Trent's weekly muse 23rd Sept - Relationships of Openess and Honesty
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:
Relational Value two: Relationships Of Openness And Honesty
Value Statement:
Relationships of openness and honesty allow us to drop the mask and the image we unconsciously present to the world. In this way we can live in conscious freedom and joy before people as we do before God. We are accepted in(by?) the Beloved, accepted in the Body, accepted by self. We rejoice that we are deeply loved, blessed with faith and highly favoured in Jesus Christ.
Romans 12:9; Ephesians 4:15;Romans 2:1-11; 2 Corinthians 4: 1-2; Romans 6:12-14; 2 Corinthians 7:1; 2 John 1:5-10.
Review the story of Esther 3.
Sometimes you see a person who is free – they do what they do and they do not care about people around them. They break convention, they don’t live by the rules, they just live and Oh how they live. They seem to just have a joy and freedom that bubbles up from inside. It scares us but if we are honest we are also envious of their freedom and ability to experience life.
Learning to be connected. Taking the risk and working at building relationships that are deeper than those we have been used to. For us to see the Kingdom culture released into our lives and flow out of our lives into those we have connection with we need to learn to be in that place of connection with others. It doesn’t mean that we throw the door open and invite everyone in. Not at all, there is the need for boundaries and I will talk about that in the weeks ahead. But we need to start getting real with people. Its hard, as I said last week; what if they don’t like what I have down inside? It is risky.
But it is the only way to live free, to live powerful and to live a life of love. That is how Jesus lived. He knew who He was, He had a strong connection with the Father and He lived a life of freedom. It was a challenge to those around Him and He understood that it wasn’t His problem to manage their response to Him. His only job was to be in a place of openness and honesty in His relationships – He was to manage Himself.
ACTION:
To begin the process of openness and honesty, start to look around and discover who, in friendship, may be trusted with certain parts of your life. Begin to develop a friendship with those people. We build our connections step-by-step through successes and failures.
It takes time and love expressed before we can trust ourselves to self-disclosure. Let's work at developing meaningful relationships that will allow us to go into this amazing adventure of covenantal relationship.