Choosing a New Perspective - Part 1

Being chosen to be the love of someone's life is a wonderful experience, provided the feelings are mutual. Staying in love for a lifetime is the intention of most couples. Hardships come, but usually there is a balance of joy and sorrows that most marriages can tolerate. Troubles provide opportunities to develop a deeper closeness and sustaining partnership.

Choosing isolation is not easily reversed, but with God's help and determination, change is possible. I observed a couple challenge a long-standing stalemate by being honest with each other. The alternative would have been a relationship of detached co-existence and never getting to know each other.

Choosing intimacy over isolation is choosing to live within God's design for communications that reveals your needs, your feelings and who you've become. God will empower you to live within his design as you commit to taking this step toward honesty. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." God can heal a relationship when we're honest with him and others.  

Stubborn Honesty or Stubborn Pride? - Part 2

Change often doesn't come easy, even when it's for a godly purpose. When change requires making adjustments for ways to function in relationships, there seems to be a particularly stiff resistance. Stubbornness, to some extent, can work for your good but often serves as a detriment to happiness.

Stubbornness is most often perceived as being inflexible, but intimacy requires flexibility that's essential to feeling acceptable and loved. Stubbornness is designed to get your way and is therefore a controlling device, but it may isolate you from those who love you. Stubbornness even makes it difficult to hear God's voice because hearing God's voice will require you to make changes.

The Lord God in Psalm 81 has this to say. "But my people would not listen to me, nor submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices." Choosing to change begins by recognizing your stubborn heart. Letting it go can be the loving and accepting decision that opens the door for you to experience the true intimacy God intended.  

Stubborn Honesty or Stubborn Pride? - Part 1

Finding a companion for marriage that lasts a lifetime is an endeavor that begins in late adolescence because God created us for attachment, commitment, and compatibility. Without compatibility, a rift develops that keeps closeness and intimacy in the shadows while creating an atmosphere for continuous power struggles. Intimacy based on trust and acceptance is out of step with power struggles.

Pretending to accept what is incompatible with your values is dishonesty and a refusal to face the truth. Honesty has the courage to verbalize your real self to others. Don't pretend to go along with behaviors just to get others to accept you. Dishonesty will come back to haunt you in the form of power struggles and possible abandonment.

Choosing honesty by disclosing what you know to be your authentic self is what God intends. You can trust God's word for help from Psalm 18:32. "It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect." Believe me, God will make a way and a perfect time for you to express who you are. Honesty makes way for genuine intimacy and peace.

Intimacy: The Power of Trust - Part 3

Martin Luther, the Catholic monk who pioneered the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, told a group of young men whom he was mentoring not to consider marriage until they were at least thirty years of age. He believed it took this long for most men to mature enough to be for their wife and children something other than just the provider of their basic needs.

The more secure and settled a person's identity, the less likely power struggles will dominate a marriage relationship. Power struggles exist where one or both of the marriage partners feel diminished emotionally, intellectually, or physically. Where power struggles are present, the less intimacy, honesty, and closeness there will be in a marriage.

Power struggles are about striving for dominance over another person. Choosing to let go of control is choosing to trust, rather than to dominate. God's plan is for us to trust him rather than him forcing us to conform to his ways. Making choices for positive change means letting go of power struggles and becoming submissive to God and each other.  

Intimacy: The Power of Trust - Part 2

Most adults by their late twenties have found an acceptable person of the opposite sex to marry. We need to be close - to be emotionally, spiritually, and physically attached. Emotional isolation is unnatural and not what God intended, but happens when hurt and angry feelings are mishandled and where healthy communication is absent.

Emotional isolation supplants or replaces intimacy and close attachments if fear of rejection has a strong history. Coupled with fear of rejection is a reluctance to trust others or oneself. Fear of rejection tied with the inability to trust blocks healthy intimacy from taking place. Fear of rejection often originates with distant or absent parents.

Choosing to love and be loved must be grounded in knowing you are lovable. God loves and accepts you as you are, with all your fears, doubts, and lack of trust. God's desire is to transform you into a person capable of intimacy and loving attachments. In Psalm 51, David asked God to "renew a right spirit" within him. Will you do that?  

Intimacy: The Power of Trust - Part 1

Most everyone leaves the safety and security of their parents' home by their late twenties. Adults of this age are faced with a difficult but common truth. "Life is not simple, nor completely predictable." Surprisingly, they accept that the world wasn't created just for their pleasure, yet they can choose to make life meaningful and purposeful.

Choosing to change is done by making a transition from a self-sufficiency mind-set to creating a partnership with a trusted intimate other. It's possible for a couple to have been married five to ten years, but have yet to establish an intimate partnership. Many obstacles can stand in the way, including parents, friends, a career, children, or even the church.

Choosing to change should begin by realizing that marriage links together two people capable of being best friends and ready to establish true intimacy. Love, trust, and respect form the foundation for intimacy that can survive the troubles inherent in every marriage. What seems to be impossible is possible for God when you, in faith and hope, turn to him for help.

Harmony at Home and Work - Part 3

Even in the most secure relationships it's possible to get your feelings hurt. This happens as attempts are made to reveal your true self. Hope relies on being known and accepted for who you are. Hope helps us to be vulnerable enough so another person can share the real person beneath the surface. Without hope, the true self stays undisclosed and isolated.

Intimate couples do hurt each other's feelings, but hurt feelings can be worked out with communication and forgiveness. Communication is more than discussing an issue. It includes a willingness to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and to be protective of each other's vulnerabilities. When hurt feelings are given over to forgiveness, intimacy is strengthened.

Intimacy includes a willingness to communicate true beliefs and attitudes. This lays the groundwork for trust and respect to find a foothold. God honors truth and openness. Listen to  Psalm 56:11. "Teach me, Lord, what you want me to do and I will obey you faithfully." God never fails to act when we ask with an undivided heart.  

Harmony at Home and Work - Part 2

Most men and women begin a serious search for a life-long companion somewhere in their twenties. Finding the person of your dreams opens the gateway to knowing what it means to merge your life with someone you love. Intimacy occurs by getting to know and accept each other during the years you share together.

A difficult issue couples face is how to deal with hurt feelings caused by differences in each other's character and emotional makeup. Growing together is encouraged by realizing that differences in personalities can actually strengthen the bonds that bind a couple together. Someone noted, however, that we aren't very graceful about the failure to get our needs met.

It's impossible for another person to meet all your needs. Instead of letting frustration contaminate your relationship, accept your mate as you want to be accepted. God loves each of you with all your flaws. Trusting God to meet and satisfy your deeper needs that no other can meet is moving toward making choices for positive, godly change.

Harmony at Home and Work - Part 1

In our culture men and women in their twenties jump on a fast track that hopefully secures their place within a career field. To maintain a competitive edge, self-confidence and competence is a necessity. A paradox is that choosing a career as the solitary pathway to happiness with a commitment to do so often generates a disconnect from intimate others.

Inaugurating change includes honestly assessing your priorities. A job is important, for it contributes significantly to structuring your identity. However when elevated to the position of highest priority, a career may create distance from loved ones. Establishing a healthy balance demands a thorough examination of workplace expectations and personal values.

God intended for you to find meaning and purpose in work. He also designed you for relationships, for here you receive the physical, emotional, and spiritual nurturing that brings contentment. When your identity is anchored to Christ Jesus, continuous harmony between a career and intimate relationships can flow with confidence.  

Allowing Intimacy: Getting Close - Part 3

An early pioneer in the field of psychology observed two basic entities known as the pain and pleasure principle. I'm sure you would agree that most people try to avoid pain, and when it's felt, an all-out effort is exerted to find relief. Too much emotional pain caused by a significant other can lead to despair and often finds relief by creating distance.

What causes a couple to gravitate toward pain and despair? Differences in personalities, beliefs, and positions taken on issues are fertile grounds for hurt feelings, conflict, and misunderstanding. Ideally, pain caused by personal differences could lead to deeper closeness and intimacy when communication leads to understanding and is honored and accepted.

Positive change is possible when pain is viewed as a friendly messenger. Pain becomes the gateway to wisdom if permitted to do so. Job 6:25 proclaims: "How painful are honest words." If you can trust your inward pain to a loved one who hears and understands, a door opens to a deeper, more pleasurable intimate relationship.  

Allowing Intimacy: Getting Close - Part 2

Recently an elderly woman edging near despair made a startling statement. "I realize my whole life has been a sham!" She never intended to be deceptive, but now in the autumn of her years she's had no friends. Explaining further, she told of never permitting anyone get close. She had spent her whole life keeping others at a distance.

God created the family for each other. In his design, family members relate to one another with love, trust, and respect. This framework makes way for openness and honesty. This is not easy to accomplish, for it takes commitment, but the rewards far outweigh the loneliness and isolation of a life locked away from others and God.

No matter what your age, change is possible and can begin by taking a small step of faith to alter the way you live. The Lord Jesus Christ stands ready to help. Listen to Psalm 118:5-6. "In my anguish, I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me by setting me free. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid." May God bless you today.

Allowing Intimacy: Getting Close - Part 1

During adolescence, an inner yearning begins to evolve to meet and be accepted by a special member of the opposite sex. Do you remember your first love as a teenager? I realize the majority of adolescent love affairs do not endure the trials and tests of those years. The reason for most failed marriages of adolescents is the absence of a solid identity.

Intimacy depends on honesty and truthfulness. It relies on having enough self-confidence to be transparent so a significant other can know you for the person you are - warts and all. Failure to be truthful is indicative of deception that ultimately isolates you by fostering loneliness and preventing the closeness God intended.

Making choices for positive change includes trusting God, others, and yourself enough to begin opening up to what's on the inside of you. Being honest opens the door for a new person in Christ Jesus to emerge. The pathway to change can spring from accepting who you really are because that person is who God sees and loves.