What They Are Not
One of the things for this New Year that the Lord has laid upon my heart is the subject THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS. I told my daughters that they will succeed in life if they learn how to build and maintain relationships. Relationships are something that we all face in our families, churches, jobs, professions, etc. Learning to build and maintain relationships will spell success or disaster in everything we do, and especially when it comes to the work of God.
When we talk about relationships we need to define what we are talking about. Often there has been a lot of confusion and misunderstanding when it comes to relationships. Often people think that to have a right relationship we must all think alike. Isn’t this what the Scripture teaches that if we are in Christ we will have the same mind? But, this is not the same as everyone thinking alike. I do not believe that this is what that Scripture teaches.
God has made each of us unique. There are no two humans alike. We are all different. And because we are different we all have different ways through our senses of sorting through information that comes to us throughout the day. I look at my wife and two daughters. They receive the same information that I receive, but they respond differently. When my two daughters were teen-agers they really thought differently. But, we all had a right relationship with one another.
Although we do not think alike we are to think together. In fact, to have a good relationship with someone means we are thinking together, or sharing our thoughts. We see the importance of this coming out with the different nationalities; that to have right relationships with people of other cultures we need to think together even though we think differently.
Having right relationships does not mean that there will be no differences of opinions on issues. It is only natural that if we think differently that there will be differences of opinions.
What I have discovered over the years is that we actually need our different thinking on issues. This is the beauty of the Body of Christ and why we need one another with our different aspects of thinking. There is no one person who has all the truth, who has all the wisdom, etc. When we come to together to think together we can begin to see a bigger picture of who Christ really is through His Body.
Some people think that to have right relationships means that there will be no more conflicts. How untrue this is. It is true that in a maturing marriage over the years conflicts will become less and less. We will see later on that conflicts are not always bad, but often even necessary for spiritual growth. Having conflicts is not necessarily a bad sign as far as relationships are concerned. In any relationship maturity comes by not avoiding conflicts, but rather by working them out and through.
One last thing that we need to understand about relationships is the mistake in thinking that everything should be perfect in the relationship. I find people who think that if something does not feel right to them then there must be something wrong with the relationship. There are two things I would like to mention about this. First, when it comes to developing relationships as well as maintaining them it will take discipline, working at it every day. The time spent working on good relationships is time well spent. Secondly, we need to understand that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace.
I remember one brother mentioning that when things came up between him and his wife he remembered that he married a sinner and so did his wife. We want to push towards perfection, but at the same time we need to keep in mind that we will not achieve perfection on this side of eternity.