Hope For Today "Relationship"

God wants each of us to come to that place where we first identify with Him and acknowledge who we are in Christ instead of seeking to be propped up by someone else.

The power of another person’s abusive words or actions is not stronger than the power of God’s love. Even though feelings of shame are some of the most powerful we experience, God’s love goes deeper and is able to lift us above it all.

In the same way that God has a plan for each of our individual lives, God also has a plan for our lives collectively in communities and countries.

We all experience hard times.  Disappointments come and we are brokenhearted.  Difficulties pile up and seem to crush us.  As followers of Jesus we are not exempt from these kinds of moments. But God - two beautiful words. But God is with us to comfort and support us and to show us a good way through the challenges.

We can all feel pretty good about things when we are doing well or someone around us is doing well and our circumstances are okay but today we look at the kind of encouragement that is there for us through thick and thin, through our successes and our failures, through our times of well-being in relationships and when things are seemingly hopeless messed up.

We know that some friendships grow in closeness as two individuals come to a place where they realize they know some things about the other person but now desire to have a more intimate relationship so they move down one path together going forward. This is what we seek as we put Step 11 into practice in our lives. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.

The God who knew us before we were even formed in our mother’s womb watches over us and draws us to Himself.  The choice of coming close to God rests with us. In Step 11 we purpose to improve our conscious contact with God so we can understand more about God and how He interacts with us. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Nothing takes more sensitivity and care than dealing with people with whom we have had painful experiences.  It doesn’t matter if it’s close family members or acquaintances, whether the injury happened a decade ago or ten minutes ago, we need to take great care and walk with humility as we work towards reconciliation. That’s the wisdom we are given in Step 9.

Each day is a new opportunity to respond to God’s call to live in humility, desire reconciliation in relationships, walk in forgiveness and focus on cleaning our side of the street. Honesty, balance, and realism are essential tools to keep at hand when we seek the way of peace in all our relationships.  At some point we will all need to make amends to someone and we need to do so with grace and kindness.  This is the invitation of Step 9. We made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

God’s heart is for us to enjoy loving and caring relationships with others.  We have much to learn in this area.  For a long time we’ve blamed others for the way they treated us.  However, we have not been mindful of how our behaviour harmed others.  Transformation in our lives only comes when our words and actions conform to the principles contained in God's word. Step Eight: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Little by little as we walk with God and work at applying new spiritual principles to our journey, we gain new information about ourselves and how we relate to other people. As we prayerfully review our lives with God, He will reveal where we have caused harm, where we might owe someone some form of amends, and teach us how we can live in new ways in relationship with others. This is the principle behind Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

God is willing, and more than able, to remove all our defects of character if we humbly ask Him.  However, we cannot expect to experience God’s transforming power in our lives if we remain proud and unwilling to admit that we are helpless apart from him.  If we decide what we think needs to go and tell God how we expect Him to act, God will simply allow us to go forward and find out what happens when we base our life on our own limited understanding. This is not the attitude we are invited to in Step 7 when we say:  We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.