Growing Relationships

Think for a moment about any relationship in your life. Is it growing?

How would you answer that question? How would you know it is? What would be signs of growth?

Maybe one way to think about your relationship is like a tree. Are the roots growing – meaning is there more depth in your relationship? Are your conversations more helpful, more encouraging? Do you talk about things that matter? Do you talk about feelings, hopes, thoughts, etc. versus just calendars and opinions?

Is your relationship being fed? Are you exposing yourself to healthy influences, good content, positive experiences, other growing relationships? Do you pray together, encourage one another in faith, “work” together on your relationship with Jesus?

Is your relationship bearing fruit? Do you see the ways your relationship is blessing one another, blessing those around you, leading to “good” for others?

I’m more and more convinced that we struggle growing relationships. We don’t know how. We don’t want to make the effort. We have other things that consume our time and attention.

God created us to grow. He created us as relational beings. He desires us to grow in relationship. For as we grow in relationships, we become more like who He created us to be. Of course this is true in our relationship with Jesus, but it also holds true in all other relationships. As we grow, we lose parts of our “self.” That is good. Relationships require us to give up the independent, selfish, prideful person that can have such influence over us. But in relationship, that person has to go. Relationships don’t grow when we are independent, selfish, and prideful.

Are you growing in your relationships? It is a critically important question. It also will not happen by accident. We may experience difficult times in life that really force us to grow, but they are few and far between and they can’t be the foundation by which our relationships grow.

We have to work at it. We have to try. We will fail at times, but we have to keep trying.

If I desire growth in my relationships with Alisa and John, I have to try. So often my initial inclination is selfishness. I want to watch TV. I want to read. I want to get my project done. “I want” dictates my decisions. When that happens, growth doesn’t. Growth happens when I am willing to set aside my wants and invest in people. It means making time with Alisa a priority where we sit across the table the talk. It means doing the activity book with John, playing trains or UNO, or just sitting and talking with him. It means not rushing through the evening routine so I can get to doing what I want, but instead taking advantage of the time together.

If you don’t try, relationships won’t grow.

And, when we invest in people – no matter who they are – even though it means setting aside our “wants,” we begin to learn and experience that blessings come most clearly and most often through relationship NOT from our “wants”.

Don’t miss out on the gifts that you have right in front of you.