1 The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. 2 He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. 3 He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. 4 Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. Psalm 23:1-4(NLT)
The statement “Your life is more than a broken relationship” may seem to you to be redundant or unnecessary. When you consider the extreme amount of emotional turmoil a broken relationship causes, you’ll appreciate that this is a statement that simply can’t just float across our consciousness. It must sink to the depths of our beings, because its truth will add to the confidence and trust we have in God. In John 3:16(NLT), Jesus Christ gives us the lens by which we must always examine our lives. He said, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Because God has given us the life of Christ as a sacrifice, his life is in us, and we are eternal beings. The lessons we learn on earth are spiritual, and if we fail to see a broken relationship through the eyes of Christ, we will miss the lesson it teaches.
1Corinthians 6:19(NLT) states, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,” We do not own ourselves. We never have and we never will. We were born into a world that doesn’t belong to us, and we were also given a life that doesn’t belong to us. Psalms 24:1 declares that the earth is the Lord’s. Everything that dwells in it belongs to Him as well. One of the wonderful aspects of this truth is that it helps us to recognize more clearly that God is in control. When we understand that He holds our tomorrows, we will not work against Him but seek to work in partnership with His Will for our lives.
He doesn’t want us to be ignorant about this partnership. He wants us to understand that any quality relationship will require communication to be unified. This is especially true when it comes to our relationship with Him. Human-beings love pleasure, and most of us are not trained in childhood about the pleasure that comes from seeking God’s Will. We’re not brought up with the understanding that we can know His voice, follow His directives, and live a life that is exponentially better than what we’ve imagined. People that don’t know they should be sensitive to the Holy Spirit will miss his promptings. They won’t learn the intimacy of his language. This is what causes us to fall short when it comes to the partnership God desires with us. We miss our blessings because we miss Him!
A relationship with another human being is not meant to be, nor can it ever be, the driving force of the gift of life that God has given us. This is one of the lessons that a broken relationship teaches. It reveals the extent to which we’ve leaned on it to fulfill needs that it was never intended to meet.
To love smart is always God’s goal for us. This requires us to understand that sometimes things fall apart and fall away because they were always meant to be temporary and not permanent fixtures. So, the spiritual lesson we must learn is that we should never try to make a temporary situation a permanent one; even if we’ve made a substantial heart investment. This doesn’t mean we’re not to mourn the person that is moving on. Any time we let someone into our hearts, we’re going to feel sad when they are no longer participating in our lives. Spiritual maturity demands that we let them go and send them on their way, not with resentment or anger, but with the grace of God.
Faith demands that we recognize the bounty that awaits us. We mourn excessively because in the depth of our hearts we’re not believing in the treasures that God has for us. This lack of faith cannot continue. Through His grace, He will allow us time for mourning, and during this time we should press into Him like never before. We must pray that the strength of the Holy Spirit will permeate our entire beings and complete a mighty work within us. Our faith must be stronger than it was, and as we commit ourselves to release the past, our grip on the newness of what awaits will become firm. We will understand that life truly does hold so much more for us, and our true destiny partner will reap the benefit when we’ve learned our lessons well.■
“Your Life is More than A Broken Relationship” written for Crazynlove.com ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.