Gods vision for healthy relationships

Discover God's Vision for healthy Relationships.

Gods vision for relationships is guided by the philosophy of Christ, namely love God first and from your relationship of love with God you love your neighbour as yourself. If we love another person as God loves him or her, our greatest desire is to see that man (or women) conformed to the image of Christ. In order to contribute to this desire being fulfilled we seek to work with the Lord to bring forth qualities in us that reflect His character and gifts that enable us to help others draw closer to God and become more like Him. On our part this requires us to be emotionally disciplined and seek emotional fulfilment in God rather than in the other. We must be willing to trade emotional dependency on people for emotional dependency on God. It also requires us to stop allowing people to make themselves emotionally dependent on us and to encourage them to find the fulfilment of their emotional needs in God. Not everyone will take kindly to this. Some people will respond with clinging behaviour, manipulation, anger and retaliation. However, it is not just in our best interest to do so, it is also in their best interest that we stay strong and do not give in. Also the need to be needed is on our part an emotional need that should be fulfilled by God and not by people who are emotionally dependent on us. To do so is tantamount to idolatry as we seek our ultimate emotional fulfilment in people and not in God and His love. To choose for obedience to God and to discipline ourselves emotionally might make or break a friendship. When we exchange another's best interests for our own neediness, we run the risk of losing the relationship. However, if we continue to maintain or pursue an exclusive emotional involvement with this person, then our desires are in conflict with what the Lord wants. We need to ask ourselves, "Am I working with God or Against Him in the person's life?”.  A healthy godly relationship is characterised by a desire to see the other conformed into the likeness of Christ rather than to see the other conformed to our wishes and desires.

See also:  http://yacrisishotline.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/emotionalinterdependency.pdf