By Brett Monk on
4/11/2009 10:48 AM
Day 40 – The Relationship Principles of Jesus
As we close this study, I’d like to recommend that you take a little time and go back through the book and through these blog entries to find the points that you’d like to work on in more detail. I’m sure that each one of us has had a few places where we really felt the Holy Spirit speak to us.
I’d also like to challenge you to do more study on the dynamics of relationships in both Christian and secular writings. I believe that to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to be committed to becoming a “relationship expert”.
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By Brett Monk on
4/11/2009 10:39 AM
Day 39 – The Ideal vs. the Real
Many people enter the culture of the church expecting a world where everything is ideal and everyone is “nice” all the time. We often become deeply disappointed and hurt when we come to the stark realization that all these other Christians have just as many problems and are just as messed up as we are. How dare they!
The Bible is a real book about real people. Nearly every person in the Bible (Except Jesus) who did something great also had problems. King David who wrote the Psalms committed adultery and had Uriah killed. Many of the kings followed other gods, including Solomon. The twelve disciples were constantly getting corrected and rebuked by Jesus for their lack of faith and other issues.
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By Brett Monk on
4/11/2009 10:18 AM
Day 38 – The Incredible Power of Sacrifice
This may be one of the most powerful, albeit hardest lessons to learn about relationships and life in general. When we’ve been hurt by someone we feel like we deserve to be angry, which makes sense. God gives us the processes of anger and grief to protect our emotional beings. There’s a feeling of self-sympathy and even “justice” that comes with remembering how wrong the person was who hurt us.
But the longer we hold onto the anger, the more damage it does to us, even though the person who hurt us may have long ago moved on and forgotten the incident. Only by letting go of the anger can we be healed and move on ourselves.
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By Brett Monk on
4/10/2009 11:41 AM
Day 37 – Love is Sacrificial
Movies and popular culture portray love as something that has value as long as it makes you feel good. As soon as a relationship is no longer “meeting your needs” or “making you happy” the expectation is to move on and find someone or something that does.
That’s just nothing like God’s love. God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that we could be reconciled to Him. Jesus didn’t come to the earth so we could make Him happy. He endured the cross; despising its shame, for the joy of bringing us back into a proper relationship with God.
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By Brett Monk on
4/7/2009 8:13 AM
Day 36 – One More Paradox
In his book, “Good to Great”, Jim Collins talks about companies either being in a “flywheel of success” where good decisions constantly build positive momentum, or a “death spiral” where bad ones compound until the company dies. Relationships can have similar dynamics.
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By Brett Monk on
4/6/2009 9:02 AM
Day 35 – Humility: What Will People Think?
In all likelihood, very few of the people reading this blog are nationally famous and rely on “what people think of you” for your living. Unless you’re an A-list Hollywood actor or professional speaker of some sort, what the “entire world” thinks of you just doesn’t have that much bearing on your life. (Any really famous people reading this can send me an email for a different encouragement.) For most of us, the fact is that people just don’t think about us or talk about us all that much. They’ve got their own problems to deal with.
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By Brett Monk on
4/4/2009 10:32 AM
Day 34 – Vines and Branches
The picture of us as the branch and Jesus as the Vine is meant to show us that we’re designed to have something flow through us that originates from somewhere else. The power, the authority, the LIFE that we use to bear the good fruit of kindness, patience, goodness, etc. is not expected to come from us.
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By Brett Monk on
4/4/2009 10:15 AM
Day 33 – Humility and Our Relationship with God
As I study the lives of the great saints of the past, and as I observe Christians of various levels of maturity, I see a pretty clear pattern. Young believers and ministers often see God as their “buddy”. I know that God gives grace for that when we’re young. Father God doesn’t mind when a His little child bursts into the room inappropriately and demands something they want. It’s what little kids do.
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By Brett Monk on
4/4/2009 9:59 AM
Day 32 – Comparing and Competing
We love to watch, or to play in a good competition. It’s great to watch a football or basketball game and root for your team, who hopefully wins. The joy of being on the winning side and seeing our “enemies” or the “bad guys” lose is deeply ingrained into our being.
But at the same time we all know that competition can be destructive. Cain’s competition with his brother led to Abel’s death. Many people are stressed out by the need to keep up with, or be better than someone else.
Comparing doesn’t work for the same reason that judging doesn’t work. We just don’t see the whole picture. We compare what we think someone else’s traits are by observing them on their best days, and inevitably compare them to us on our worst days. Or worse, we do the opposite.
The key to the problem is in the concept of “contending”. C
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By Brett Monk on
4/4/2009 9:57 AM
Day 31 – The Need to Be Noticed
Being a disciple of Jesus, or developing the same motives and actions of the Master, is all about focusing on others. Among the many paradoxes of the Christian walk is the following: It’s actually much more deeply gratifying to bring attention to someone else than others. Bringing attention to yourself may be gratifying for a while, but it becomes empty and hollow to have to keep proving that you’re worthy of attention. Many celebrities have emotional meltdowns from the stress of trying to stay on the a-list.
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