Restored Relationships

By Rosemary Flaaten –

Do you find yourself wishing your friendships could be authentic and loving? Do you wish you could forgive your parents and siblings? Do you long to know how to relate to your husband and children? Do you damn yourself for the choices you’ve made?

How do we bring about change in the way we relate to others? Do we just try harder? Do we give more and more of ourselves to a seemingly bottomless pit of relational need? Do we give less of ourselves, becoming more guarded and controlling? I could give you some quick tips to improve your relationships, but doing so would be like giving you a Band-Aid for terminal cancer. To get to the root of the problem in our relationships, we must have them connected to our most basic relationship: the relationship with our Creator.

Imagine arranging thousands of tiny pieces in straight lines. As soon as we get one line neatly placed, we bump the table, and are forced to start over. Over and over we try to get everything lined up, but even our best efforts do not produce the outcome we desire. Does this frustration sound like our attempts to improve our relationships?

Now imagine what would happen if those pieces were brought in contact with a magnet. The pieces would quickly line up and order would be created. So it is with life and relationships. Putting God at the center of our lives, through a surrendered heart, aligns our relationships, transforming chaos into order.

Only as we allow God to bring about heart change will we relate differently to others. Our relationships will be transformed as we’re filled up with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. None of these are qualities we can manufacture on our own. We need God to fill us with His character.

Prayer: Forgive me for trying to fix my relationships on my own. Help me to open my heart to You so that what flows out of me is Your character, O Father.

“Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them – living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious free life” (Romans 8:5-7 The Message).