Understanding What Characterizes Great Relationships
Your happiness in life is directly proportional to the greatness of your relationships. There are four things that will characterize your life when you are satisfied and in right relationships. These four things are joy, gladness, thanksgiving and you will want to express the happiness in your heart through song. We all have different degrees of intimacy in our relationships which is according to the relationship. However, love and peace are what will characterize all of your relationships when they are right.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
Thanksgiving and sound of a melody. Isaiah 51:3b
Understanding the Levels of Great Relationships
Relationships are privileges that are given to us. The first relationship that needs to be in order is a person’s relationship with God. Jesus Christ came to bring love and peace on earth to those who are in a right relationship with God. Relationships go from greater to lesser degrees of intimacy. God knows everything and is intimately acquainted with all of our ways. Nothing is hidden from Him. The next relationship, if you are married, is your relationship with your spouse. Our spouse is the next level and our spouse knows us (or should know us) better than any other human. The greatest level of love and trust should be with a spouse and it is the only relationship where you are one in body, soul and spirit, or at least should be. The next level is family relationships. The next level is friendships. The next level is neighbors and acquaintances. The last level of relationships is enemies.When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Proverbs 16:7 If you want to have a great marriage and if you do, life is amazingly wonderful with a great marriage. A great marriage is a taste of heaven on earth and truly the most satisfying of all relationships. However, when you get married then you take all of your other relationships into that marriage. You take all of your baggage from past relationships with you. Oftentimes we do not realize all of the baggage that we have from our past relationships until it starts to make itself known in our marriage. The best thing you can do to have a great marriage is to be restored, if possible, and healed from past relationships. Relationships are difficult because they can cause hurts. When we are young we do not choose who most of our relationships are with and have no control over the hurt that happens. However, we may not be able to control what happens to us but we can control our responses. It is not what happens to us but our response to what happens that determines the destruction in our lives. Being hurt from people can bring anger or bitterness. If we are not healed then the anger or bitterness will come out in our relationships with others. Jesus Christ is the Great Healer. If you will go to Him then He can and wants to heal you. Spiritually and emotionally healthy people have healthy relationships. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; Hebrews 12:14,15
Instructions To A Young Life 