Today we are going to begin a series looking at the relationship principles taught to us and modeled for by Jesus. . Whether it was his family, his disciples, and the crowds who loved him or the critics who opposed him, Jesus was an expert in relationships and he shows us the way God wants us to relate to one another. As we begin this study, I want to be clear that the principles we are going to look at are not just for husbands and wives, or parents and children, the principles we are going to look at are ones that can improve every relationship in our lives. From family to friends, from co-workers to our church family, all of our relationships can be strengthened if we will be willing to put into practice these basic principles. As part of this series we are offering small groups that we hope you will take part in because the best way to learn about strengthening relationships is in relationship with one another where together we can not only dig deeper into the teaching and example of Jesus, but where together we can begin to live out these principles.
The reason we are taking six weeks to look at relationship building is because the most important thing in our lives is not our money, it is not our job or career, it’s not even the mission and ministry we do in Jesus name, the most important thing in our lives are the relationships which make up our lives. We were not created to live in isolation. After God created Adam he said, it’s not good for man to be alone and so God created Eve. We were created to be in relationship with one another and with God, so at our core we are relational beings – we were created for relationship. The first principle in building strong relationships, therefore, is to simply understand that there is nothing more important in our lives than these relationships. It’s important to see the value of relationships because if they are not our top priority, we will invest the time and energy needed to strengthening them. Let’s face it, relationships are hard work and if we don’t see the value of them in our lives, if we don’t see how fundamental they are to who we are, we will never take the time and work hard at strengthening them. So the first relationship principle is to place the highest value on our relationships, and Jesus makes this clear to us in Mark 12.
In the Old Testament there are over 600 laws that the Jewish people were to follow each and every day, and there were constant conversations among the Jewish leaders as to which of these laws were the most important ones to follow. When Jesus was asked which of all the laws was the first, or the most important, he said, Mark 12:29-30. Notice that what Jesus says here is that the most important thing in our lives is relationships, our relationship with God and others. We are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. The most important thing in our lives is our relationships, which mean they need to be our top priority.
Now let me ask the tough question: Do we value our relationships over everything else? Is our top priority working on the relationship we have with our spouse, and parents, and children, and friends, coworkers, neighbors and even strangers? Are we investing our time and energy into our relationship with God? If you aren’t sure how to answer these questions, reflect for a moment on where you spend the bulk of your time and money. The priority of our lives is usually seen in how we spend our time and our money – so where do we spend the bulk of our time? How many hours do we spend watching tv compared to talking to our spouse, children or parents? How much money do we spend on ourselves compared to the money we spend helping our friends, neighbors, or family members who are in need. How and where we spend our time and money can reveal the priorities of our lives.
At a conference this week I heard Bishop Schnase tell a story about meeting a shuttle driver at an airport. It was late on the weekend and the bishop was the only one on the shuttle to the hotel and so he struck up a conversations with the driver and found that the driver was actually a college professor who was driving the shuttle on weekends because his brother had died and he was working a second job to help raise money to send his brothers children to college. That is a commitment to relationship – he was investing his time and money into his nieces and nephews. Do the choices we make reflect our commitment to God and others?
As we look at the life of Jesus what we see is that he was constantly making choices that reflected his commitment to relationships. What’s the first thing Jesus would often do early in the morning? Look at Mark 1:35. While everyone was searching for Jesus wondering where he was, Jesus was off in a quiet place keeping strong his relationship with God. Now if Jesus, who was constantly and intimately connect to God, needed to take time to keep his relationship with God strong through prayer, how much more do we need to invest time and energy into our relationship with God? Jesus shows us that not only is our relationship with God to be a priority, but building relationships with others must also be a priority. Again and again in the gospels we see examples of Jesus choosing relationship over mission, and ministry, over his schedule and agenda, and over the expectation of others.
In Mark 10 we find Jesus teaching the crowds and in the midst of this important work people were bringing little children to Jesus asking him to bless them. While the disciples tried to keep the children away from Jesus because they would distract him from his work, Jesus said, “no, let the little children come to me, do not stop them.” Jesus chose to reach out to the children – he chose to establish a relationship with children over the expectations and even criticism of others. Nothing was more important than relationship.
In Mark 5 we again find Jesus choosing relationship over ministry. One of the Jewish leaders comes to Jesus and asks him to come to his home to heal his daughter. As Jesus is on his way, a woman reaches out to touch the hem of Jesus robe with the hopes of being healed herself. As the woman touches Jesus she is healed and Jesus knows that someone has touched him and received power. Now Jesus could have just kept going, but he didn’t. He stops and asks “who touched me?” Jesus doesn’t want to scold the woman – he wants to deepen his relationship with her by reaching out to heal her emotionally and spiritually.
It’s important to understand that the illness this woman has suffered with for 10 years has made her unclean – which means that for 10 years she has not been able to be an active part of her family, her church or her community. Her illness has literally cut her off from relationships with God and others so the words Jesus chooses to speak to her when she comes forward are powerful because they are words which establish relationship. Jesus says to her, “daughter, your faith has made you well.” Of all the words Jesus could have used to address this woman he chose daughter because it was a word that told her she was back into a relationships with God. She was once again a daughter of Abraham. It was also a word that reminded her she was part of a family, maybe even had a daughter herself. The use of the word daughter shows us the importance and the value Jesus places on relationship. He not only stops to build a relationship with this woman, but his healing helps restore her relationships with others.
Jesus valued relationships over everything else. Jesus made his relationship with God a priority, and the choices he made in life show us the value Jesus placed on his relationships with others. If we want to grow stronger in our relationships, then we need to make them the priority of our life and we need to start with our relationship with God. It is our relationship with God which builds a foundation on which all our other relationships are developed, so we need to take Jesus seriously when he says that we are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. Loving God with all our heart means loving God with all our emotions. Loving God with our soul means loving God with the very breath and passion and personality of our lives. Loving God with all our mind means using our intellect to learn more about God’s character and will, and loving God with our strength means living out God’s love in the world today. The best example of a person who did all of this and strived for this kind of loving relationship with God as King David.
The psalms are full of David living out his love for God and they model for us the kind of relationship we can have with God. We see David loving God with all his heart
Psalm 51:1: David cries out to God for mercy:
Psalm 18:1: David cries out to God in love and praise and joy
David loves God with all his soul as he shares with God all his passions and desires, all his hopes and dreams look at Psalm 38:9.
David loves God with all his mind as he talks about the importance of reflecting on God’s word and will for his life, Psalm 119:44 & 19:14.
And David also shows us what it looks like to love God with all our strength. Look at Psalm 18:1 again. This is not just a cry of love from David’s heart, it also shows us David’ understanding that to love God with all our strength doesn’t mean trusting in our own power to faithfully serve and follow God. Loving God with all our heart means trusting God to be working in us. It’s faith and trust that God shares his power and strength with us. If we try to follow God in our own strength and power – we will fail. David understood this, David experienced this. Loving God with all our strength means trusting God to give us his strength so that we can live lives of faith. Paul says the same thing when he says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
If we want to improve the relationships that make up our lives we have to start by improving our relationship with God because that relationship is primary. Since every other relationship in our lives will flow from our relationship with God, as our relationship with God deepens so will every other relationship. It makes sense if you think about it: as we understand and receive more of God’s grace and forgiveness - we will be able to share more grace and forgiveness with others. As we learn to walk more faithfully with God - we will also learn how to walk more faithfully with others. So the first principle in building stronger relationship is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength so that we can learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.
While we will are going to look at this call to love others in more depth next week, I want to think about what it means to love our neighbor. When Jesus says we are to love our neighbor he’s not just talking about the person who lives or works next door, when Jesus says we are to love our neighbor he is really saying we are to love everyone. There is no limit on who we are to love. Jesus reached out to love and build relationships with everyone –the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the socially acceptable and the social outcast. Jesus reached out to Jew and Gentile, Romans and Samaritans. There was no one beyond the reach of Jesus love and there is to be no one beyond the reach of our love. God calls us to love everyone, those we like and those we don’t like. Those who look like us and act like us, and those who don’t. Those who believe the way we do and live the way we do and those we don’t. The command of Jesus is to reach out and build relationships with everyone.
Tom Holladay says, there is to be no limit on the extent of our love (which means we are to love everyone), but (he says) there must be a limit on the expression of our love (which means we can only practically reach out and love the person or the people God has placed in our lives today). Sometimes we get so caught up in thinking about how we can love those in need around the world that we forget to love the person who is in our lives today. Who has God placed in our lives today? As we look around, who is it that God says, “this is the one I want you to reach out and love.” Is it a neighbor or coworker? Is it the person sitting next to you in the pew? Is it a new person you may meet in a small group this week? There are people in all of our lives that God is calling us to reach out and love and we can’t overlook them as we think about loving someone else. While Jesus called people to love everyone, he always loved the people who were in his life at any given moment: children, sick women, distraught fathers, even criminals who hung on the cross next to him. Jesus reached out in love to build relationships with the people God placed in his life at any given moment and God places people in our lives every moment of every day and those are the people God is calling us to love. Will we make those people and those relationships our top priority?
If we want to grow in our relationships, if we want stronger and healthier relationships with our family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and church family – then we have to place the highest value on those relationships so we will see the need and have the desire to invest the time and energy needed to make those relationships strong. If we want to strengthen our relationships we also have to place the highest priority on our relationship with God because it is from that relationship that we will receive strength and power for every other relationship. So let us work today to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength so that we can more effectively and powerfully love our neighbor, our friends and our family.
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