God at the Center of Your Relationships

So, I’ve given some of my views of marriage. I failed to mention in that post how God should be at the center of every marriage, and instead of going and fixing that when I edited the post earlier, I thought….YAY! New post!

Marriage isn’t the only thing that God should be at the center of.  God should have His Almighty hand in all aspects of your relationships (all of them) not to mention every other aspect of your life.  So when you start dating, when ever that may be, I personally don’t think you should date until you are completely ready to be married…but hey. So when you start dating someone do you think to yourself any of these things,

Will this relationship glorify God?

Would God want me in this relationship?

Will God be able to be the center of this relationship?

?

Lot’s of teenagers date…I know because I’ve been in relationships.  I’ve shared in a few posts, mainly the page about me, that I’ve been hurt in relationships, specifically 2…so please, allow me to share what I’ve learned since being 15 and dating.  Along with not being ready for marriage, I am not ready for a serious relationship, or seriously dating someone.  What I am ready for is forming friendships with members of the opposite sex and learning what I want in a mate.  What I can handle is hanging out, maybe in a date like setting, with guys and learning what dating is like.  And I’m nearly 18.  I’m just not ready. No shame in that.

I’ve tried having a serious relationships and they didn’t work because of several reasons; 1 my obvious immaturity when it comes to dating (not that I’m saying I’m immature per say, only that I can not mentally handle the stress of a relationship); 2 the males obvious immaturity when it came to dating me; 3 lack of communication skills on both parts, ( amazingly, being able to discuss something rationally is really important. That and being honest about your fears and what you believe in); 4 trying at play marriage…if you’re above the age of 25 you completely understand that phrase, what I mean by play marriage is that you act married…it’s as if another person owns you, with out the commitment of marriage.  You forget all else to please this person….big mistake.  and 5 God never was the center.

In Galatians 5, Paul list the fruits of the Spirit…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness…If you have God in your life and you’re living His way, these are the “fruits” of your life, same thing with a relationship with Him at the center. All of these things come with growing maturity of faith, so that explains why I’m not mature enough to handle a serious commitment to another human being…I’m just now learning what it is to have a serious commitment to God. I was so concerned, not even a month ago, about getting someone to fall in love with me that I completely ignored my spiritual self and my own needs when it came to God, the number one being that I have a relationship with him.  I’ve never had time to fall in love with God, and if I’m not in love with Him, how could a relationship work, part of me is missing. Also notice specifically the fruits of patience and kindness…I can say that I don’t always have those traits when I communicate a point…like I said, all parties involved in my love life, no communication skills.  And when you play at marriage, the whole ownage thing really has a lot to do with jealousy and control, why do you need those in your life when you know that the fruits of your relationship are love, joy, peace, and faithfulness.  Why do you have to worry about any type of relationship, not just a dating one, when God’s in the middle and you have these wonderful gifts inside of it?

OK so I’ll can do a fruits of the Spirit blog later.  The point is, when God’s at the center of your relationships you’ve built a good foundation for a strong experience.  If God isn’t the center, well you end up heart broken and alone, wondering why you can’t find a decent person to share your life with, like I was and sometimes am when it comes to dating.  With out God at the center you set yourself up to be jaded.

One more thing…if you are allowing things like sex, or “fooling around” in your relationship, and you’re not married, it’s not God centered.  God can not, and will not surround Himself with sin.  And that’s what all of that ‘stuff’ is, sin.  If you are not married sexual anything will hinder your relationship, I know, trust me.  Dating is about getting to know someone, it’s about seeing if you could have a marriage with them…and you have to allow God at the center of every step of the journey.

I believe, 100%, if a relationship is God centered from the start, and you marry the person of the God centered relationship, there’s more of a chance of the marriage being God centered.  You’ve had practice with that person, you have placed God first for the whole relationship, you’ve formed a habit.  It’ll make, I hope, marriage just a smidgen easier, because it will be God blessed.  And who doesn’t want that?

There seems like there is so much more I could say about dating in general, but this post would just be never ending…so I’ll continue later on…:)

I seem to be, yet again, ranting. I’ll write to y’alls later!

~Amanda~

Nakedness

At my 16^th birthday party one of my very good friends and mentors blessed me with a devotional book entitled “My Utmost for His Highest,” written by Oswald Chambers (The Updated Edition). Now I have not exactly been faithful to reading this devotional, but every now and again I feel the need to reconnect with God so I pick it back up and turn to the current date.

My mother and I were reading, “My Utmost for His Highest,” devotion at the beginning of our “Porch Time.” On July 22 we read a devotional on Sanctification. Chambers asked “Am I willing and determined to hand over my simple naked self to God?”

That question suddenly became pertinent to me today as I sat on my porch alone and picked up a book, “Freedom from Fear, Overcoming Worry and Anxiety,” by Neil T. Anderson and Rich Miller. I turned the book open to the Foreword (Just started the book today J) and was struck immediately by the magnitude of how it began.

“But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” (Genesis 3:9-10 NIV)

Since the beginning of human sin we have been ashamed of our nakedness. We’ve been afraid that God would see us and our sin and hate us. We are scared of what it means to be naked in front of God. He’ll see it all, the burns and scars, wrinkles and age spots, and we’re afraid that He won’t see any good in us because when we are naked we can’t see the good. We so easily forget that God made us naked, already seeing everything we have to offer.

So we clothe ourselves, we hide from God (which is impossible to say the least). When we’re finally ready to let God into our lives, when the good news finally clicks and the enormity of being saved hits us, when it should be so easy to say “God, Here I Am! I’m a sinner, fix me!” the enormity of our sin also hits us, and it hurts, and we know that for God to “fix me,” it will hurt even more. So we let God come in and fix us a little, we give up some, but we are still scared for Him to venture further into our hearts and see what we know is there.

My mother explained it two ways to me.

Our hearts are like houses, and we allow God to fix up the front room so that He can come in and visit in the pretty, so that we can invite others into the clean, but we stop Him, as well as others from coming in farther than that, because we don’t want the worst seen. So when someone needs something to drink we run back to the kitchen and clean up a glass real quick to bring it back without anyone seeing the mess we’ve made. We’re so afraid of letting God open doors in our hearts and cleaning it all out. But my mother also said this, “When God’s reaching under a bed and pulling stuff out, it’ll hurt and you’ll be scared but He might just pull out a teddy bear, and you will have been afraid for nothing. But maybe He does pull out something bad, like that moldy, rotten, stinky, 3 month old pizza that you forgot about. It’s still going to hurt and you’ll still be scared, but if you don’t let Him pull it from under the bed and throw its nastiness away, it’ll just get moldier and more rotten; it’ll just smell worse with all the time you invest in hiding it. Think of how much better you’ll feel, how much prettier the room will be with it gone.”

Analogy numero dos; we are flowering plants. “How do think plants feel when we prune them Amanda? It can’t feel good. But look at how much prettier the plant is, a new bud grows in after the dead one is gone.” It’s the same way with us, God prunes us, He cuts away the dead parts, the ugly parts, the parts we don’t want to show people anyway, and then something prettier grows back.”

It’s humbling to see all of the dead, the moldy and rotten on yourself; it’s humbling to go to God with nothing but our nakedness, just ourselves.

“Am I willing to reduce myself down to simply “me”? Am I determined enough to strip myself of all that my friends think of me, and all that I think of myself? Am I willing and determined to hand over my simple naked self to God?” That is what Oswald Chambers says we must ask ourselves. He goes on to say that “Once I am, He (God) will immediately sanctify me completely.”

When Adam and Eve came to God in their nakedness, do you remember what He did? “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21 NIV)

~Amanda~

Cruelty

     This is a word that should have never needed to exist.  There should never have been, not even one time in the entirety of history, a need for the word cruel, or vindictive, or brutal, nasty, pitiless, hurtful, atrocious, wicked, evil, unkind, mean, spiteful, vile, malicious.  No person should have had to go through something that would merit the invention of these words to describe someone else. But it happened.  Look at how many, and there are more.   Do you realize what those words existing mean?  It means that one action can have you labeled, one, one action that you may not even think of.

      What gives us the right to be cruel?  What gives us the right to practise cruelty?  I ask this because dear friends of mine have been hurt, and I don’t know how it happened, or what happened, or what was said, but I do know that there was pain involved.  And at first I didn’t think of it, but now I realize…for those friends to feel the pain they felt, they had to have experienced some type of cruelty.

      What makes us, anyone, so wonderful that they have the right to degrade someone?  What?  Race?  Color?  Nationality?  Religion?  WHAT!?!  Daily people kill themselves because someone, or people are so cruel to them that they feel that everyone in this world must feel the same way.  Daily people turn to vises to deal with the cruelty they suffer.  Why should they have to? 

     Growing up I have heard that people, more specifically kids, are cruel.  I was one of the ones made fun of in elementary school–luckily I am one of the strong ones that can learn from it, and choose, now, to ignore it.  But what kind of excuse is that to a child facing Hell on Earth?  “Oh, you might as well get used to it, People ARE Cruel…”

    Even I can be cruel, we all can be, we all have been.  Isn’t that horrible, isn’t it horrible that I can look at myself and see that black mark?  How about you, really look pass your own fictitious purity and perfection and see where you have caused pain.  Maybe you haven’t, maybe you are really one of those people that despite everything, despite anger and jealousy, and annoyance and can honestly look at someone and not treat them unkindly.  Bless you if you are.  But if you have even said one unkind word, reflect on that.  Maybe you ruined someones day. Maybe you added to the pain of a lost soul.  Maybe you are the last straw before the drugs, the alcohol, the sex, or suicide invade someones life. 

    One cruel, one malicious, one unkind word is all it takes to break a person; to take the innocence from a child, to harm a pure soul.  Do you want to be the one to say that word?  Have you been the one to say that word?

     There are many words synonomus to cruelty, and thus many words to describe cruel people.  You and I have the choice to adopt one of these adjectives, or to take a word that means kind.  Choose.

~Amanda~