Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, walked the face of the earth over four thousand years ago. John 3:16(NLT) says, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Through Jesus Christ, we learn how much God loves us. His only begotten Son is His greatest treasure, and He gave him to the world. Anyone that has been given the privilege and honor of being someone’s parent or guardian can relate to this. As responsible and supportive parents and guardians, our love for our children is beyond what we could have ever imagined. Our hearts swell with love for them, and we want to protect them at all cost. We would do just about anything for their well-being. Well, God’s love is exponentially higher and deeper than ours. The love He has for His Son and the unity they share is nothing short of perfection, yet God gave His Son to be sacrificed for our sins. He did this because He loves us that much. It’s almost beyond comprehension.
This not only demonstrates the worth and value God has placed on our lives, but it also demonstrates in high-definition technicolor the kind of relationship that God wants with us. Jesus Christ shed his blood to cleanse our sins for all eternity, and not only this, he made it possible for us to have the kind of relationship with Heavenly Father that even Adam and Eve didn’t have. Ephesians 1:13-14(MSG) tells us, “It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.” Through Jesus Christ, God placed His Spirit in our body temples and then sealed us with His Holy Spirit! And as amazing as this is, it’s just the first installment of all that God has for us—all that is to come.
God wanted a family, and because of the pattern He set up, children are produced from the seed of their fathers. You and I couldn’t have done this. We didn’t set it up this way, Heavenly Father did. Genesis 1:11, 21(NLT) tells us, “Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.” And that is what happened. 21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.” Birds can’t produce monkeys, and elephants can’t produce giraffes. The pattern that God set forth is that every living thing produces after its own kind.
In this same manner, God created us in His image. We were created to be like Him. Why? So that we could have fellowship and relationship with Him. He wanted a family and we’re it! Genesis 1:26-27(NLT) tells us, “26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” God created us to be like Him, and 1John 4:8 tells us that God is love. Therefore, you and I have no other choice but to conclude that love is a big part of who we are and what we were put on earth to do.
God’s love is life! God’s love expressed through Jesus Christ is the foundation of our lives, and relationships are the houses we build on that foundation. As we build and strengthen relationships with others, we are privileged to be conduits of Heavenly Father’s love, because when His love is expressed through the example of Jesus Christ, it is the most powerful force in the universe. God’s love creates! It motivates and produces the most wonderful results. Our responsibility as His children is to make sure we move through His love. This is how we continue to remain in harmony with God’s agenda, however, expressing His unconditional love to others is sometimes where many of us get stuck. For those who love us back and are friendly towards us, we find that being loving is very easy. But when it comes to those that have hurt us and are not supportive towards our well-being, we tend to disconnect and cut ourselves off. We stop the flow of God’s love towards them, and therefore cut off an avenue for God’s love to flow into us as well.
Our self-preservation reflexes are engrained in our makeup. They come baked in, but as we mature spiritually, we should recognize that God is our Protector, and the confidence and knowledge of this should dissuade us from putting up walls and keeping them up. Of course, there are certain individuals within every family unit that are detrimentally toxic, and we must keep our distance, but as followers of Jesus Christ, He’s the One who decides this. Our posture must be one of obeying HIS guidance. Some individuals in our families are nothing like the people we’ve made them out to be or that others have made them out to be. We’ve ostracized them, ignored and neglected them, and casted them aside. It could be that they are the very link to God’s plan for bringing His healing to issues within our bloodlines, and because of a trick of the devil, we’re missing the blessing of God. We’ve allowed roadblocks, things like negative attitudes, feelings, and thoughts to operate in our hearts, and these things have blocked God’s love from moving through us. We can’t see people the way He sees them, and we have to change this.
None of us understand the magnitude of the way internal blockers can impede the flow of God’s love from moving through us. The decisions we make to hold on to fear, shame, anger, resentment, and hurt are so costly because they affect generations to come. Negativity does not remain dormant or stagnant. It spreads, but praise God, so does His love. His love not only spreads through us, but it bountifully impacts everything and everyone it touches.
Our sojourn on this earth provides us with opportunities to learn the spiritual lessons of God’s love through our relationship with Him. You and I can’t dictate what those lessons are, but we can be assured that the first place they will start is within our own families. As believers and followers of Christ, we can’t afford to overlook the reality that his love working through us is an integral part of our destinies. As we lean completely on Jesus Christ, and remain committed to follow his lead, he will direct us to strengthen our relationships first with God, then within our family units, and finally with our relationships with others.■
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.
“Strengthening Relationships”, by Alexandra Copeland. Springfield Fellowship © 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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