Healthy Relationships, Part 2 - Pastor Kenneth Woolf

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New Life COTR Wednesday May 30, 2007
HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS
Part 2

INTRODUCTION: Next week we’re going to be focusing on having a Healthy Family. We’ll begin with the marriage. “Do you want a marriage that rocks, instead of a marriage on the Rocks?
Life is all about relationships. But countless people are in relationships that need a miracle. Every day we see shattered relationships. Husband and wife, parent and children, sisters and brothers, neighbors and co-workers who aren’t talking to each other, church members who don’t like each other.
Many people are settling for mediocre relationships! Relationship pain continues to grow in America.
Approximately children every day hear these words from their parents. “WE’RE GETTING A DIVORCE. Or words like this, mommy or daddy aren’t going to live here anymore.
In ten years, that can translate into negatively affecting more than 7 million relationships. THIS HAS TO STOP.
Relationships were designed by God. It’s a God idea. We were all created with the capacity, with the desire, with the need to have healthy relationships.
You and I will never fulfill our God given destiny outside of healthy relationships.
Very seldom to you see someone who doesn’t want to be connected to others. To love and be loved, to share dreams and hopes, to be valued.
Everyone longs for emotional, physical, and spiritual closeness and intimacy with others. Where does that longing come from? God created us for relationships!

How do we know this, let’s go back to the beginning.
Genesis 2:15-25- Turn and Read
Adam was the first person God created. He must have felt in harmony with God and the creation. He had an intimate connection with both.
The Garden of Eden was a true paradise, a safe place to exist. There was no war, famine or natural catastrophes or sin.
God gave Adam everything he needed: work to do, a close relationship with his Creator, everything he needed to take care of himself.
YET GOD SAID, “IT’S NOT GOOD FOR MAN TO BE ALONE.
God has also planted deep within man the desire for an emotional and physical connection, a bonding of the inner spirit, an intimate attachment of the soul called human relationship!
God created woman and the two became one flesh and enjoyed the Garden of Eden TOGETHER! They had relationship with one another and God!
Yet they sinned and disobeyed God and when God questioned them about their sin Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the devil. Neither was willing to take responsibility!
Their perfect relationships were shattered, with one another and with God!
TRANSITION: From this story we learn about what it takes to have healthy relationships.

Three things you must understand if you’re going to have healthy relationships.
1. You are made for relationships
2. You are made with the capacity to choose
3. You are made to take responsibility for yourself
Understanding these three things can revolutionize your life and your relationships.
First thing you need to really understand.

I. YOU ARE MADE FOR RELATIONSHIPS
While we choose HOW we’ll participate in relationships, we have no choice whether or not we’ll participate in relationships.
Your only real choice is whether you will work to make your relationships healthy, or whether you will hinder them or enhance them.
You are made for three kinds of relationships. 1. With others- 2. With yourself- 3. With God.
Each of these relationships is not only important but they are all interrelated. If one of these relationships is out of balance the others will be as well.
WE ARE MADE FOR RELATIONSHIPS! The first thing you’ve got to understand if you’re going to have healthy relationships.
TRANSITION: The next thing to understand if you’re going to have healthy relationships

II. YOU ARE MADE WITH THE CAPACITY TO CHOOSE
You can’t always choose your relationships-you didn’t choose your parents your siblings or your children-but you can choose how you will act in those relationships.
One of the statements people make in troubled relationships is “I HAVE NO CHOICE.”
Two sisters have a heated argument, and the older one vows she will never speak to the younger until she apologizes. She fumes, I HAVE NO CHOICE!
A husband is unfaithful, and the wife files for divorce, all the while crying, I HAVE NO CHOICE.
A man feels betrayed by a business partner and shuts down the relationship claiming, I HAVE NO CHOICE.
A person is the member of a church and is repeatedly offended by another members comments. He gets frustrated and leaves the church saying I HAVE NO CHOICE!
God gave you the power to choose. So when it comes to how you will respond in a relationship that has hit rough waters, never tell yourself, I HAVE NO CHOICE! That’s a lie. The truth is, you do have a choice, lots of choices.
*****Here’s why so many people struggle with this issue. Choice equals change!
Making a choice is often difficult because it requires change. And that change can be threatening. CHOICE EQUALS CHANGE!
Sometimes it just comes down to making a choice. You have to take control of your life, stop being a victim of your past, and start moving on to something new. You have to make a choice. You have to change. Even when the change is scary!
NOT CHOOSING IS ITSELF A CHOICE.
The mistake so many of us make in our relationships is to think that if we just let things stay as they are, if we can postpone making a choice, making a change, then we can get through a difficult experience.
We fail to realize that by not making critical choices we are choosing. By not doing anything we force change to be done to us.
What will you choose? Will you choose to act in ways that hinder or enhance your relationships? The choice you make will affect everything about your life.
It doesn’t matter what others do to me or what circumstances I face everyday, I determine all of my feelings, sad or happy, by what I choose to think and how I choose to react to what happens to me. NOW THAT’S TRUE FREEDOM!
TRANSITION: The key to healthy relationships. 1. You were made for relationships, 2. You were made with the capacity to choose.

III. YOU ARE MADE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF
The Story of Adam and Eve is the story of us. They were made to take responsibility for themselves. But after they disobeyed God they violated that truth.
When faced with the consequences of their choices, neither Adam nor eve was willing to take responsibility. Each pointed the finger at someone else. WE’RE LIKE THAT!
When we find ourselves in relationship difficulties, we point the finger and say, it’s him or it’s her.
One of the keys to experiencing healthy relationships is realizing you must take personal responsibility for your actions and choices.
It’s far too easy for us to slip into the pattern set way back in the Garden of Eden: blame the other person.
Proverbs 19:3- “A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the Lord.”
YOU ARE MADE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF!
2Corinthians 5:10- “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”
Romans 14:10-13 Turn and Read

CONCLUSION: Life is relationships; the rest is just details. God made you for relationships. You can’t change that. You work either with or against this truth, but you can’t choose whether it exists.
The only choice you have is whether you will work to make those relationships great or allow them to cause you-and others-great pain.
1. You were created for relationships
2. You were created with the capacity to choose
3. You were created to take responsibility for yourself
IT’S NEVER JUST ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON
1Peter 4:10- “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’ grace in its various forms.”