Relationships: A Mess Worth Making...

  I’ve probably shared a part of this before, but when I was younger (a few years out of high school), I joined the USA mission’s organization “Mission Year” in Oakland California.  I have so many memories and growth experiences from that time, but something that will always stick with me is how much God changed my perspective on relationships.  I specifically remember the closing ceremony of the program where we all shared a testimony of how God had moved in us during the year.  I shared how when I joined the program I was pretty much “fundamentally against relationships”… which was pretty hilarious considering a large component of the ministry was building relationships with people around your serving city.  Anyway, during that year God began putting some major cracks in my armor of protection and I started shifting from someone who wanted only surface level connections with people, to someone who semi-desired more intimacy with people.
  Over the many years since then, God has continued to chip away at that armored exterior and through many ups…and many more downs… I’ve felt that desire for true community and intimacy with others, continually increase in me.  Sadly, my ability to connect with people in a mature and God-honoring manor hasn’t grown in an equally consistent manner.  As much as I want to be this amazing, grace-filled, encouraging and spirit-led friend….I struggle.  Not only that, but when I encounter the less righteous sides of others, my immediate reaction is to build up walls again…. To push them away or to remove myself from the equation.  Even in the midst of desiring real relationship, sometimes it seems so much easier to just give up and walk away.  It’s such a juxtaposition….a tension that I constantly live in.
  With all of this in mind, and some seriously struggling relationships that seem to be plaguing my life right now, I decided to read the book “Relationships: A Mess worth Making” (by Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp) as a reminder to myself as to why I should put in the effort and why God designed us to be relational beings.  From the moment I started reading the honest admissions of personal struggle in the first chapter, I was hooked.  Not only was I caught up by the fact that “God wants to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we would see our need for a relationship with Him as well as with others”, but also that “Every painful thing we experience in relationships is meant to remind us of our need for (God).  And that every good thing we experience is meant to be a metaphor of what we can only find in Him”.  I was also reminded that, “While we would like to avoid the mess and enjoy deep intimate community, God says that is in the very process of working through the mess that intimacy is found”.
  Beyond that, this book reminded me to stop looking at others people and their perceived faults and instead work on me.  The authors share a very valid truth that, “much of the disappointment and heartache that we experience is the result of our attempts to get something from relationships that we already have in Christ” and that it’s only “when I remember that Christ has given me everything I need to be the person that He has designed me to be, I am free to serve and love you.  When I know who I am, I am free to be humble, gentle, patient, forbearing, and loving as well as navigate the inevitable messiness of relationships”. 
  And finally, I was encouraged by the thought that, “though we are to be wise, we are not to fear the world in which God has placed us.  Yes, things will get messy.  But if you are humbled by the messiness of sin in your own life, yet confident in God’s grace to change you, you will not be afraid to get close to other sinners who need that same grace.  God will use the messiness you encounter in others to spur your own growth in the gospel”.  I needed to hear so much of this.  I needed to be comforted by the fact that I am not the only Christian in the world who struggles with these things.  And I need to be reminded that even though relationships are messy and they can sometimes take more effort than I want to give, they are also God’s vehicle to make us more like Him.   

In the 7 days in took me to read this book, I must have recommended it to at least as many people.  However, if you were not one of those people, I encourage you to check it out….it’s available on Kindle, nook, and regular old book!