Leaning Forward

I like to read, but I’ll be honest when I read my mind does have a tendency to drift away from time to time. (Yes, I know that’s ADD) One of the books that I read back in 08, The Second Mile  by Mike Hamon, continues to stir in my spirit.  This book caught my attention from the get go, and didn’t let up. Ironically, it was on the acknowledgement page. You know the page we have a tendency to skip over so that we can start immediately on page one of chapter one. The first four words drew me in, and to this day they continue to invade my consciousness, “success is never singular”.  I love that phrase mainly because I love the idea of community. Anyone that has ever done something great or significant in any capacity never did it alone.  We need one another. Relationships are key to us living the life that we were intended to live. At the very core of the Scriptures, we see this. It’s about relationship. It’s about relationship with our Creator and his most prized creation, mankind.

Genesis 1 is more than just what God created “in the beginning”. God is screaming to us, even before Adam and Eve come on the scene, it’s about relationship!!! Think about this … if planet earth moves just slightly closer to the sun, we burn up and if earth moves just slightly away from the sun we freeze. Earth is positioned perfectly, in relationship to all creation so that LIFE can exist. I think sometimes that our relationships have fallen into “nothingness” not because we’ve been wronged or misunderstood but because we are not in proper relationship with our Creator. We read the story of Cain and Abel, and what most of us see is Cain murdering his brother. We don’t see the underlying cause. Cain severed his relationship with God, and the result was that he severed his relationship with Abel. Could it be that our relationships are unfulfilling and burdensome because our relationship with our Creator is not in proper alignment?

Why have our relationships fallen into nothingness?

For the first 100 days of 2009, the church I attend, Healing Place Church, is doing a series entitled  Closer: Closer to God, Closer to Home and Closer to others.  This series has challenged me to rethink where I am in relationship to my Creator, my family, and my friends. I can be guilty sometimes of taking these relationships for granted. When I look at what God has blessed me with (my time, my talent, my treasures, my touch), am I using them to enrich my relationships or am I using them to serve myself?

God knows that we need each other because that’s the way we were created. The greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and the second was was like that, “love your neighbor”.  Again, God is screaming … RELATIONSHIP! Relationship with Him and relationship with one another. Isolating ourselves from others is very destructive and leads to emptiness. Someone out there “in your world” needs you to be at your best today. They need a relationship with you! Who is it? Your spouse? Your children? Your co-workers? What has to take place so that our relationships move from stale and stagnant to health and wholeness? Who do you need to forgive? Who do you need to spend time with? Who can you invest in? It begins with your Creator, and your relationship with Him will overflow into your relationship with others.