What EVERY Christian needs to know about relationships

Relationships...the topic everyone wants to know about, right?

But... if you are reading this right now, first of all, take a moment to ask your heart, "why did I click on this post?"

It's because you are interested in knowing how to improve your relationships, of course. Maybe how to get into a relationship, maybe how to improve the one you are in, how to understand the women in your life, or the men in your life, maybe even to "see what God thinks" about relationships.You want fulfillment in your relationships, you want love, satisfaction, happiness. This is what we all want.

But what if the title of this post was "What Every Christian needs to know about letting him/herself die so that Christ would live instead" ? Would you still be interested in knowing more?

Because actually...God is not concerned about your relationships with the opposite sex. He's also not concerned about serving YOU. He is concerned about who YOU are dying. Your flesh dying. Your normal desires dying. It is only when these die in you that Christ's life can be manifested fully in you.

If you're reading this then you need to know that you are in the wrong spirit. The purpose of life is not to satisfy your own heart, but the opposite--to bear your cross.

The wrong spirit that lead you here IS death--the death of which God spoke when He said to Adam in the garden, 'If you eat of the fruit you will die.' It was not the fruit itself that was the problem; it was the abandoning of obedience to God's gentle and loving direction. Instead of living by the image in which He was made, Adam relied on his own mind, deciding for himself what was good and bad. Since the fall we have relied on the thoughts and decisions of our own minds and imaginations to direct our lives; but the imagination of all men is wrong. Our normal way of thinking actually fights against God and is unwilling/unable to submit to Him.

So today, when God allows pain and suffering to happen in our lives, or when we don't have what we want--whether it is a relationship, or money, a job, food, good health, power, etc... our 'normal way' of thinking screams "BAD!!!" It is natural for us to be offended and recoil away from God in this way, labeling it bad, evil, or the work of the devil--when in fact it is God. That recoiling is the evidence that the most important thing in our lives is ourselves. God's purpose in sending Jesus was actually to destroy this nature and replace it with a new one. It was NOT to let us keep all of our normal desires and then fit Jesus into our life somehow. We cannot fit HIM into OUR lives. He came to end OUR lives, to replace OUR nature with the ' the mind of Christ... The Holy Spirit Himself.

Some words from Jesus to consider:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me...And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me."

"So likewise, whoever does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple...For whoever would save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."

We ought to say: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved  me and gave Himself for me."

When these things are true in our lives, I mean really true...why would we need, or even want, to click on blog posts seeking advice about the relationships that I think would bring ME happiness?