Looking for a Real Relationship? (not a dating ad)

Looking for a Real Relationship?

(not a dating ad)

 

So, I’ve been reading this book for quite some time now and every time I read just a few lines in it, I’m just blown away by what it is telling me.  The way it is written makes it seem as though God is standing right in front of me speaking to the depths of my heart.  I can’t help but break down every single time I read more and more of this book.  The book is called Captivating, Unveiling the Mysteries of a Woman’s Soul by John & Stasi Eldredge.  It’s not a super long book but for some reason I want to breathe each word in and study each thing that is being said.  A lot of women I know have read the book and they all say the same thing I am saying.  It’s “mind-blowing”.  What’s it about, you ask?  Well, exactly as it states in the title. 

While I was sitting in the lunchroom at work the other day, this man saw me reading and asked what it was that I was so intently reading over there.  I told him the title and he said, “Well that’s funny because you’re a woman already, you don’t need to understand your own soul.”  But that might be what a lot of people think when they hear the title of it or many may think that it sounds a little too “churchy” or “spiritual”.  This book is far from “churchy”.  In fact, I feel as though it’s a necessity for learning and growing in any relationship I have in my life, male or female.  We, as women, are more than what we think with our minds.  We are deeper than just human beings on earth trying to live their lives.  We have mysteries that even we don’t know about.  God designed us that way, so we would search for Him and draw close to Him.  We long for a “relationship”, a true and perfect relationship.  And sometimes we get distracted or blindsided by the world that we don’t even know what a “relationship" means anymore.

When I was living in, what I call my “dark times”, the word “relationship” was something that was abused and manipulated by all of my surroundings.  In high school, relationships were the thing to have.  Everyone had one and they changed all the time.  But relationships in high school weren’t even close to being mature.  In fact, what we learned in high school about relationships was that they change through different seasons and that it is all about the “learning experience” (this can be friendship or boyfriend/girlfriend relational).  What we learned to like or dislike in relationships, we learned to hold on to or let go of in the future.  Right?  It makes sense.  If we dislike something about a relationship we had in the past, we probably won’t go into another relationship just like that one.  Ideally, that would be logical thinking.  But most people don’t grow up and learn from their mistakes, so their meaning of the word “relationship” doesn’t change.  It stays the same and immature. 

In college, relationships were the thing “not to have”.   Really, because everyone who wasn’t in a relationship didn’t have all that extra baggage.  “We can live free and do whatever we want to do.”  Since our relationships stopped growing, we stayed immature during that time as well.  We lived like the Israelites in Judges did.  “At that time there was no king in Israel. People did whatever they felt like doing” (MSG). 

It’s true though, right?  When the word “relationship” is placed in the same sentence as God or Jesus, we just brush it off like we already know what a “relationship with Jesus” is.  But do we really know what a “real” relationship with Jesus looks like?  Try to think about the word relationship and not immediately think about something or someone that is of this world, its hard right?  God is not of this world, and it’s hard to think that we can be in a “relationship” with Him?  But if our mind is set on the worldly view of a “relationship” then we can’t imagine what a true relationship with Jesus Christ looks like, because it is still under “immature thinking.”  Once we begin to see God for all He has done and is doing in our lives, we can begin to understand what a “relationship” with Him looks like. 
Do you long for a relationship with some One that will NEVER change during a different season of life?  Aren’t you ready to put the “dark times” behind you and “grow in a relationship” with some One that will, not only direct your path straight, but love you more than you thought you could ever be loved?  Then lay down your immature thinking and take a hold of the promises He has for you!

“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.  Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” Ephesians 4:14-15

“Do what God's teaching says; when you only listen and do nothing, you are fooling yourselves.  Those who hear God's teaching and do nothing are like people who look at themselves in a mirror.  They see their faces and then go away and quickly forget what they looked like.  But the truly happy people are those who carefully study God's perfect law that makes people free, and they continue to study it. They do not forget what they heard, but they obey what God's teaching says. Those who do this will be made happy.” James 1:22-25

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  1 Corinthians 13:11-12