The Challenge

 

The Challenge of Trying Relationships

Have you ever felt totally alone? Maybe you’ve just moved to a new city or started a new job and you wonder where you will find friends.

Or perhaps you have a different dilemma– you have experienced betrayal from someone close to you, which has sent you into self-preservation mode and has made you want to keep people at arm’s length.

Most of us have experienced one or both of these depressing circumstances in life.

During these challenging times, we wonder why Jesus placed such importance on relationships with others if maintaining them is so difficult. Perhaps you asked yourself, ‘Did He ever experience loneliness? Can He possibly understand how broken I feel because I have been wronged?’

The tension between wanting to have close relationships and not wanting to get too close to people in order to avoid being hurt is a scene that plays over and over in the drama of life. But neither of these scenarios paints the picture of the plan God has for our relationships in Scripture.

As Solomon reflects on life, he states, “Then I turned to re-examine something else that is pointless on earth: …someone who is alone.” Ecclesiastes 4:7-8

Being alone is pointless?

He goes on to say, “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

The times we feel lonely or want to keep people at arm’s length are the times we are trying to be in control of life…the times we aren’t truly trusting the Lord to provide our need.

Perhaps we are wallowing in self-pity, putting walls around our heart because we fear more hurt, more betrayal. But God established relationship to be an expression of love and joy and to reflect God’s heart for us.

When we are unwilling to let God flow through us with His power to love, to reach out, and, if necessary, to forgive, we relinquish His promise that through HIM we can achieve the impossible.

When we allow God to bless us with the gift of relationship, we realize we weren’t designed to walk alone; we were designed to walk with one another through good times and bad times.

As people created in the image of God, we can experience the heart of God through strained relationships when we give love as well as when we allow ourselves to receive love. The most important aspect of damaged relationships, the purpose for which God has allowed them is to cause them to be opportunities through which we express the heart of God (forgiveness, patience, kindness, joy, love, etc.).

So Solomon was right…being alone is pointless. We limit ourselves from experiencing the heart of God when we don’t embrace the person who caused our pain. But in order to experience that, we have to be willing to take risks and let people in. We have to be willing to let them BACK into our lives.

We must realize that we will have joyful days and we will have challenging days in this life, but when we do life together we grow in our faith as we experience God’s love through even the most difficult of our challenges, through the most formidable of our trying relationships.