STEPS OF THE PATH

LIFE CONTROLLING ISSUES

WHO IS DRIVING YOUR BUS???

                                        RELATIONSHIPS

 

Marital/Romantic

Unfortunately, original sin of man within our fallen world has impaired our ability, man and woman alike, to live, exercise and enjoy the full fruit of the"agape" (agápē embraces a universal, unconditional love that transcends, that serves regardless of circumstances) model with one another that God bestows upon us and was established for us. Our marriage/romantic relationships are meant to be the ideal picture of the relationship between the human race and God.

Mark 12:30, And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Our first love is to be directed toward God.

The bible tells us that if we will seek God first He will add our peace and happiness to us. The major difficulty arises in the reality of our mortality and our need to satisfy ourselves physically, emotionally and psychologically but focusing upon acquiring that satisfaction from another in our worldly realm. We become less of self and more dependent on that other person who we think can supply the needs we have to secure the happiness and satisfaction of our desires. Thus, co-dependent relations are formed.

This diagram illustrates that much of our time which does in fact become Life Controlling is spent in trying to control the behavior of our partner by manipulating circumstance and situation in the effort to satisfy our need. An irrational and unrealistic fear is self produced by our insecurity of self worth compelling us to become excessive in our activities toward the other to feel needed, once again in effort to satisfy our physical, emotional and psychological worthiness as a person.

Our lives become enmeshed with one another when we look to our partner to fulfill the many emotional needs we have as human beings in contrast to the biblical prescriptive, mindset and action as elaborated by the Apostle Paul,

Eph. 5:21  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ

Eph. 5:22, Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord

Eph. 5:25, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

These verses are illustrative of service to God and one another. Though given that we are not perfect, it begs us to seek the discipline even more diligently to turn to God through faith in the power of the Holy Spirit to offer ourselves in spiritual worship in service to each other. Our initial submission (1John 4:19, We love because he first loved us) to Christ is out of reverence and pleasing the Lord through sacrificial service.

I have but barely scratched the surface of issues regarding relationships, focusing primarily in this post on the marital/romantic and how they can become Life Controlling. In my next post we will look at social relationships i.e., friendly and adversarial, that in so many ways are quite alike in the compulsions and excessiveness that we exercise and extend ourselves to.

May God Shower Blessings Upon You