Relationships

Relationship.  That’s what it’s all about.  Most importantly between us and God and when that is right on, then between us and others it is right on.  I had a friend send me an e-mail yesterday which was great:

The Disconnected Generation 

“It’s like I have this really heavy heart and this burden on my back, but I don’t know what it is.  There’s something in me that makes me want to cry, and I don’t even know what it is.”  These are words of today’s teens. 

They are the offspring of the Baby Boomer generation.  They are perhaps the richest, most populous, best-educated, and most physically fit generation in history.  Yet they feel disconnected.  Even kids from good Christian homes feel alienated from their parents, from adults in general, and from society as a whole.  Lacking a sense of personal identity, today’s teens feel adrift in a hostile world.

Clearly, adults must provide clear guidance and hold their children accountable for their actions even when they feel confused and disconnected.  The question is:  How do parents provide appropriate rules and guidelines for children without prompting them to disconnect  relationally?  The rules must be presented in the context of loving relationships.  Youth do not respond to rules, they respond to relationships.

Rules – Relationship = Rebellion

Rules + Relationship = Response 

When kids know that they are more important than the rules – that parents love them no matter what – they are much more likely to follow the rules.  Rules without relationship lead to a relational disconnect, which prompts rebellion.  But rules within a loving relationship usually lead to a positive response. - From the writings of Josh McDowell

Especially now in these times we have to get relationship right.  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto”  Our world is so much different than it was 20, 30, 50 years ago and relationship is more important now than ever before.  I just love the below devotional, because I experience this.   The more we live for God and others and not for ourselves, it all comes back to us in a greater way … I am happier now than I ever have been in my life, have more fun than ever before, and yet, have very little in the realm of ‘material or financial goods’.  Stuff isn’t important, it is RELATIONSHIP!

The Dove Daily Devotional, Aug. 8, 2013, Matt. 5:3

When the rosy glow diminishes and reality sets in, what makes some marriages happy while others slide into misery?  Luck?  Good genes?  Hanging tough?  Hardly!  Marital happiness that transcends changing circumstances is built on the qualities Jesus taught.  Let’s look at them:  1) Happy are the humble.  “Blessed (happy …) are the poor in spirit (the humble, who rate themselves insignificant).”  Pride that’s self-promoting and always demanding its rights brings misery, while humility, self-denial and considering your mate’s needs brings happiness. 2)  Happy are the meek: the gentle, patient and kind.  Handling your spouse’s struggles with kindness, sensitivity and long-suffering is an expression of love that brings healing into the painful chapters of life and marriage.  3)  Happy are the merciful.  Sooner or later we’ll inflict injury on one another.  Hurt, disappointment and anger will rise up, followed by a desire to make them pay.  But just as revenge begets revenge, mercy begets mercy.  Mercy isn’t “letting them get away with it.”  Treating your spouse mercifully is reciprocal.  It creates an atmosphere, where, when you fail, you “shall obtain mercy.”  Mercy ends disputes when nothing else works!  4)  Happy are the peacemakers.  The need to be “right” and “win” only intensifies conflict.  In marriage, when one “wins,” both lose!  Giving up personal victory to be a peacemaker is ultimate victory.  You’d be eternally lost if Jesus hadn’t willingly surrendered His rights for your wrongs.  The ring is not the sole symbol of Christian marriage, but the cross superimposed on the ring.  Christ-like surrender of our uncrucified self promotes marital happiness!

Even my wedding ring has the cross … I love it.  It twirls, since it is a bearing-style ring and what is so cool, God gave it to us in a very unique way.  My brother-in-law, Jon, came down to visit William one day 2 years before we got married and he gave William a pair of rings – one is just a basic band and the one with the cross … he ended up giving one to his daughter several months later and sometimes wore the one I ended up getting.  The October before we got married, he gave it to me with a special message from God.   Right before we got married, he was concerned about having wedding rings and I reminded him of the ones Jon gave him, so he got the one back from his daughter and we used them.    They are special to us and I love the way God gave them to us.  Most importantly, I love how God put William and I together … a very special relationship that STARTS in God.

Below is a song that we both love and it centers in the Cross and relationship:

How love wins by Nichole Nordaman/Steven Curtis Chapman

My life began like any other man
Held beneath a mother's loving gaze
Somewhere between now and then
I lost the man I could have been
Took everything that wasn't mine to take
But love believes that it is not too late
Only one of us deserves this cross,
A suffering that should belong to me
Deep within this man I hang beside
Is the place where shame and grace collide
And it's beautiful agony
That he believes
It's not too late for me

This is how love wins,
Every single time
Climbing high upon a tree
Where someone else should die
This is how love heals,
The deepest part of you
Letting himself bleed into
The middle of your wounds
This is what love says,
Standing at the door
You don't have to be
Who you've been before
Silenced by his voice,
Death can't speak again
This is how love wins

Did you see
This moment from the start
That we would drink
This of cup of suffering?
I wonder, did we ever meet?
Childhood games in dusty streets
For all my many sorrows and regrets
Nothing could compare to just this one
That in the presence of my king
I cannot fall upon my knees
I cannot carry you up to your throne;
You instead, will carry me back home.

This is how love wins,
Every single time
Climbing high upon a tree
Where someone else should die
This is how love heals,
The deepest part of you
Letting himself bleed into
The middle of your wounds
This is what love says,
Standing at the door
You don't have to be
Who you've been before
Silenced by his voice,
Death can't speak again
This is how love wins

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood,
Nothing but the blood
What can make
Me whole again?
Nothing but the blood,
Nothing but the blood
Because this is what love say,
Standing at the door
You don't have to be
Who you've been before
And silenced by his voice,
Death can't speak again
This is how love wins.