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      

LIFE CONTROLLING ISSUES

WHO IS DRIVING YOUR BUS???

This subject has such a wide berth of sub-topics and overlapping implications, integration's and complications that it would be impossible to cover it exhaustively. For the point of our discussion and edification I will attempt to be as general, yet poignant as possible in a few of the major issues that do control many lives. In focusing on the contemporary and most obviously identifiable, which in themselves encapsulate the essence of most of our difficulties are the areas of consumption, i.e., alcohol/drugs, etc.>> relationships, i.e., romantic, adversarial, general societal etc.>> ambition, i.e., greed, power, recognition, etc.>> self definition, i.e., self esteem, confidence, inferiority 

I like this clear and simple explanation of our major subject; “How does something become a life-controlling problem? It starts with what we are giving our thought-life over to. We become preoccupied with thoughts. We begin to plan around what we are thinking. When we are bored, we begin to think about what we have focused on, and give in to a substance, a behavior, or an unhealthy animate or inanimate relationship. Make your life a sacrifice to God striving to please Him, as an act of worship” Carey Kennon. 

 

Don’t conform to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind; Romans 12:1-2.

Many are under the ill informed impression that life controlling issues are singularly the fact of induced chemicals or general bodily consumption. Let us begin considering mind altering substances such as alcohol/drugs of a prescriptive or non-prescriptive nature, whether they are used orally, intravenously, nasally or by osmosis they all end up interacting with the central nervous system thus evoking chemical fireworks in the brain. Our conscious realities are altered to one degree or another dependent upon the strength and dosage of the substance. Now, for whatever reason the extent and duration to which the substance is used, be it for physical/emotional pain, general discomfort, or a boatload of various reasons to many to mention, they may more than likely become either physically addicting and/or psychologically habitual. In many cases the physically addictive substance will in fact require medical intervention to discontinue usage.

The time of active usage of the substance illuminates the Kennon description above in that our thought life as well as our behavior life is given over to the nurturing of self in maintaining the altered state received from the substance. This “giving over” is often more clearly recognized by those closest to us in our relational interaction with them as well as our modified daily routines.
Comfort derived from and by worldly means has been the deceitful scheme of the enemy since time began, initiated to only pull us further from the eternal love, safety and comfort that only Jesus Christ is able to provide.  It is typical that our recognition of our unhealthy transformation to whatever degree, is only unfortunately realized after self induced harm, circumstance, loss or truthful confrontation from those around us.

Until next post, please consider the issue, meditate and comment.

 

May God Bless You With His Favor