Healthy Relationships

And we exhort you, brothers: warn those who are irresponsible, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone.  See to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all. 1 Thessalonians 5:14-15

 

Thessalonians reminds us of our responsibility to one another as children of God, to be our brother's (and sister's) keeper, without being an enabler or a controller.  We’re called to help one another grow towards God, not away from Him. We’re called to do the hard stuff on behalf of,  and in the best interest of, others. In order to fulfill our callings, we must maintain a tender and caring heart and a healthy idea of boundaries. If we’re going to love like Jesus loved, it’s crucial that we know where our responsibility ends and another person’s begins without quitting on those whose struggles we can't fix. 

 

I learned the concept of boundaries later in life, when everything in my life began to fall apart for the second the time. I lived most of my life with this idea that boundaries were selfish and unbiblical. I was insecure and constantly being tossed around with no real understanding of what was right in my relationships. I allowed myself to be mistreated and I mistreated others. I enabled people in my life to keep doing things that hurt me by playing along and keeping quiet. I was so busy trying to earn love that I neglected my responsibilities to myself and to others. Frankly, I’m surprised that my life didn’t fall apart any sooner. 

 

When His love was finally enough and I was really ready to follow Him, He began to set me free by teaching me the difference between my responsibility and those things I could never really accept responsibility for. Because of this huge lifting of dead weight, I began to be free to love people without having to fix them or make them feel better. 

"Jesus really loves me" -  that’s the premise behind being able to establish boundaries in confidence. It has to be around His love, not anyone else's. He has to be first. He has to be enough. Relationships are a huge deal, and the only way to have good relationships is to learn our roles in them. 

We’ve got to know what is ours to fix and what invisible boundaries are unhealthy to cross. We must be able to spot manipulation, guilt and control in ourselves and others. We need to resist being enablers, who help others stay comfortable in their own sin, and we need to stop expecting others to enable us. We’re going to have to choose to stop making it easy for others to stay in sin without inhibiting their choices, and we need to be open to having the same done to us. All of this must be done with a loving spirit.  Each of us need to be held accountable and, in order for this to work, we have to drop our own defenses. It's not going to be easy. 

 

We cannot do what’s best for the other person until we learn to do right by ourselves because we can’t love anyone until we have truly soaked in the love God has for us personally. We live in a society that values caring for others only within certain parameters, but Jesus always cared. He didn’t try to force people to change and He didn’t try to control others because love always offers a choice. Therefore, our own choices should always should be offered and made with a tender heart, from a place of trust in God…who will always do right by us.