How Are Your Relationships?

[Jesus] answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Luke 10:27, NIV

When it comes to marketing, Hallmark knows what to do. Their cards are all about wonderful ways to make connections with other people. You can even share your card story on their website. And then there are the commercials! They always make me cry because they draw me into what life is really about—relationships. The relationship between a mother and daughter, a teacher and student, one friend to another.

How are we doing in our relationships? Let’s think about it. If you and I have an altercation with someone and do not do our part to resolve it, are we at peace? Of course not. We are either stewing at work or stewing at home, and heaven forbid, we may have gossiped about it to someone, and started that person stewing too.

Sweet friends, God set our priorities in Luke 10:27 with the two most important commandments—to love Him and to love people. If our relationships with God and people are full of strife or are simply lacking, then we need to do a heart check to see if our love priorities are in order.

If we have a personal relationship with God through Christ, we need to ask ourselves if we love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. If we do, then we should have greater love for others. As our relationship with God grows and we come to love Him more, in His strength and power He moves us toward restoration and reconciliation in our earthly relationships. We will not have time to look critically at others and judge them because our relationship with our holy, gracious God keeps our heart softened. When we live in light of God’s perfect, infinite grace, forgiveness, and mercy with our own failings, then we will want to do what we can to offer grace and forgiveness to others rather than pushing to win an argument and get our way.

When we keep our relationship with God on His terms, it will carry over to our relationships with others.

Let’s grow in our love for the Lord, and all our other relationships will grow and blossom too.