Bringing Strength to Relationships: Here is the fundamental problem most people have with relationships: they come to relationship needing something. They come to relationships to get instead of give. This isn’t how relationship is done in the kingdom: Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20:35

The critical misconception is this: that we can’t actually have our needs met by God. Many of us know in our heads that God should be able to meet all our needs, but we don’t walk in the reality of that by faith, so our experience is that God isn’t meeting all our needs. We turn to our relationships to meet whatever needs we don’t see God fulfilling in our lives.

This isn’t the way it should be! We can walk by faith in the reality that God really does meet all our needs; in that case, when we come to relationships, we come from a place of strength instead of weakness. Relationship is now about you instead of me. It is now about what I can bring and give to you rather than what you can do for me. Because of this, we can come to relationship always from a place of strength. If my main motivator in relationship is to bless you because I’m already fulfilled, then your response to me can’t be a threat. It doesn’t matter whether you are responding or reacting; neither affects me. I’m covered either way by my identity being in Christ.

This is the way that Jesus did relationship. Jesus never lost touch with who He was or His completeness in the Father because of the actions of those around him. He at times had the worst possible circumstances (being betrayed by one of your disciples to be killed in an extremely painful way comes to mind), but never let His circumstances control His inner state. He always chose to respond out of who He was instead.
Our Motivation in Relationships: If we choose not to control or scare people into doing what we’d like for them, what does that mean in terms of working with others through disagreement? How can I get what I want?
In short, the answer is you can’t, or rather that you never could in the first place. What happens is a paradigm shifts in our relationships. What happens when we operate from a paradigm of control or fear is that we trade in on the relationship for the behavior we want. I am willing to do wrong by our relationship in order to get the behavior from you that I want. I am willing to raise my voice at you or threaten to isolate myself from you in order to get you to do the dishes, mow the lawn, or whatever else I’m trying to convince you to do. In the process, I’m sinning against our relationship to bring about behavior.

The paradigm shift is that we now decide that no behavior is worth trading in on the relationship. Our relationship is more valuable to me than anything I’d like you to do or believe, and so your behavior becomes a secondary issue. Now we need to learn to address behavior without sacrificing the relationship in the process. This requires needing to use a new set of tools for doing relationship.

The motivation we use now is love rather than fear. Our appeal is not based on trying to scare someone into doing something, but rather a clear communication of our desire or need and expecting the person to respect the relationship. It is their choice whether they choose to do what we would like them to. Clearly some choices will affect the relationship we have in negative ways and others in positive ways, but the choice is up to them.

Now, of course, this can be pushed too far. I’m not saying we should deliver the person a relational ultimatum. What I’m saying is we make clear that some choices will hurt us. We choose to love them regardless of the choice they make, but make clear the choice they make may affect the quality of the relationship because it isn’t possible to maintain intimacy with someone who doesn’t care if they hurt the other person(s).

There is a much more dangerous form of relating. It leads to the type of relationship in which people can hurt you deeply, but it also develops the soil in which people may grow. It is the way God relates to us. God never tries to manipulate but always reveals His heart and invites us into what He has for us. Jesus stands at the door and knocks; He doesn’t guilt us into letting Him in. Likewise, we choose to make ourselves vulnerable to others in order to not compromise their freedom. Will it result in not getting what we’d like all the time? Probably. God doesn’t get what He wants all the time either, but He doesn’t change His approach to relationships. Likewise, we will do well if we settle in our minds that the ends never justify the means in relationships. It’s not okay to use sinful means to get positive ends.

I will end with this, the Apostle Paul was motivated by his love for Jesus and empowered by The Holy Spirit in order to secure relationships with people for the cause of Christ. He wrote, “We who are strong must be considerate of others. We must not just please ourselves. We should help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord, For even Christ didn’t live to please himself,” Romans15:1-3.