Bullets for the Battle

Relationship Failures: The Reality That Fuels Authentic Faith

It is a rare thing to build God’s kind of relationship with another person. Most relationships in life are no more than functionary, casual, pretense or self-serving. Rare are those connections with other human beings that are bonded in authentic love, spiritually significant and God compelled. Yet we should always be seeking to make “spirit connections” to people so that we create the possibility of an impacting “Christ touch” that is ennobling, giving and truth energizing. It is part of the Master’s pattern for our relationships that we do not have to wait until we encounter perceived “worthy” or “significant” people to initiate a “Jesus connection.” Even if the other person is blind to your heart or too self-occupied or spiritually dense to accept your “grace attempts,” you still enhance yourself in the understanding of what “Messiah love action” is all about. Learning how Jesus felt when He was rejected by those He created and loved is one of our greatest lessons in living the Christ Life. Only by experiencing the humiliation of being ignored and/or disdained by others can we begin to appreciate the grief of our Lord for us! The Cross Disciple can always win in every situation … be it the worst or best of circumstances … because he or she uses experience to adjust their grasp of reality to the Mind of Christ! Life doesn’t get any better than living it with His Mind! This “puts” all of our contacts with other people into the flow of His will. The highest relationships we can realize are the ones where we initiate in others a new or refreshed passion for more of Christ. All else fades into necessity, routine or trivia.

When a relationship is at the “flesh connections” only level, it always leaves a void. It is after only a minor reminder of the shallowness of human nature or the nature of much human activity that we perceive how empty others leave us. Yet, frequently, there is the painful prick of conscience that our deepest interest in another person is only surface. Between “us” there is nothing more than the touch of have to, non-concern, low-mindedness, greediness and lie enforcement at worst. At best, it is only the necessary and brief routines of function. Have you ever been waited on or served by a self-centered clerk or disinterested waitress? There may be politeness and even gratitude, but nothing much “of Jesus” is exchanged.

These relationships never even approach “eros,” the most limited yet passionate of human loves. As C.S. Lewis, the great British popular apologist, reminds us: when speaking of being “in love” (eros), poor as such passion is in comparison to agape, the love that comes from the Godhead, a person in “eros” is as close to understanding what true, sacrificial agape is all about as their human experience allows. How sad that such flawed and insufficient relationships define the best that many people experience of the true nature of love (agape). They never grasp or express the truth about the great Lover of their souls, Messiah Jesus.

How do we give “new health” to such relational impotence? The best stimulants and vitamins we can ingest to make “spiritual connections” and the finest antidote and pain killer we can take to diminish our “flesh connections” is to radically dedicate our daily encounters to “being Jesus” to every person we touch! This all-consuming passion will correct, teach, refine, reduce or resolve every other issue or circumstance of our relationship experiences. Such a vision will instantly begin to heal our inner confusion as well as our outer tensions. To truly be alive to this “magnificent obsession” of being “a Jesus” to everyone you can is the supreme vision of our creation (Gen. 1:26-28) and recreation (II Cor. 5:17). This is the only normative philosophical mindset where “one-size-fits-all!” To authentically “know” you no longer belong to yourself (I Cor. 6:19-20), that your highest Christ worship is being a self-dead, Christ-alive cross taker (Luke 9:23-24), that your life has been and presently is being crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20) and that the Lord Himself constantly delivers you to death situations (II Cor. 4:­­11) so that you can die daily (I Cor. 15:30-31) is the most significant Christ theology a professed Disciple can “put” into his or her mind. And it is in our heart controlled mind where the God changed life begins (Eph. 1:17-19). The truth must be precisely “put” into your mind before you can precisely “put” your life “as a Jesus” into your relationships with others!

The practical block and hindrance to a Disciple “taking up the cross” is that most Christians don’t know what a real cross in their life looks like or should look like. Further, “taking up” is falsely understood as “something to do” rather than primarily “someone to become.” Our cross is to encounter the world as it really is in all of its sad falleness and to determine we will respond to it with the Mind of Christ. Armed with His Mind and Heart we increasingly seek to drink His cup for us, hang on His cross for us and to accept His commission for us. As we progress in this vision, our relationship to the Savior is deepened, enriched and all consuming. At the same time, our relationships with all others take on the love, light and fragrance of Jesus. This is the abundant life the Lord desires to give us if we will accept and yield to His cup, cross and commission.

… I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (abundantly). John 10:10