Insight #27

FUNCTIONING IN THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP

Last week we saw how to assess your relationships and before that we learnt to always define our relationships. This week we’re moving on to the next step. After you’ve defined a relationship and you assess it on a regular basis, and you’re convinced that the relationship is both beneficial and a righteous one, then you need to move on to the next step.

The step we’re examining today has to do with learning to function the right way in any given relationship; what is expected of you, what isn’t expected of you, what isn’t expected of you and what you should expect from certain relationships, depending on how close you are, In this study, you’ll basically learn the limits you should place on every relationship. This step is crucial because it will help you to maintain your relationships for as long as necessary. This step is as follows

(i) You must take interest in your friend’s life and he/she is expected to take an interest in yours. Like we saw in our last study, you should avoid parasitic relationships. Applying this to the point we’re considering now, you must not continue any friendship in which your friend doesn’t concern himself with your affairs, by looking out for you, making sure you keep on the right path. At the same time, you shpuld do the same for your friends. Never do anything that will cause any sort of damage (whether physical, emotional, and financial) to your friend and you are also allowed to expect the same from your friends.

(ii) Accept your friends for the way they are, but love them too much to leave them the way they are. This goes against the popular saying that goes, “Love your friends the way they are”. This isn’t exactly bad, but it’s not good enough. Now, what do I mean when I say, “Love them too much to leave them the way they are” I mean if you notice any attitude, negative habits, tendencies, behaviours, words and sometimes, actions that may lead them to disaster later on in life, or get them in some sort of trouble as they go on. If you notice any of such, then you need to advice your friend with caution care, understanding and love, not in a derogatory manner; don’t make them feel bad about themselves. In the same vein, you should expect them to be able to do the same for you. Let me take the time to tell you that any “close” friend of yours that never calls you to order when you’re doing something wrong isn’t a good friend at all. Good friends should encourage you as well as correct you. The same goes for you; you should expect your friend to advice you and point out all the negative attitudes and habits they see in you too. After doing this, both of you should prayerfully and patiently work on yourselves and on each other in order to become better people. In case of a serious problem, you should both see your pastor.

(iii) Communication: this has always been a major issue in most relationships now, you need to understand that its not everyone you have to tell your deep secrets. Make sure that its only those close to you that know much about you. Note that not everyone must know every detail about you. Learning to know when to withhold info about yourself and when to release it is extremely important. We’ll look into this in detail in our upcoming study. Remember to put into action all that you’ve seen in this study. God bless you.

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Insight #26

This week, we’re continuing our series on relationships. Last week, we were introduced to the concepts of relationships and the difference between associations and friendships. We learnt that we must define every relationship that we’re in so as to properly direct our focus, attention and time.

The second thing we must do with our relationships is to assess them. This step applies to both your friendships and associations. Let’s look at this in greater detail. We all know looks can be deceiving as well as the fact that people change overtime, it is necessary to make sure that your relationships are still affecting you the right way consistently. Consider this, you meet someone who seems nice, morally upright and shares the same interests and values as you, and you immediately become friends with such a person but deep down the person was pretending all the while or maybe got influenced negatively down the road. By assessing your relationships, you’ll be able t notice such negative traits and changes in your friend early enough for you to warn him and try helping him. Whereas if you don’t check on your relationships from time to time, you’ll end up imbibing some of those negative traits yourself. Don’t forget that you need to assess your relationships from time to time to know if a certain relationship is still beneficial to you or not.

What to do

(i) You must ascertain that you’re not the only one giving out your energy and time.

For example, if you have a friend who isn’t always available for you when you need him, but you’re always there for him when he needs you either in your academics, finances, heath wise and spiritually. Such a relationship is parasitic in nature and will only waste you and lead to frustration as time goes on.

(ii) You must make sure that you’re becoming a better person as a result of a relationship

How do you do this? You may wonder, well its easy, first you need to sit down and think back. Since that relationship began, have you become a better person as a result of that relationship or have you reduced in any area of your life? Have you become more God-fearing, Obedient or respectful? Have your values gotten stronger or not?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, then you have to review such a relationship or if necessary, end the relationship.

(iii) You must review what you talk about and what you do with friends from time to time.

Check the content of your conversations with friends. Is it clean, free of impure language and free of gossip? I’m sure we all know the danger of gossip and backbiting. You must make sure that you are not a partaker of gossip. Cut off any friend that constantly brings gossip to you. Also you need to check your activities. What do you spend time doing with your friends? Make sure there aren’t any sinful activities such as drinking, chasing girls/boys, and smoking, wild partying and so on. If you find yourself in such a relationship, cut off from it immediately because it will ultimately lead to destruction.

Now let’s take a look at some disadvantages of not assessing your relationships on a regular basis.

(i) Bad friends will take advantage of you by enjoying in areas where they aren’t contributing to your life.

(ii) When you’re being affected by wrong friendships, it will be extremely difficult to trace where the problem originated from.

(iii) You will unknowingly pick up wrong habits that will ruin you later on

(iv) You will keep some friends who are out to see your failure.

There are more disadvantages of not assessing your relationships but this is enough for now. Remember to be a doer and not just a hearer. I’ll advice you to get a notebook in which you assess your various relationships in. GOD BLESS YOU.

PRAYER; Dear father, give me the grace and wisdom to assess my relationships wisely and Lord, every area where bad friends have taken advantage of me or done damage to me, I ask that you bring about a restoration in Jesus name. Amen

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Insight #25

RULES FOR RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships can be broken down into two aspects which are; friendships and associations. A lot of people get these two mixed up but you shouldn’t. Associations with people could arise due to numerous reasons such as neighbours, classmates, mutual friends and so on but you must realise that certain associations must never cross the line. We’ll discuss this in detail as we move on.

Friendships are a higher step from associations. I want you to pay close attention to this because this is where a lot of people have gone into miserable and unprofitable relationships. A friendship should never “just happen”. Friendships must be carefully though through and prayed about. Never have, or call anyone your friend until you’re sure you want to be friends with them. You’ll see why as we move on.

Now, the first thing you must do in any relationship is to DEFINE it. That means you consciously decide whether the other person involved is a friend or just an association. This may seem trivial, but one of the worst things you can do is to have undefined relationships in your life. They will rob you of your time and energy and also bring you lots of pain. It doesn’t stop there though, if you decide someone should be your friend, and then you decide how close you’ll be to them and how valuable the friendship will be to you.

The advantage of defining your relationships is that you will be able to determine how much energy you spend on each friend, how much of your time or resources you can give to each friend, and whose words of advice, correction or encouragement will mean more to you. Before we continue, there are a few points I would like you to consider.

(I) Your friends or associations contribute to the outcome of your life. Let’s look at Proverbs 13:20;

20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. (KJV)

(II) Your friends or associations determine if you’ll increase or decrease in every area of your life. Therefore they can affect your success.

(III) The kind of friends you keep will eventually form your character. If you want to have a sound character, look for someone with a sound character to befriend, just as we read in the scripture above.

(IV) Everyone needs friends, no one is an island. There are people God has purposed to be your friends.

Secondly, never have friends that are immoral or ungodly, no matter what. Even if you have been classmates since you were in nursery school. This doesn’t mean that you wont share the gospel with them, it just means that you don’t “hang out” them or spend unnecessary time with them. The reason for this is simple, because of their negative or wayward lifestyles, a lot of bad behaviours and negative tendencies are in them. And the truth is those things could enter into your life if you aren’t careful

Join us next week as we continue our series on relationships. Also if you have any bad friends or associations that affect you negatively, especially by wasting your time and energy, you must withdraw from such relationships and ask God to remove anything that might have come into your life as a result of those relationships.

PRAYER: Dear father please help me to pick the right friends and associate with those who will bring blessings into my life and disconnect me from any wrong relationship I’m in Jesus name Amen.

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Insight # 24

DEALING CORRECTLY WITH PERSECUTION

This week, were going to discuss something that every Christian will go through at one point or the other in their lives. This is the issue of persecution. Contrary to popular opinion, persecution isn’t just when someone is faced with death threats or toured because of Christ; it could also be discrimination at school, maltreatment and mockery. So today, we’re going to look at hoe God wants us to handle persecution and the reward that will come our way as a result.

As we sae above, persecution isn’t always as extreme as most of us think, no one has to put a gun to your forehead before we can say that were being persecuted. Persecution comes our way in different forms. For example, in school people might mock you or even laugh at you when you do the right thing or when you stand by your values. If everyone cheats in class and you report it to your teacher, if your classmates then begin to abuse you verbally, that’s persecution too. Based on these things, lets define persecution as, “The process of harassing or acting unfairly to towards someone as a result of their religious beliefs. Based on this definition, I’m sure by now; you’ll have seen that everyone goes through persecution at one point or the other.

Now that we have seen that we all go through persecution, let’s take a look at how we should handle it. Before we move on, I’d like to point out that it is necessary to make sure that you’re not going through harassment or unfair treatment because of something wrong you did (1 Peter 5:15) Always make sure that it’s because of your faith that you’re receiving that kind if treatment. If not, find out what you did wrong and rectify it. And if you’re being harassed for no reason you should report to authority.

(i) God wants us to be happy when we go through persecution

Let’s look at 1Peter 4:13-14

1 Peter 4:13-14 (New Living Translation)

¹³ Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.

¹⁴ So be happy when you are insulted for being a Christian,^[a] for then the glorious Spirit of God^[b]rests upon you.^[c]

Here God tells us to be happy when people insult us for being Christians because then, God’s spirit rests on you and you’ll also become partners with Christ in glory because or those experiences. Please note that if you go through persecution with bitterness and anger in your heart then you’re robbing yourself.

(ii) God wants you to stand firm and be strong in the face of persecution

Take a look at 1Peter 5:9

1 Peter 5:9 (New Living Translation)

⁹ Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters^[a] all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are.

Here, we’re told to stand firm in our faith. Don’t be discouraged because no matter what it is that you might be going through, another Christian somewhere has, or is going through the same thing or even worse than what you’re going through, so you don’t have any excuse for giving up. Also if you stand firm, God has promised to strengthen you, restore and support you through your time of hardship.

(iii) God wants you to pray for those who persecute you.

Take a look at Matt 5:14 and Rom 12:14

You must always remember that God loves the people who persecute you as much as everyone else and he wants them to be saved. Instead of cursing them and being bitter, pray that they will someday come to the light of God’s word. Just like Jesus and Stephen did when they we’re being persecuted as well.

So, what exactly does God promise us? Let’s take a look at Matt 5:11

Matthew 5:11 (New Living Translation)

¹¹ “God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you^[a] and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers.

Here Jesus tells us that great blessings await us in heaven when we go through persecution faithfully. Also when you’re persecuted and you go through it with the right attitude, God’s spirit rests on us and guides us in our daily lives. So make sure you endure and stay faithful till the VERY end. GOD BLESS YOU.