Relationships

10 things that God has shown me about relationships:

1.     Adam loved Eve at first sight.  When Eve disobeyed God, Adam chose to also disobey God and gave up a face-to-face intimate relationship with God and an eternity of perfection... all because of Eve.  How lovely is a woman that can satisfy my entire heart!  Also, how lovely is a God that would provide such a lovely companion.  So, make sure we focus on God first and our luscious companion second!

2.     When unequally yoked, it is impossible for the love of Christ to be maximized in our lives, self or together.  It is also impossible to be effective to be Christ's ambassador to the other half, or to others.  We can try, but, it is only dimmed light. 

3.     God is still in complete control, despite our choices in life.  When someone does not know Christ, it is not that we haven't done enough to show them Christ, or to bring them to His feet... it is because God hasn't revealed Himself to them.  When God reveals Himself to people, there are really no other choice than to chose Christ.  The obsession of God's love through Christ our Savoir would be obvious. 

4.     When someone is not in the presence of Christ, there is not much they can do with overwhelming sense of fear, frustration, sadness, and disappointment.  We developed psychology to deal with human distress, and we work at it constantly... but at some point, we all get overwhelmed and break down.  The other thing that plagues us is that our hearts are never satisfied in collecting our own achievements.  The meaning of life comes from whether we are happy with ourselves, and whether we are able to keep ourselves distracted long enough so we never had to think about the big questions of life.  Why do bad things happen to anyone, and not just to good people?  I think, because of our stubbornness and pride need to be broken down, grounded, and molded into clay... by God our potter... so that He can reconstruct us into something pliable, useful, and able to hold His blessings to be shared with others. 

5.     All the spiritual wisdom of this world, other than Christ the Messiah, teach all the same things: we all have a desire to be a better person and get to a better place some day; and how we get there depends on us.  If I am a bad person, then I go to hell.  If I am a good person and do good to others, then I go to heaven.  Moral standards are determined by the collective, and perhaps by a book.  BUT, Christ turned all that upside down.  The Bible said that it doesn't matter how good you are, you are still filthy rags in comparison to God's holiness and glory.  So, there is no possible way you can be 'good enough'.  'Good enough' to human terms is relative.  'Goodness' to a Holy God is absolute.  So, in this light, Christ the Messiah is unique.  God is His own provision for atonement and forgiveness of our sins.  Only a perfect God can give a perfect sacrifice to restore our imperfection into perfection.  Now, that is crazy... and unique.  There are nothing out there like it... and in some weird way it make sense!  It makes choices easy.  Try to make your decisions about which one of these world philosophies to believe in... they are all confounded by human experience and culture.  Now, the message of Christ is the only one that claims to depend on nothing but God Himself.  I can trust that.  When that is your starting point, you now have freedom from the confines of philosophy and culture and traditions... and that is how you can love everybody... Christ loves you regardless how you have been taught or shaped by your society or culture... because in the end, Christ is the only one that is truly out-of-this-world and can influence all traditions.

6.     It is impossible to understand or see God without God giving us that opportunity first.  You can ask all you want, but God is still supreme.  He is not our servant or our idol.  He can give... and He can take away.

7.     Knowing the truth, set me free.  I no longer have to see the world by how we segregated or define the differences.  We should be non-judgmental.  God's love compels us to remove the prejudices in our hearts and see all people as beloved of God.  It gives urgency to my heart for those souls who don't know Christ; and allows me to want to bear the burdens with others. 

8.     As a Christ follower, Christ is 100%.  If King Jesus is All and 'in all', then our world becomes 'perfect' despite all of its inconsistencies and pain.  When we put others in perspective of Christ, Christ fills in all of the pain, that way it frees us up to really become an instrument of healing and love for Christ to others.

9.   It is a blessing to not be distracted by all that is apparent and visible, but to see things as God sees them.  There is a matrix of different world that require us to tune in our hearts, and tune out our minds, to experience...  yeah, I can't explain this one.

10. Genesis 1, God created us in His image by breathing His life into us.  Humans are the only creation with God’s living soul dwelling in a body.  No other creation, as wonderfully made as they are, has a soul.  That is why our relationship with our Creator is also so unique.  That is why God is all about relationships with us!  All of our ‘human attributes’ are really ‘God attributes.’  Many might say, God cannot be God if He has human attributes of joy, love, calm, angry, hate, jealousy, sadness, cry, tire, hungry, pain…  But, I have to disagree!  Everything starts with God and ends with God.  All of our attributes are actually God’s attributes, because He created us in His image!  We have a God that is both supreme, and yet as humble as a servant, and knows exactly what it feels like in our lowly human condition.  A God is that truly omnipresence and omnipotent and able to commune with us because we are a part of Him.  Our souls are a part of Him.