Relationship Roots

The cause and effect of relationships determines the stability and durability of our relationships. For instance, if I form an intimate relationship with a woman based primarily on her beauty, obviously the relationship is in jeopardy when age begins to take its toll or even when she looks scruffy and unkempt. Or if my relationship with someone is based on their kind ways or sweetness or their brilliance, when those characteristics come up missing then our relationship may easily become unstable and rocky.

On the surface this all seems very plain and obvious, but it also seems to be very subtle and overlooked on the experiential level. It seems we have a very hard time being honest enough with ourselves to admit our true motives, probably for fear of the shame we would feel if we were to admit the truth. The fruit betrays the root. This may be the easiest access to begin uncovering my true motives. Of course if I don't want to know my true motives because I have no good alternative to replace them, then likely I will use any maneuver to avoid going there.

When my relationship with someone is marked by sudden disconnects or ugly feelings and I entertain thoughts of reducing my involvement in the relationship to reduce or avoid my pain, that is a sure sign that to some degree this relationship is based on externals. I say externals not just in the sense of physical but anything outside of a connection between our true hearts. Externals are great additions to sweeten and enhance the pleasure of relationships. But if the relationship foundation itself is not composed of selfless caring for the other person's heart it is in constant danger of crumbling and failure. Remember the house on the sand?

Most of us enter into relationships based on externals. This may be unavoidable and maybe even guided many times by heavenly influence. The problem lies in not investing the time and effort to mix cement into the initial sand, water it and form it up deep so it can harden into a reliable foundation that can withstand the storms that inevitably will strike. 1 Corinthians 13 may be a good description of what a good solid foundation looks like. But I am curious. What is cement? What is water? What is sand?

Work on the Affirmative Side

Our right brain learns primarily by imitation, by being mentored. I am starting to see a little more clearly how poor a mentorer I am. When people watch me to learn how to act under different situations and pressures they are often seeing more a mirror of their own problems than they are seeing the responses from the spirit of heaven.

I want people to see how blindly defensive they are and how they thereby are avoiding facing their “stuff”. But when they trigger my stuff what do I do? My first overwhelming impulse is to feel defensive and point out their stuff – which is exactly how they react in turn. A vicious and accelerating cycle.

I want people to not make assumptions about what I am thinking. But I also expect them to read my mind when I am afraid to express my true feelings. I want people to understand my true heart motives in spite of my words and actions that seem to convey the opposite. But when others treat me by doing the same thing I want them to be more honest about expressing their real core feelings. I want people to live from their hearts and not just from head formulas or from their triggers. I want people to take ownership of their “stuff” and be willing to be humble enough to admit and apologize when they hurt me. But how often and willing am I to do the same for them? Very little I'm afraid.

Therefore, I really may understand them quite well because they are simply reflecting my unresolved “stuff” back to me and I don't like what I see and experience from them. They don't like it when they see their unresolved issues reflected in me and so they attack the mirror and blame it/me for everything bad they see about themselves. That really hurts when I am the mirror being spit at and slapped around emotionally.

I need much more grace and heart-sight to break this closed cycle. I need radical healing of my triggers so I don't mirror other's problems back to them. I need to look more frequently at the mirror-face of Jesus to get more acquainted with my true identity and value. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAS95) If I can see my real self as God is forming in me I will be more transparent so others will see less “stuff” mirrored back to them and more value as they look through me to catch glimpses of their true self-worth in Jesus' mirror.

I need a spirit of instant forgiveness, humility, unconditional love in the face of abuse. I don't have those qualities very much and I can't produce them. God.......

Just after I finished writing the above I read todays message from the devotional book To Be Like Jesus. It was directly for me in the present. “If there are any of you who have weak faith, remember that it is because you do not work on the affirmative side. It is of no use for us to think that we can carry forward the glorious work of God without strong, unfaltering faith.... Those who have educated themselves to stand on the negative side should without delay repent and be converted. Remember that when you stand on the negative side, accusing and condemning, you make room for the agencies of the power of darkness. Precious time has to be spent in waging war against these agencies, because there were those who refused to stand on the affirmative side.... "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory." Satan is behind all strife and vainglory. Let us get out of his company, and stand with those who say, "Victory is for us, and we will cling to the arm of infinite power."

I have weak faith because I do not work on the affirmative. I cannot reveal more of God's glory without strong, unfaltering faith. I can see that I have been programmed to stand on the negative side, as many around me have as well. I need to repent and be converted without delay. When I take the negative side I make room for the power of Satan. The negative side involves accusing and condemning. This extends the time needed for healing since more baggage is created that then has to be resolved along with the original problems, all because I refuse to stand on the affirmative side.

Satan is behind all strife and vainglory. Those two sound like two sides of a common coin – the two branches of the Tree of Death.

The solution? From the reading I see these:

• Seek the Lord with my whole heart so He will come very near me.

• Take hold and present God's promises to Him.

• Ask God to lead and direct.

• Work only on the affirmative side.

• Think of all that God has done for us.

• Praise God for all blessings.

• Always draw others with affirmation.

• Repent and be converted from negative thinking to affirmation.

• Do not refuse to change.

• Get out of Satan's company.

• Say affirmatively, “Victory is for us.”

• Cling to the arm of infinite power.

In My Utmost For His Highest the reading for today also reminds me that obedience comes from oneness of spirit. I either synchronize with Satan by dwelling on the negative or I synchronize with God's heart and work only on the affirmative. God, change me!

If I want to be a useful disciple, I must give up my right to myself to Jesus. God does not operate primarily by rules, but in relationship. If I hesitate to obey it is because I love a false god more than Him. Jesus will not “help” me obey – I must choose and then experience His power to do it. Obedience creates and spreads life.

What is My Source of Life?

Every person, no matter how sweet, nice and loving, has the inward seeds of selfishness and death. But they also have the evidences of life as demonstrated in their compassion and caring for others. So they appear to a greater or lesser extent to be a source of life to others who are thirsting for life themselves. But they are only second-hand sources of life no matter how wonderful, thrilling or satisfying their presence is.

In our desire to bring more life into our souls and bodies we attempt to form relationships – intimacy at some degree – with others who attract us by the evidence of life we see in them that we crave to experience for ourselves. The most obvious examples of this is in our attractions to physical beauty in all its various forms. Body language in gestures, mannerisms, voice tone and facial messages are closely related. We see these in varying ways as communications of life that we desire to share and assimilate.

Pleasure is an aspect of receiving life that is high in our priority. Pleasure means different things to different people and is sometimes opposite, but it is always a craving for life in some way. Often however, our lust for pleasure imparts some measure of death to others in our attempts to extract life from them for ourselves. We are operating on the false assumption, though usually subconsciously, that to add life to ourselves we must subtract it from others. Or, conversely, to impart life to others is to subtract it from ourselves.

These basic assumptions and cravings underlie most of the interactions between people in this world both individually and collectively. It is some of the essence of selfishness and is what we all inherit from Adam. When Jesus stated that we must hate our family members in contrast to loving Him to be enabled to be a disciple in His kingdom (see Luke 14:26), He was trying to draw sharp attention to this issue of where we try to get life from. We are so naturally and almost exclusively dependent on drawing life for ourselves from those around us that we can't see the ultimate danger in our dependence on those sources. We are only working with second-hand life which is all that any of us possess no matter how alive and attractive it appears. And in extracting life for ourselves from those around us it is further reduced in its satisfaction content.

So we increase our frenzied clamor to get more and more from others and from possessions, or we sink into despair and depression and surrender to the death-inducing effects of others extracting life from us.

Theologically we say that God is the only source of life. But what we really believe is demonstrated by how we live, particularly in our “free time”. What we do for entertainment to receive relief and pleasure is the clearest indicator of what we really believe can give us life and satisfaction, even if we deny it verbally. Those who insist they don't use entertainment to satisfy themselves usually look to work or other achievement oriented activity to create a sense of self-value and identity.

Our need to receive life revolves around our need to feel valuable and our perspective on our identity. Our perceived identity is usually the composite and accumulation of all of our previous preferences of how we have tried to get life for ourselves in the past. Our identity also is perceived by what others think of us and how they have treated us, strongly affecting the way we view and value ourselves.

But most of these factors that have such overwhelming influence on shaping our perceived identity are not necessarily factors at all in identifying or revealing our true identity. Only in true reality which is rooted outside the artificial, fake environment of this world, can our true identity be found by communication with the original Designer of our heart and soul. Our real identity is not even a compromise between the two realities. Our real identity and value is solidly rooted outside the distorting atmosphere of the complex illusions created by the relationships and messages around us.

All our relationships other than with the real God are sources of second-hand life mingled with seeds of death. We are all under the drugging influence of seeds hidden in the fruit of the Tree of Death, the so-called good and evil fruit that our parents indulged in from the Garden of Eden. The only antidote is accepting God's redemption through Jesus and reestablishing our connection to the Tree of Life. There is only one source of life that does not contain poisonous seeds of death as all the other sources do. If we reject that source in preference for other sources we will eventually succumb to the death-producing effects of the hidden poison that we ingest. No matter how intense our pleasure or perceived satisfaction we receive from our human sources, we are still receiving hidden sources of death if we trust them to be our vital source of life.

Her Stuff, My Stuff

Because her stuff resonates with my stuff, my desire and even ability to struggle to see her real heart is often blocked. Her anger masks the underlying pain and shields it from honest examination. It also triggers my fears and sets my mind in a defensive mode instead of maintaining compassion. The cycle is cross-linked and functional until I can disengage and resolve my stuff and get healing for my fears. We both are afraid our needs will not be met. We both secretly want the other to give us some life. Another god exposure.

Prejudice

Prejudice means making a judgment without looking carefully at the evidence. It usually involves a bias towards what we want to believe or what we have been programmed to believe. Our picture of God is the most vulnerable victim to our prejudice and the most damaging to every other belief. Because it is a maxim that we inevitably transform into the image of the god we believe in, our prejudices about what God must be like translate directly into how we relate to others and even to ourselves.