Relationships & YOU

Paul wrote this in Romans 12:

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 

And in Philippians 2 he wrote:

Do nothing from selfishness or for personal glory, but in humility consider one another as more important than yourself.  Don’t look out for your own interests, but for the interests of others. Your mind should be the same as that of Christ Jesus

With those two passages in mind, I’d like to share with you something written by Landon Saunders, which I’ve slightly modified here.  I hope this will bless you and help you to serve and pray and love as Jesus did. 

Any relationship can change because of you.    I believe that is undeniably true.

But it is not true that you can get the other person to change!     You can’t.

The only person you can do something about is you.

You can change, and when you change, the relationship changes. 

A man and a woman had been married for twenty-five years.  At that point, the relationship was virtually bankrupt.  Tensions had peaked.  Children were suffering. 

In search of help, the man attended a workshop on relationships, where he heard an idea that sounded radical.  Having nothing to lose, he decided to try it.  The idea was that he could simply choose to love no matter what, without any conditions or expectations.

He decided to love, again, the woman he had once loved.  He acted on the idea and stuck with it.  As the weeks passed, he sometimes felt he could not go on.  But he did.  She was skeptical at first, then attacked, trying to shake him from whatever game he was playing.  But he was unshakable.  After several months, the relationship began to take on a bit of new life.  At the time he told me his story, he said they had just had the most joyous month of their entire marriage.

Easy?               No  

Does it always work out this way?         No 

The point is simply that change can occur when you change.  And even if nothing improves in the relationship, you will be the stronger for having increased your own capacity for patience and understanding.
 You will also be better equipped for having a life that loves to happen - no matter what happens.