Law of Relationships #2 of 4

You reap what you sow. Galatians 6:7 says, Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. This one is all over scripture. We've all heard the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31), treat others like you want to be treated. But rarely are we told the reason. Growing up, I always thought it was just one of those “must do because it's the right thing” things.

But the truth is, even from a selfish point-of-view, we want to do this. Because we reap what we sow. People will treat us the way we treat them. This concept is actually getting a little traction in the culture with the phrase, “Pay it forward.” Or how about the bumper sticker I've seen so often, “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” Or to put it more bluntly, “What goes around comes around.” See, even the world has figured this one out.

So what about when I sow kindness and mercy and people give me crap? What about when I'm nice and people are still jerks to me? Huh? What about that?!? Wow, then you're very lucky. Because then, God makes up the difference, because you're being like him. He will be kind and merciful and gentle and understanding to you. He will “pay it forward” to you. And that's way better than any person could ever do anyway.

And if you're really lucky, he'll pay you in currency of intimacy with him. There are no greater riches.

Law of Relationships #1 of 4

The first law (or principle) of relationships that God has woven throughout the fabric of the universe involves the very first relationship we ever had – the one with our parents. “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16) This one is so important it made the Ten Commandments. And it's the first commandment with an explicit blessing (Ephesians 6:2).

In whatever area you honor your parents in, you will be blessed – it will go well with you. That's a promise from God. But the reverse is also true – in whatever area you do not honor your parents in, it will not go well with you.

There's no age limit given in the commandment. Even as an adult living on our own, there's still a blessing for honoring our parents. We can still make our own decisions. But we should listen to them, and prayerfully consider what they say, even if we think they don't know what they're talking about. Just because they're not experts, or even knowledgeable, about the domain they're giving us advice about, doesn't mean it's not from God. God often speaks through parents, especially godly ones, even in stuff they know nothing about. The Holy Spirit is giving us wisdom through them – it will go well with us if we listen, and it will not go well with us if we don't. Ask God how to apply what they've said.

What if they're abusive? We don't have to submit ourselves to unsafe situations. We can set healthy boundaries, and they don't have to like them. Just because they accuse us of being dishonoring doesn't mean we are. But there are healthy boundaries within which we can honor our parents, whether they deserve that honor or not. In an abusive situation, please ask a Christian counselor and your Pastor to help you set healthy boundaries.

Judgements we hold in our hearts about our parents – this is the most common form of dishonoring our parents. We need to release ourselves from that judgement by forgiving them – accepting that they are not the evil they did to us. We can acknowledge that they did evil to us, whether they do or not. But we release them from owing us anything – we claim Jesus' sufferings as payment in full for the wrong they did against us.

See my previous posts about forgiveness for help with this very difficult task.

    http://www.davewernli.com/2014/09/the-good-guy-and-bad-guy-chairs.html

    http://www.davewernli.com/2014/09/getting-out-of-that-chair.html

    http://www.davewernli.com/2014/10/re-profiling.html

God's Physics of Relationships

The laws of God are like gravity. They exist and operate whether we believe in them or not. I'm using the word “law” here like in physics – principles we observe operating universally. God set up these laws to bless us. For example, airplanes, gymnastics, weather and communication satellites – all of these blessings come from understanding the law of gravity and using it properly.

But if we say, “I don't believe in gravity, so I'm going to jump off my roof and fly,” I daresay we are in for a rude awakening and an abrupt landing! Gravity still operates as God designed it whether we believe in it on not. “Gee, that was dumb,” we would say to ourselves as we hobble around the next few weeks on crutches. We injure ourselves if we try to live in opposition to God's law of gravity.

God's principles apply to the saved and unsaved alike. Both saved and unsaved can be blessed by air travel or an around-the-world phone call. Both saved and unsaved alike will be injured if they jump off their garage. Hobble, hobble.

So many of us today, even Christians, hobble through our injured relationships because we don't understand relationship principles, as trustworthy and universal as physical laws, that God wove into the fabric of the universe to bless us. When we live in opposition to them out of ignorance or outright willful sin, we injure ourselves, saved or unsaved. But when we live in accordance with them, that area of our life will be blessed, saved or unsaved.

So these next few blog posts will be fun – stayed tuned as we go through God's 4 laws of relationships. You might find it explains a lot. :)

I Like Winning Banners

[Author's Note: I've repeated the following post several times. That's because I think it's so important that we realize the intimacy Jesus wants with us. It's really foundational to what I've trying to say and do with this blog.]

In Song of Solomon 6:4, the Lover (Jesus) calls his Beloved (you and me), “majestic as troops with banners.” Armies carry banners to celebrate battles they've won, and to show off to any potential future adversaries how BA they are.

In the next verse, Song of Songs 6:5, the Lover (Jesus) says to his Beloved (you and me), “Turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me.” The Lover is saying to his Beloved, “Don't look at me like that – the love in your eyes for me is overwhelming me with emotion and I might lose it,” while he smiles and looks away, so she can't see he's blushing. Jesus is blushing!

When you don't feel like you're winning at all, when life has the better of you, when you're sure you're going down for the last time, when you can't feel His presence, but you still choose His ways and choose to trust Him instead of give place to fear and anxiety – in those times when you felt Nothing but chose Him anyway, He felt Everything! You just won a majestic banner, and He blushed.

I like winning banners. Out of His overwhelmingly great love for us, He puts us in those situations where we feel overwhelmed and don't feel Him at all. So we can win a banner. So we can choose to trust Him instead of dwelling in fear, out of our love for Him, and it makes Him blush!

On that Day when we finally see him face-to-face, the walls of our mansion in Heaven will be decorated with the banners we won in this life in those moments when we trusted Him instead of ourselves or something else. Wow.

Shame vs Guilt

Guilt, or conviction, is what the Holy Spirit gives us, because he loves us, when we do something wrong. He's trying to correct our behavior that (1) is self-destructive, and (2) interferes in our relationship with him. The message of guilt is, “I did something wrong.”

Shame, on the other hand, is not from God, but rather is Satan's perversion of godly guilt. Shame is the belief that I am uniquely and fatally flawed. The message of shame is, “I am something wrong.” That's the “flawed” part. In addition are the “uniquely” and “fatally” adjectives of shame:

• “I am uniquely flawed.” No one is as bad as me. I am the only one with this problem.
• “I am fatally flawed.” I can't be fixed. My flawed-ness is permanent.

Shame holds so many Christian's in prison, keeping them from living out their true identity, or often even knowing it. But each of shame's three lies described above get smashed to pieces by the Word of God:

• I'm not something wrong. I was made in God's own image (Genesis 1:27). I have been made a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and God loves me apart from what I do (Ephesians 1:3-14).
• I'm not uniquely flawed; I'm not the only one like this. No temptation has seized me but that which is common to mankind (1 Corinthians 10:13).
• I am not fatally flawed. Jesus' blood is bigger and stronger than any and all of my sin, and by his stripes I have been healed (Isaiah 53:5, Romans 6:10, Hebrews 9:28, 1 Peter 3:18).

So who are you going to believe?

Re-Profiling

Forgiveness can be really hard. Especially when you've truly been grievously and unfairly wronged. Especially when the perp is unrepentant. But it's so important, because our unforgiveness keeps us in prison, not the other person.

It's a process, not a single event. It can be a long process, one that we keep going back to – forgiving again and again – layer after layer – going deeper and deeper.

One exercise that can significantly help us along in this process is re-profiling the person. No single person is wholly evil – only Satan and his demons have that distinction. So there is something good about the person. Rack your brain and find those things. If you just can't, ask the Holy Spirit; he'll tell you. Then write it down.

The goal here is to write down how God sees the other person, which is not necessarily how they are behaving right now, but how he made them to be. So then when we fall into bitterness, we go back and read our re-profile of them. Read it out loud – let your ears hear your mouth say it. It's powerful.

Then you start thinking of the other person in terms of how God made them, versus what they've done. Because they are not the evil they did to you. Wrapping our mind and heart around that last sentence is the essence of forgiveness.

Re-profiling makes this much easier, and it is very freeing. Try it!

Fear, The Great Identity Stealer

I find, in my own life and in the lives of others I talk to, there's one thing, more than anything else, that keeps us from living out who we really are. Fear, The Great Identity Stealer.

What if I try and it doesn't work? What if I fail? Most of us have been raised with such a performance orientation that we're deceived into thinking that failure's bad. But failure is not sin. And in the Kingdom of God, not only is it a prerequisite, it has another name – Experience.

God has a track record of calling people to things bigger than themselves that are totally impossible and won't work, at least not by human standards or human effort alone.

• A guy who stutters, Moses, to talk one-on-one to the most powerful leader in the world and demand he release a million slaves.
• A cowering farmer (Gideon) to be a warrior and deliver Israel.
• A shepherd boy, David, to be king of Israel.
• A peasant girl (Mary) to be the mother of the Messiah.
• An uneducated fisherman, Peter, to be the apostle to the Jews, who respected learning and education.
• An educated Pharisee, Paul, who hated Christianity and was trying to destroy it, to be the apostle to the Gentiles (who couldn't care less about the Jewish law), and to write more books in the New Testament than any other writer.
• Me, a software engineer of 25+ years, to write a book about emotions (Mixed Emotions), and transition to a Christian author and speaker.
• You, to do that thing that makes your heart leap.

I love the stories, like Moses and Gideon, where people argue with God about their calling. God never disagrees with them about their excuses; he just totally ignores them. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I will be with you.” Translation: “Come on, it'll be fun. You'll like it. Eventually.” And suddenly the impossible works out.

See, God's called you to do something you can't do without him because he wants to partner with you to get it done. So if God's our partner, what are we afraid of?

When I wrote my book, Mixed Emotions, I was tremendously afraid it would be a flop. I didn't want to risk being a failure. But then I thought, you know, I know what it looks like if I don't do this. I've been doing that for 25 years. But I don't know what it looks like if I do try this. And there's only one way to find out. So I followed my heart and took the leap, and we'll see where it goes. I'm learning by successes and failures along the way what works and what doesn't. I'm still finding out what it looks like. But I'm loving the adventure.

How about you? What makes your heart leap? If you were, theoretically, to do that thing, what would the first step be? Think it out, plan it out, and then take the leap. Try it. See what it looks like. If it fails, learn from the experience and try again, wiser this time. The Lord your God is with you.

Offense, The Great Energy Stealer

There's a great book by John Bevere called The Bait of Satan about offense. Allowing ourselves to be offended at other people is The Great Energy Stealer. I'm not talking about disagreeing or being angry with people – I'm talking about being offended at people. You know the difference. We've all felt it.

It takes so much energy to stay offended. God made us very capable people, so we can do pretty much anything we put our mind to. So if we decide to stay offended, we certainly can. But that's not what God designed us for, so it's exhausting.

All that energy could have been put into being who we were created by God to be, but being offended steals it. And it blinds our mind so all we can see is red. Here's a litmus test: If we can't pray blessing on the other person, we're offended.

So let's disagree with others without being offended by them. We do that by praying to God, confessing our sin of offense to him (it doesn't matter whether the other person sinned or not, or how wrong they are), and asking him to take our offense. And then let it go by praying blessing on the other person. You'll be amazed at how much lighter you feel, and how much extra energy you have.

Reaction, The Great Authority Stealer

As Christians, we know revenge is wrong. We quote Romans 12:9, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (which is Paul quoting Deuteronomy 32:35). We don't think of our reactions as revenge. But many times, when we have an ungodly reaction to something, we're really taking revenge, punishing the other person with our wrath.

Reaction, revenge, striking back, whatever you want to call it, is The Great Authority Stealer. It cements us as the Victim, and the other person as the Perpetrator. In the ungodly relationship between Victim and Perp, who has the power, the authority? The Perp!

But that is not God's plan for us. As the Bible says in Hebrew 6:9, “I am confident of better things in your case.” We can express emotion, as long as we also exercise godly self-control. “In your anger do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). Here's a free hint: Use “I feel...” statements rather than “You did...” statements.

An ungodly reaction comes from a lack of trust in God. When we trust God, and the first word out of our mouth is praise to him in that circumstance (and y'all know that circumstance in your own life), we retain our Authority that Jesus gave us through His blood to speak life into that situation, and to the other person.

And we make Satan stub his toe. Let's make that bugger hobble on crutches!

Intimacy Forever

Most religions' version of heaven promises some form of eternal pleasure. Most are some form of self-centered pleasure. One world religion even promises 70 virgins. Not sure that's heaven for the virgins. Subtle clues of a man-made religion. Another promises being god of your own world.

But Christianity is different. Eternal pleasure, yes, but the pleasure is Jesus. Spending time with him, seeing him face-to-face. Eternal intimacy, relationship unhindered, with the Father. Forever.

The really mind-blowing thing is God designed it so it's heaven for Him, too. Whoa, now that's a brainful!

A Sloppy Wet Kiss

There's a song by Jesus Culture called How He Loves that has the best line in a worship song ever. Of. All. Time.

Heaven meets Earth like a sloppy wet kiss

Sometimes we have such a wrong view of God. He is neither a harsh task-master opposed to fun nor a kindly grandfather who's nice but completely irrelevant.

He's a passionate lover-king, who could do anything he wants at anytime, but doesn't do anything without partnering with us. Such is his deep, lover-passion for living life with us. Totally awesome.

Duty vs Pleasure

I've heard people talk about our Christian duty – to live holy lives, to share our faith, etc. And we should live holy lives and share our faith and all that. But out of some sense of “Christian duty”? I think that's the wrong paradigm. Duty is often a synonym for drudgery.

Think of it this way. It's a husband's duty to make love to his wife, but he seldom thinks of it as duty. It's something he looks forward to, because he loves his wife and it's way fun.

We should have the same mindset about living a Christian life, sharing our faith, etc. And if we really knew Jesus as our soul-lover we would. Our lover-king.

Living holy is So. Much. Fun. And sharing our faith – if we really knew God, we'd love it. The Holy Spirit shows up with words-of-knowledge for the other person, and maybe we get to pray for physical or emotional healing or something. I mean, how cool is it to do miracles, right?

Doing things out of lover-pleasure beats duty any day of the week.

Fear vs Adventure

Yesterday I talked about softly worshipping out loud wherever we find ourselves, by giving soft voice to the worship song already going through our head anyway.

I bet most readers had the same initial reaction to that idea: Fear. Would we be afraid to do that? I'd wager that is most people's initial reaction.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty fed up with Fear right now. Like, it is officially off my Christmas card list. Fear is the great paralyzer. Even more than Judgment, which we talked about last week, Fear steals who we really are. And personally, I'm sick and tired of being pushed around by it. So I'm kicking Fear in the head. Whenever I realize I'm afraid, and Fear is the main reason I'm not doing what otherwise seems like a good idea, especially if it seems like a God-idea, I'm doing it anyway. I'm get excited to see what adventure God brings me.

So I'm trying to start something here. Let's start quietly singing the worship song going through our head. If there's not one going through your head, then don't worry about it. But if there is, give it voice. Let's see where God takes us. Send me email or post a comment and let me know what happens.

My “What If...”

What if we all worshiped all day long? No really. Many of us have a worship song going through our heads all day long. What if we let that song come out? What if we gave it voice? Just a little bit, out loud, but not loud, just softly. Not obnoxiously singing in public, but quietly, just a whisper, so only someone next to us could hear it?

It would change the atmosphere everywhere we went. The likes of Letterman and Seinfeld would joke about bumping into these quiet singers everywhere they went, and how annoying they are when you're trying to have a bad day.

It would change the atmosphere everywhere we went. And Christians would get a reputation in the society as worshipers instead of judgers. How awesome would that be?

Don't do this if you don't have a song in your head; that would just be legalistic. Don't force it. But if you happen to have a song in your head while you're out somewhere, just let it out. Let it have quiet voice. Let's start something here. Let's see what happens.