Luke 6:47-49<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nTrust is based on experience, either a person\u2019s own experience or the experience of someone else they know.\u00a0 If a person just met someone for the first time, they would not trust them. Because trust takes time to build.\u00a0 The exception to that is trusting someone based on the recommendation of someone who is already trusted.\u00a0 For instance, if someone I trust makes a recommendation of a doctor I do not know but that they have worked with, I would trust their recommendation and put my trust in an unknown doctor.\u00a0 People also tend to trust professionals that they don\u2019t know. For instance, someone drops off their child for school on the first day, entrusting their care and safety to an unknown teacher.\u00a0 But even this is based on experience. The child may have had other teachers, and the parent remembers their teachers from their school years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are building blocks to any relationship.\u00a0 One does not \u201clove at first sight,\u201d that is something of the movies. One may \u201clust\u201d at first sight, but love takes time to build, and there are necessary building blocks in order for that to happen.\u00a0 The first building block is respect and safety.\u00a0 Before any relationship is built, one has to feel safe, they have to know they won\u2019t be harmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once a person feels safe, the next step is to find something you share in common with someone else, something to do together you both enjoy.\u00a0 That might be talking, or a shared interest like sports.\u00a0 We\u2019re not just talking romantic relationships here, this is how any relationship is built.\u00a0 If an employee is going to trust a boss, or a boss trust and employee, that is built through the shared experience of working together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third step in a relationship is building attraction, again this is not just romantic attraction.\u00a0 One finds joy in working together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fourth step is trust. Trust, as previously mentioned, is based on experience.\u00a0 Having shared camaraderie or worked together for some time, trust begins to develop. You know what the other person is going to do, they start to think like you, and you start to think like them.\u00a0 You begin to count on them.\u00a0 And you know that when you are not around, they aren\u2019t going to do something to sabotage the relationship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fifth step then becomes love.\u00a0 Love involves two specific things, sacrifice and joy.\u00a0 Love is when we take from ourselves and project onto someone else.\u00a0 We don\u2019t take from ourselves and project back onto ourselves, that would be narcissism. The projecting onto someone else is sacrifice. We take our time, as an example, and give that to someone else. We take something we have and that we value and we sacrifice that for someone else.\u00a0 However, the sacrifice is made not with angst, or guilt or expectation.\u00a0 It is made with joy.\u00a0 We don\u2019t keep score of what we sacrificed, we don\u2019t let others know what we sacrificed.\u00a0 We just offer, and we do it with joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which leads to the sixth step in a relationship, which is vulnerability or intimacy.\u00a0 We\u2019re not talking about sexual intimacy, but rather a place where thoughts and feelings are expressed freely and deeply.\u00a0 Being able to confide in someone, knowing they won\u2019t gossip or break our confidence is \u201cintimate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some relationships we have are purely transactional.\u00a0 For instance, I see the same tellers at the bank I go to.\u00a0 I give them a deposit, they put it in my account.\u00a0 I trust them to do this job, and that trust is based on their years of getting the deposits correct.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t say I love them or am vulnerable around them. This is because the relationship is purely transactional.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We need more than transactional relationships in life.\u00a0 Everyone needs someone to confide in, to feel free and comfortable around, where words don\u2019t have to be measured, where struggles can be kept confidential.\u00a0 And it takes time and skill to build these kinds of relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When a misstep is taken in a relationship, one has to go back sometimes to the beginning block, and reestablish safety, build back trust and let love happen again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our relationship with God works in a similar fashion. In order to love God, one has to respect Him, and know that they are respected by Him.\u00a0 One has to spend time with God, one has to sacrifice with joy. And only after we love God are we able to become vulnerable and intimate with Him, to pour out our hearts in prayer, to come to Him in repentance, to open up to Him in confession, to completely trust in Him even when life gets hard.\u00a0 When God disappoints us, and He will at times, we might have to take a step back and re-establish trust and joy.\u00a0 This relationship all tilts on spending time with God in prayer and worship and sacrificing with joy.\u00a0 If someone rarely prays or worships, the relationship is probably more transactional than loving\u2014we \u201ctransact\u201d with God a couple of times a year.\u00a0 When one succumbs to the same temptation all the time, one has to question is there really a sacrifice for God?\u00a0 When one has been really knocked down in life, one might think that God is unsafe, and the relationship will need to be built back again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Bible verses chose for this relationship are about laying a foundation that will survive a storm.\u00a0 We know that a pyramid has a much bigger base than a pinnacle.\u00a0 And for a building, the foundation is thicker than the floors above.\u00a0 It is critical that in order to build up a relationship, the foundation has to be solid, whether this relationship is with someone else or with God.\u00a0 It takes time to build.\u00a0 One cannot love God if he or she hasn\u2019t taken the time to know Him.\u00a0 Just like a person meeting someone and becoming physically intimate with them almost immediately doesn\u2019t work out because they are putting on a roof without a foundation or walls to support it.\u00a0 In being called to love, God and one another, there are necessary steps in building a relationship, and all of those steps start with safety and then time before moving up to trust, love and vulnerability.<\/p>\n
Lord, thank You for the relationships I have (mention someone of them). Help me to form strong and health relationships.\u00a0 Help me to see people I can trust. Give me wisdom so that I can be a trusted friend.\u00a0 Help me to avoid gossiping about things people confide in me.\u00a0 May I respect others always and have them feel safe around me. Help me to see those who I have things in common with. Strengthen my relationship with You, may I come to You with joy, with trust and with faith.\u00a0 Thank You Lord for the relationship I share with You. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\nA relationship is built with specific blocks assembled in a specific order\u2014respect\/safety, commonality (finding things in common), attraction, trust, love (marked by sacrifice made with joy), and finally intimacy\/vulnerability.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u201cEvery one who comes to Me and hears My words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep, and laid the foundation upon rock; and when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house, and could not shake it, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":359210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110490],"tags":[7449,2539,17663],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7063866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-prayer-team","tag-blocks","tag-building","tag-relationship"],"yoast_head":"\n
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