiritual direction they’re going to be in for some incredible suffering and struggles in their life. So He gives us advice.

He gives us advice about relationships between workers and bosses, brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, and friends at church. It’s all here – we just have to be willing to hear it, and obey it. God’s word, revealed to us by the Holy Spirit as we read and study it, is our primary source of direction.

The next place you look is advice from other believers, other people who are trying to follow His word. Have you noticed when it comes to relationships there are lots of people willing to give you advice about your relationships? Lots of people – From your mother in law to Dr. Phil, there’s lots of advice out there. Do yourself a favor – seek advice from people whom you know are seeking God’s direction in their own life. There’s nothing wrong with seeking good counsel, in fact I highly recommend it. Psalm 37:30 (NLT) says, “The godly offer good counsel; they know what is right from wrong.” Proverbs 13:20 (NIV[iii]) reads, “He who walks with the wise grows wise…” 18 months ago, Carol and I gave each other a gift for our 25^th anniversary year – a year of counseling with a professional Christian counselor. It was the best thing we have done in years. We both wish we had done it for our 5^th anniversary instead of our 25^th! Each of us need good, Godly counsel in our relationships – whether it is in marriage, business or church.

Relationships. They are the fibers of our lives. They are what make life worth while. Like anything of value, they require lots of care and attention. The moment we take them for granted, we risk breaking them. But if we can recognize and actually be thankful to God for the differences and variety that exists in each of us, and if we can go to God with the disappointments relationships sometimes bring, and when we seek God for direction, our relationships can be the wonderful, fulfilling part of life He intends them to be.