Ecclesiastes 4:4 “Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his
neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.”
Continuing Pastor Kyle's message, he stated that the voice of isolation creeps in and skews our perspective. A perspective is a lense by which we view the world. We filter our worldview through a perspective that is shaped by all kinds of things in our lives. Through this bias lense, we see people not as God sees them nor how others see us. These filters skew reality to communicate messages a certain way, but God can see through every filter, seeing us for who we really are and for who He created us to be. We are not often good at recognizing the lense by which we view reality. Isolation puts a filter on our view of reality that we are not even aware of, but process all of life through. Whether we say, “I’m better than the rest”, “I am not as good as the rest”, or comparing and judging everyone to ourselves for better or worse, it is not reality. People many times set out to do great things for the wrong reasons. The only way to fix the lense of isolation is to choose togetherness.
Togetherness with the wrong people is arguably the only thing more dangerous than isolation. Being wired for togetherness, we are all terrified at heart to be alone, and in our search for companionship, fellowship and belonging, we often form the wrong kinds of connections, finding ourselves not where we want to be with no way out. A 3-fold cord can be either positive or negative. Once you twine and weave those strands, they are strong and hard to get undone. Wrong relationships drag you down rather than pull you up; messy and causing chaos in your life. We seek a cathartic (purifying and therapeutic) relationship in our life. But, we find ourselves normalizing what we are trying to overcome; things that the devil wants us to normalize, but God wants us to overcome. Crawl out of that hole.
Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Togetherness with the “right” people makes you a better you. There are things that magnify the wrong qualities and things that magnify the right qualities in our life. Togetherness with the right people magnifies the qualities that God wants to grow and enrich in us. Know that God has great friendships in store for you, but you must walk in them. Good works includes good relationships for the Christian. Good works lead to great relationships. God pouts people into our lives, but great relationships and friendships only happen when we walk in them. God may have new friendships in store for you for this season of your life, to bless you or to be a blessing in someone’s life today. Walk in it, not fight it.
Some friends are forever. Some are for a season and that’s okay. It is natural that most people have only five or less “inner-circle”, close friends in their life. Not every relationship we have is supposed to be an amazing, “best friends forever” scenario. That is not genuine. We can put an unrealistic amount of pressure on relationships. Do current friendships meet a need for this season of your life? Then, it is a win for the kingdom of God and a win for you! There are relationships in your life that God uses to make you into a better you; to grow into the likeness of Jesus.
Know that the fruit grows at the end. We really want a 3-fold cord relationship. The reward in Christian relationships is in our worries and cares losing their scale and impact in our perspective to become manageable for us together in the end. Life is for togetherness. Do not walk alone.
In Christ, Brian
No comments:
Post a Comment