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Wednesday, Jan 17 - Surrendering Your Relationships
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DEVOTIONAL: “SURRENDERING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS"
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It seems these days it is becoming more and more difficult to find a high-quality person with whom you can form a healthy relationship. So when you actually find someone of such merit, sometimes they become more than special – they become the center of your world.
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It’s easier than you might think to place your relationships with others over your relationship with God. Your defining relationships (spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, children, etc.) hold a special power over you. You often serve them differently than you do your general relationships. Now, serving your loved ones isn’t a bad thing. However, the motivation behind your service matters. If you serve out of a firm understanding that God is your King, you will have an inexhaustible source of unconditional love. However, if you serve out of conditional love, trying to earn their favor, then these people become a flawed king or queen in your life. They will fail you, and when they do, you’ll be devastated because the center of your world just crumbled.
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God commands us to “have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). He wants your adoration and love. He wants to be your God. Your relationship with Christ is holy, separate, and special.
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The Apostle Paul illustrates our relationship with God in Ephesians:
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“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.” (Ephesians 5:25-30)
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When God defines marriage, arguably the most consequential relationship on earth, He uses His relationship with the Church to help define marriage. When Christ is your central relationship, you are “cleansed… having no spot or wrinkle… holy and blameless.” No other relationship can compare! Therefore, surrendering your relationships to Christ is the only path to the kind of earthly relationships that generate life and don’t become a replacement for your relationship with your Creator.
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If you acknowledge God as King, you will surrender all to Him, including your relationships. Yet the beautiful thing is that in the act of surrender, God perfects your earthly relationships.
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Father, please help me to keep You at the center of all that I am. Forgive me for placing others before you. Help me to place You first, and teach me to love others like You love me.
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