RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

This should be the soul aim of our lives, and everything else will fall into place. God has created us in His image, and he has created us to be in relationship with him. That’s what life’s all about, and that’s the only way we’ll find fulfillment in life. If our relationship with God is healthy then our relationships with others (friends, family, loved ones) are healthy also. The reverse is true also of course, and if we let our relationship with God suffer, relationships with those around us suffer also.
Relationships are an integral part of our lives, and maintaining good relationships is a big part of our daily lives. Indeed as we look at creation, God created mankind to be in close relationship with fellow man, and indeed with God himself. And until sin entered the world, relationships with God and fellow man existed in perfect harmony. But since man’s fall into sin, the breakdown of these relationships has been a big part of the fall of mankind.
So then, following Jesus example, surely a major part of our lives today as Christians should be that of developing, maintaining and restoring relationships with fellow mankind. This may take many forms : reaching out in love, offering the hand of friendship or forgiveness, helping brothers in their time of need. Often this will involve laying aside self in order to put others first, and this is where the difficulty comes. But in Jesus Christ we have the perfect role model, and as we see the priority He gave to maintaining His relationship with God the Father, and how that transpired into His boundary-breaking relationships with fellow man, that should show us how to go about it today.Heavenly Father, help me to remain close to you and to cut out the sin that breaks and separates my closeness to you. Help me to develop characteristics that will enable me to be like Christ in the relationships I have in this life. In the busyness and whirlwind pace of life, enable me to keep you at the center, making my relationship to you that I entered by the blood of your Son, and seek to maintain by your Spirit, the priority of my life. And by this I pray that the relationships I have with others daily would develop and deepen as I grow closer to you.