Post by Cindy on Nov 19, 2015 12:20:00 GMT -5
Often our own loved ones can become the source of sever trial for us. Jesus was aware of this of course and He shows us how to deal with it in His Word. Obviously, if the person that's hurt us is a loved one, we already love them or we wouldn't be hurting. So the problem isn't that we don't love them. But often the problem in a situation like this is that we become confused between what the world has taught us about dealing with relationship problems and what God tells us. We tend to go over what hurt us in our minds over and over again, day in and day out. Sometimes we do this for years. When we do, of course we're always looking at what they did wrong that hurt us, and we'll often throw in all the good things we did and said for them over the years as well. After all, we want to make sure that we're in the right to be hurt and that they're the ones in the wrong. So we lick our wounds, and fall prey to self pity and remember how the world tells us to put ourselves first and to take care of ourselves. So we try that too, but the pain doesn't go away. Some of us will go to the person and tell them how wrong they were and how much they hurt us and often wind up in even more pain when the person still doesn't agree with us. So then what are we to do? Do we give up on the relationship? Do we just stop communicating with them at all? Let's see what the Lord tells us about it.
First we need a refresher on just what love should look like. No, not what the other person should show us, regardless of whether or not they're a Christian, but how we should show love to others. For that we should start at ! Cor. 13. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7) I've underlined some of the more common things we tend to do wrong in loving others, but we each need to look at each item God lists carefully to see what is really true about us and how we love and the current relationship problem. First notice that God's kind of love isn't self seeking. That means it's sacrificial. We're not loving them to get something back from them; not even to get them to love us back, or be nice to us. It means we love them regardless of how they treat us. It keeps no record of wrongs.....yet we frequently go over in our own minds what they did wrong and how they hurt us, don't we? We even tell others about how they hurt us and how wrong they were. Again, that's now how God wants us to love. Notice too that love always trusts, hope and perseveres, and that there are no exceptions for those things. He doesn't tell us to trust "except when the person has lied to you", or to hope "except when the person keeps dashing your hopes to the ground", or to persevere "except when they keep pushing you away". This is generally where conviction begins for the believer, and that's good, because healing can start when we confess that we haven't loved the way the Lord tells us to and repent from our old ways.
If we want to see what God's love looks like, we can also look at the life of Jesus and see how He loved others, including us. All we have to do is remember that He loved us when we were still His enemy. We didn't just not know about Him, nor were we just acquaintances, we were literally His enemy when He first loved us. Think about what an enemy is for a minute to realize just what we were when our Lord first loved us. An enemy is someone who hates you and wants to hurt you or even kill you; they want to destroy everything you care about, so if you're "for" something, your enemy is going to be against it. And they're not going to be against it just in words, but also in deeds. That's who we were when Jesus first loved us. He commands us to love others the very same way. No matter how much they've hurt us, we're to love them with His love and we're to show them that love in deeds. Obviously, this requires a lot of forgiveness, but then didn't our Lord forgive us completely? Did Jesus withhold His love from us because of our sins against Him? Then how can we withhold our love from others because they've hurt us? We can't. Forgiving and Forgetting the Lord's way isn't easy, but we can do it with His help. We've already discussed that on this thread though, so I won't get into that here.
It must break the Lord's heart to see the lack of love from those who belong to Him. And when we really think about it, aren't we withholding our love for really petty things? One of the big reasons we often see if that we want to be "right". We want the other person to admit that we're right and they're wrong and we want them to feel badly that they were wrong and/or that they treated us badly because of it. One of the very worst things we can do when we've been hurt or when we're angry at someone is to withdraw from them. That's the exact opposite of what Jesus tells us to do and is exactly what Satan wants us to do. Sadly, we see this all the time though, where one of the offended parties will simply walk away, or will refuse to talk to the other, often dropping the other person from their life entirely. Satan rejoices when this happens because he's been allowed to destroy that relationship and prevent that person from fulling abiding in Christ. The person has put a barrier between them and the Lord because they're not loving others the way Jesus tells us to. When we do that, the Lord tells us that then He will have to judge us the same way we've judged them. I don't know about you, but I sure don't want Him to judge me that way! Far better to forgive and forget and just cover their sin with love then to have anything come between me and the Lord or to have Him judge me the way I've treated others I was angry with or hurt by!
God tells us that we're to live at peace with others as far as it depends on us. In other words, our words and actions are to come from a place of love, no matter what. If the other person refuses to speak to us, or runs away from us, then they will be judged for it, but we should not turn away from them! We should reach out to them whenever we can with love, whether it's a phone call, a gift, or the offer of a helping hand. If they reject it, so be it, but we still love. If they block every attempt we make to communicate with them, then again, they will be judged for it, but at least we can rest easy knowing we've done and are doing all we can to obey the Lord and love the way He does. It's very hard to keep loving and keep giving of ourselves when we feel it's constantly rejected by someone. What helps me keep going is when I remember all the times I rejected my Lord before I was saved, and all the ways He loved me anyway. So we have to continue to show the love of Christ to all the people He's put in our lives, no matter how they react to it.
If we take another look at the life of our Lord, we see something really amazing. Something we rarely think about. At least I rarely did. Think about Judas, who betrayed the Lord. Jesus knew that he would betray Him. He knew it when He chose Judas. Jesus didn't make a mistake choosing him, He chose him on purpose. Judas walked and lived with Jesus for 3 years. Judas preached the gospel and even worked miracles in our Lord's name during that time, just like the other disciples. None of the other disciples had any reason to suspect that Judas was any different then they were. There's not the slightest hint from any of them or from the Lord anywhere in the New Testament until just minutes before Judas went to actually do the deed itself. All during those 3 years, Jesus loved Judas, and showed him His love just as He did to all the other disciples. Even then, at the last supper, Jesus did not give away who would betray Him to the other disciples. Not only that, but Jesus offered him forgiveness and salvation again that very night, but he chose not to accept it, and instead embraced the darkness. What an amazing picture of love Jesus showed us!
When you read the New Testament you find that the way we treat others is a reflection of our relationship with the Lord. Really think about that for a moment. We can't just pick and choose and say, "well I treat these people really well, so I must be OK with the Lord", when there's another person or group that you're not getting along with at all. I know.... it sounds impossible doesn't it? How can we be in a loving relationship with everyone we know? Only by abiding in Christ, and relying on Him. There is no other way that will work. That does not mean that everyone will love us and treat us with love though. Again, look at how Judas responded to the love of Christ in his life. But Jesus never pushed him away, never showed anything to him but love, and that's how He wants us to behave.
Sure, others may not accept our love. Some may run away; some may block us from any attempt to communicate our love for them; some may respond with outright venom and spite and try to make things more difficult for us. But as far as it depends on us, we're to love others and live in peace with them. The Lord knows that problems will arise in relationships, and He left us very explicit instructions on how to deal with those problems. We covered some of them in Forgiving and Forgetting the Lord's way, as a starting point. But if you're in doubt about how to handle a relationship problem in your life, turn to the Lord in prayer and study His Word for His answers. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that when we obey God and do things His way, we won't have stress or anxiety about the problem because we'll know we're doing all we can with His help to obey Him and that our most important relationship - the one with Jesus - is in good standing. We can't change others, or force others to obey Him, that's not our job anyway. Our job is to be like Jesus and to obey Him at all times. Obviously, we can't know the Lord very well if we don't know His Word, and we certainly can't obey Him if we don't know it. I saw a neat graphic the other day of a man praying and pleading with God to talk to them and tell them what to do. In the graphic the next scene showed the hand of God coming down from heaven with the Bible and handing it to the man! That is so very true. So often I hear people asking for prayer for various things that the Lord tells us all about in His Word! These people often feel their prayers aren't answered, because they don't realize that the answer's been available to them all along in their bibles.
Jesus warned us that we would have trials in this life and He specifically warned us that many would involve relationships with family members. The early Christians had to deal with this constantly and were often disowned by their entire families and communities because they believed in Jesus. They often even lost their jobs and means of making a living. The only family they had then was their relationship with other believers. That didn't mean that they treated their biological family badly or the rest of their community. No, they loved them and showed them love. That was the huge difference between believers and unbelievers then. What Jesus tells us when He said others would know we belonged to Him by our love, was an honest to God truth back then and still is now. People who lived back then wanted to know why these folks were so loving and how they could be when they were treated so badly. They came in droves to find the answer to that, and when they did, they discovered the answer was Jesus, and many were saved. It sure doesn't seem that way now though.
I know this doesn't answer all the questions of what to do when a relationship goes bad. But it does give us a place to start. The other article about forgiving and forgetting gives us yet more information about it. The bottom line though is that we need to talk to the Lord and then study His Word for our answers and stop looking to the world and what it says for our answers. If we start with love and forgiveness in relationships and keep 1 cor 13 in mind for how we should love (not how we expect others to love) that's a huge start toward living the way God wants us to and solving any relationship problem. From there the Lord will lead us in His Word to whatever else we need to learn for our personal situation.
In 1 John 2, John tells us that if we love the Lord we'll obey His commands. Next he reminds us of the Lord's command to love others, and illustrates what it looks like when we do and don't obey that command. In 3 John he really nails it down for us: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:14–18) He's not saying that our words shouldn't be loving or that words aren't needed, He's saying that words alone aren't enough. Let me leave you with some more from 1 John about this:
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:8–12)
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.” (1 John 4:16–17)
First we need a refresher on just what love should look like. No, not what the other person should show us, regardless of whether or not they're a Christian, but how we should show love to others. For that we should start at ! Cor. 13. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7) I've underlined some of the more common things we tend to do wrong in loving others, but we each need to look at each item God lists carefully to see what is really true about us and how we love and the current relationship problem. First notice that God's kind of love isn't self seeking. That means it's sacrificial. We're not loving them to get something back from them; not even to get them to love us back, or be nice to us. It means we love them regardless of how they treat us. It keeps no record of wrongs.....yet we frequently go over in our own minds what they did wrong and how they hurt us, don't we? We even tell others about how they hurt us and how wrong they were. Again, that's now how God wants us to love. Notice too that love always trusts, hope and perseveres, and that there are no exceptions for those things. He doesn't tell us to trust "except when the person has lied to you", or to hope "except when the person keeps dashing your hopes to the ground", or to persevere "except when they keep pushing you away". This is generally where conviction begins for the believer, and that's good, because healing can start when we confess that we haven't loved the way the Lord tells us to and repent from our old ways.
If we want to see what God's love looks like, we can also look at the life of Jesus and see how He loved others, including us. All we have to do is remember that He loved us when we were still His enemy. We didn't just not know about Him, nor were we just acquaintances, we were literally His enemy when He first loved us. Think about what an enemy is for a minute to realize just what we were when our Lord first loved us. An enemy is someone who hates you and wants to hurt you or even kill you; they want to destroy everything you care about, so if you're "for" something, your enemy is going to be against it. And they're not going to be against it just in words, but also in deeds. That's who we were when Jesus first loved us. He commands us to love others the very same way. No matter how much they've hurt us, we're to love them with His love and we're to show them that love in deeds. Obviously, this requires a lot of forgiveness, but then didn't our Lord forgive us completely? Did Jesus withhold His love from us because of our sins against Him? Then how can we withhold our love from others because they've hurt us? We can't. Forgiving and Forgetting the Lord's way isn't easy, but we can do it with His help. We've already discussed that on this thread though, so I won't get into that here.
It must break the Lord's heart to see the lack of love from those who belong to Him. And when we really think about it, aren't we withholding our love for really petty things? One of the big reasons we often see if that we want to be "right". We want the other person to admit that we're right and they're wrong and we want them to feel badly that they were wrong and/or that they treated us badly because of it. One of the very worst things we can do when we've been hurt or when we're angry at someone is to withdraw from them. That's the exact opposite of what Jesus tells us to do and is exactly what Satan wants us to do. Sadly, we see this all the time though, where one of the offended parties will simply walk away, or will refuse to talk to the other, often dropping the other person from their life entirely. Satan rejoices when this happens because he's been allowed to destroy that relationship and prevent that person from fulling abiding in Christ. The person has put a barrier between them and the Lord because they're not loving others the way Jesus tells us to. When we do that, the Lord tells us that then He will have to judge us the same way we've judged them. I don't know about you, but I sure don't want Him to judge me that way! Far better to forgive and forget and just cover their sin with love then to have anything come between me and the Lord or to have Him judge me the way I've treated others I was angry with or hurt by!
God tells us that we're to live at peace with others as far as it depends on us. In other words, our words and actions are to come from a place of love, no matter what. If the other person refuses to speak to us, or runs away from us, then they will be judged for it, but we should not turn away from them! We should reach out to them whenever we can with love, whether it's a phone call, a gift, or the offer of a helping hand. If they reject it, so be it, but we still love. If they block every attempt we make to communicate with them, then again, they will be judged for it, but at least we can rest easy knowing we've done and are doing all we can to obey the Lord and love the way He does. It's very hard to keep loving and keep giving of ourselves when we feel it's constantly rejected by someone. What helps me keep going is when I remember all the times I rejected my Lord before I was saved, and all the ways He loved me anyway. So we have to continue to show the love of Christ to all the people He's put in our lives, no matter how they react to it.
If we take another look at the life of our Lord, we see something really amazing. Something we rarely think about. At least I rarely did. Think about Judas, who betrayed the Lord. Jesus knew that he would betray Him. He knew it when He chose Judas. Jesus didn't make a mistake choosing him, He chose him on purpose. Judas walked and lived with Jesus for 3 years. Judas preached the gospel and even worked miracles in our Lord's name during that time, just like the other disciples. None of the other disciples had any reason to suspect that Judas was any different then they were. There's not the slightest hint from any of them or from the Lord anywhere in the New Testament until just minutes before Judas went to actually do the deed itself. All during those 3 years, Jesus loved Judas, and showed him His love just as He did to all the other disciples. Even then, at the last supper, Jesus did not give away who would betray Him to the other disciples. Not only that, but Jesus offered him forgiveness and salvation again that very night, but he chose not to accept it, and instead embraced the darkness. What an amazing picture of love Jesus showed us!
When you read the New Testament you find that the way we treat others is a reflection of our relationship with the Lord. Really think about that for a moment. We can't just pick and choose and say, "well I treat these people really well, so I must be OK with the Lord", when there's another person or group that you're not getting along with at all. I know.... it sounds impossible doesn't it? How can we be in a loving relationship with everyone we know? Only by abiding in Christ, and relying on Him. There is no other way that will work. That does not mean that everyone will love us and treat us with love though. Again, look at how Judas responded to the love of Christ in his life. But Jesus never pushed him away, never showed anything to him but love, and that's how He wants us to behave.
Sure, others may not accept our love. Some may run away; some may block us from any attempt to communicate our love for them; some may respond with outright venom and spite and try to make things more difficult for us. But as far as it depends on us, we're to love others and live in peace with them. The Lord knows that problems will arise in relationships, and He left us very explicit instructions on how to deal with those problems. We covered some of them in Forgiving and Forgetting the Lord's way, as a starting point. But if you're in doubt about how to handle a relationship problem in your life, turn to the Lord in prayer and study His Word for His answers. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that when we obey God and do things His way, we won't have stress or anxiety about the problem because we'll know we're doing all we can with His help to obey Him and that our most important relationship - the one with Jesus - is in good standing. We can't change others, or force others to obey Him, that's not our job anyway. Our job is to be like Jesus and to obey Him at all times. Obviously, we can't know the Lord very well if we don't know His Word, and we certainly can't obey Him if we don't know it. I saw a neat graphic the other day of a man praying and pleading with God to talk to them and tell them what to do. In the graphic the next scene showed the hand of God coming down from heaven with the Bible and handing it to the man! That is so very true. So often I hear people asking for prayer for various things that the Lord tells us all about in His Word! These people often feel their prayers aren't answered, because they don't realize that the answer's been available to them all along in their bibles.
Jesus warned us that we would have trials in this life and He specifically warned us that many would involve relationships with family members. The early Christians had to deal with this constantly and were often disowned by their entire families and communities because they believed in Jesus. They often even lost their jobs and means of making a living. The only family they had then was their relationship with other believers. That didn't mean that they treated their biological family badly or the rest of their community. No, they loved them and showed them love. That was the huge difference between believers and unbelievers then. What Jesus tells us when He said others would know we belonged to Him by our love, was an honest to God truth back then and still is now. People who lived back then wanted to know why these folks were so loving and how they could be when they were treated so badly. They came in droves to find the answer to that, and when they did, they discovered the answer was Jesus, and many were saved. It sure doesn't seem that way now though.
I know this doesn't answer all the questions of what to do when a relationship goes bad. But it does give us a place to start. The other article about forgiving and forgetting gives us yet more information about it. The bottom line though is that we need to talk to the Lord and then study His Word for our answers and stop looking to the world and what it says for our answers. If we start with love and forgiveness in relationships and keep 1 cor 13 in mind for how we should love (not how we expect others to love) that's a huge start toward living the way God wants us to and solving any relationship problem. From there the Lord will lead us in His Word to whatever else we need to learn for our personal situation.
In 1 John 2, John tells us that if we love the Lord we'll obey His commands. Next he reminds us of the Lord's command to love others, and illustrates what it looks like when we do and don't obey that command. In 3 John he really nails it down for us: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:14–18) He's not saying that our words shouldn't be loving or that words aren't needed, He's saying that words alone aren't enough. Let me leave you with some more from 1 John about this:
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:8–12)
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.” (1 John 4:16–17)
!!
