 Our highest highs and lowest lows revolve around relationships.
Last week we looked at the first of several principles that can
help us build and sustain relationships: the
”
priority of love
”
principle.
 Our highest highs and lowest lows revolve around relationships. Last week we looked at the first of several principles that can help us build and sustain relationships: the “priority of love” principle. The central measuring rod by which God will assess our lives is the measuring rod of love. We all need to be moving toward a place where we speak lovingly more often, and with less hesitation and less worry of being misunderstood.
We might call the second principle the “speak the truth in love” principle (Ephesians 4:15). When we ask ourselves how relationships start (words), how they deepen (words) and how they are straightened out when hurting (words), we begin to understand the importance of this principle.
The reason many of us can’t sustain healthy relationships is because we haven’t learned this principle. We don’t say the words we need to say, or we say words that are driven by anger or the desire to manipulate and control. Some of us go from one superficial relationship to another because we won’t take the next step in developing relational depth by disclosing who we really are, our hopes and dreams and fears and vulnerabilities. Or we allow potentially wonderful relationships to break apart because we’ve never learned how to say, “Ouch, you hurt me.” Instead, we let the hurt go underground and fester into resentment, only to surface later in a way that destroys the relationship. Learn the value of speaking the truth in love; it will change your life.
Then there is the “not easily provoked” principle (1 Corinthians 13:5). When my wife and I went to the Caribbean on vacation a while back, I did everything I could to get her on sailboats. She looked at the boat, she looked at the ocean, she looked again at the boat, and looked at me and said, “No way! It will just flip right over when a big wind comes.”
Knowing I would never persuade her, I called in an expert. I asked a sailboat captain to explain to her how these kind of boats are built. He told her there were two kinds of sailboats. One only has a centerboard under it (a piece that looks like a fin). In a strong wind these can blow over, so they are only used in mildly windy areas or by people who like to swim.
But the other kind (the kind used in the ocean) have a keel under the bottom that is filled with lead, so that even in hurricane-force winds the boat will stay upright because of the ballast.
I still only got her in one sailboat, but I share the story because it is a good analogy about relationships: It’s hard to build one with someone who, with the slightest wind of trouble, is easily offended, irritated and angered, capsizing the relationship. God says we need to have some ballast in our lives so that we are not so easily overturned when storm clouds blow in.
What is the ballast? It’s our own personal relationship with Christ that fills us with the heavy weight of his unconditional love rather than the kind of love we normally have (the fluffy flyweight of conditional love). With the ballast of God’s love in our heart, we may be rocked and blown off course for a while, but we will never be overturned.
The reason so many of us are perpetually involved in unhealthy relationships is because we are depending on someone other than God to be our ballast, and when that person messes up or lets us down, we feel like our life has been capsized and we are drowning in deep seas. Incorporate this principle into your life so that when (not “if”) someone let’s you down, you can say, “I’m hurt and disappointed, but I’m so glad that ultimately my security and sense of well-being (my ballast) comes from God and not from frail and fallible human beings like myself.”
Henry Harris is lead pastor of Rolling Hills Community Church, 330 Tres Pinos Road in Hollister. If you have questions or comments, please visit the church Web site at www.rollinghillsfamily.com, e-mail pa*********@****************ly.com or call (831) 636-5353.
