Weekly Thing
Genesis 2:18
It is not good for man to be alone.
Deuteronomy 6:5
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Proverbs 27:17
As iron sharpens iron, so does one man another.
Hebrews 10:24,25
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hello everyone,
It looks like I’m late, but to be honest I’ve been having an interesting time wrestling with a lot of things over the past two weeks. It’s been kind of crazy with going back and forth in my own mind about what I know to be true about God and my relationship with Him as a daughter, and being distressed about finances and ultimately dealing with doubt.
Thankfully, through one of those kinds of sermons that kick you in the gut and key people in my life to challenging and encouraging me, I have been strengthened by our Lord. All the more reason why it’s obvious that we are not meant to be alone in our Christian walks, but that we need our brothers and sisters - one-on-one as well as corporately. God uses the people in our lives to teach and rebuke us; to love and care for us; to humble and encourage us; to grieve and celebrate with us. It’s in the very fabric of our created selves that we are meant to be in relationships with other people. Community is important to God’s plan for us.
At the same time, we are also meant to keep God as our primary relationship and focus. It is so easy to distort our relationships with others and effectively put them in the place of God. It seems harsh to say, but in our hyper-dependency and desire to please we make idols out of people -- and they usually don’t even know it, because we don’t even recognize it as such. This can especially be true of romantic relationships, but also true of when we put our worth and esteem in being overly concerned with how others think about us (parents, friends, peers, teachers/bosses, etc). Our thoughts, actions, words, dress, and attitudes are essentially controlled by our fear of being rejected by others. Or, the reverse is that we have unreasonable expectations of the way others conduct themselves or dress or talk when they are with us. We lose our grace and our compassion. The unfortunate thing about it though is that we tend to not even be aware of it. These are so heavily imprinted on the way society runs that we don’t even see it, and it’s especially dangerous (and damaging!) when it creeps into our churches and places of worship. Sanctuaries suddenly lose their safety.
Could we work to be a people who are not controlled this way? Our first step is recognizing it, which honestly is easier said than done. We cannot recognize it on our own without God first revealing it to us in our hearts through His Holy Spirit but we can pray for this end. Perhaps some of us don’t have these issues and God has been increasingly gracious, but certainly then we can pray for it stop running rampant in the lives of others.
When I first started writing this I thought that I would write about God’s sovereignty and provision - obviously that changed and I’m not 100% sure why. But whatever the case is, I do pray that each one of us would learn to embrace friendships with others in a way that is open and honest and safe. On the flipside I also pray that we learn to not put people before God, and that our fear of the Lord would reign supremely in our hearts that we may serve and love Him - and that we would love others as the overflow. I pray that we could learn to trust our Father in heaven and learn to trust one another and not betray one another to gossip and slander. May each of us be refined, shaped, and changed by the Holy Spirit.
In love and in Him,
Your sister,
Yvonne
It is not good for man to be alone.
Deuteronomy 6:5
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Proverbs 27:17
As iron sharpens iron, so does one man another.
Hebrews 10:24,25
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hello everyone,
It looks like I’m late, but to be honest I’ve been having an interesting time wrestling with a lot of things over the past two weeks. It’s been kind of crazy with going back and forth in my own mind about what I know to be true about God and my relationship with Him as a daughter, and being distressed about finances and ultimately dealing with doubt.
Thankfully, through one of those kinds of sermons that kick you in the gut and key people in my life to challenging and encouraging me, I have been strengthened by our Lord. All the more reason why it’s obvious that we are not meant to be alone in our Christian walks, but that we need our brothers and sisters - one-on-one as well as corporately. God uses the people in our lives to teach and rebuke us; to love and care for us; to humble and encourage us; to grieve and celebrate with us. It’s in the very fabric of our created selves that we are meant to be in relationships with other people. Community is important to God’s plan for us.
At the same time, we are also meant to keep God as our primary relationship and focus. It is so easy to distort our relationships with others and effectively put them in the place of God. It seems harsh to say, but in our hyper-dependency and desire to please we make idols out of people -- and they usually don’t even know it, because we don’t even recognize it as such. This can especially be true of romantic relationships, but also true of when we put our worth and esteem in being overly concerned with how others think about us (parents, friends, peers, teachers/bosses, etc). Our thoughts, actions, words, dress, and attitudes are essentially controlled by our fear of being rejected by others. Or, the reverse is that we have unreasonable expectations of the way others conduct themselves or dress or talk when they are with us. We lose our grace and our compassion. The unfortunate thing about it though is that we tend to not even be aware of it. These are so heavily imprinted on the way society runs that we don’t even see it, and it’s especially dangerous (and damaging!) when it creeps into our churches and places of worship. Sanctuaries suddenly lose their safety.
Could we work to be a people who are not controlled this way? Our first step is recognizing it, which honestly is easier said than done. We cannot recognize it on our own without God first revealing it to us in our hearts through His Holy Spirit but we can pray for this end. Perhaps some of us don’t have these issues and God has been increasingly gracious, but certainly then we can pray for it stop running rampant in the lives of others.
When I first started writing this I thought that I would write about God’s sovereignty and provision - obviously that changed and I’m not 100% sure why. But whatever the case is, I do pray that each one of us would learn to embrace friendships with others in a way that is open and honest and safe. On the flipside I also pray that we learn to not put people before God, and that our fear of the Lord would reign supremely in our hearts that we may serve and love Him - and that we would love others as the overflow. I pray that we could learn to trust our Father in heaven and learn to trust one another and not betray one another to gossip and slander. May each of us be refined, shaped, and changed by the Holy Spirit.
In love and in Him,
Your sister,
Yvonne