From one introvert to another

Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. 

(Joseph Brodsky)

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

As we continue on with our new year's goals, it is important to consider the status of our relationships. If you are a little bit of a loner, you might want to change that perspective this year. It may not be easy to enter into relationships because you are bit shy, introverted, or just haven't had the best of luck with others over the course of time. Whatever the reason for attempting to walk this day-to-day relationship with Jesus out on your own, you really cannot do it alone! You and I were created to relate - like it or not, we actually were created to need each other.

One may stand, but two stand stronger and are even there to help pick one another up when we fall. I guess that is likely where one who stands alone really deprives themselves. There is no one to support them when they are a bit wobbly in their walk, much less pick them up when they fall flat on their faces. Temptation will come - will you resist it alone? You may for a little while, but you can trust me on this - Satan will change his tactic time and time again to prey upon your weakness, but if you are standing alone, you may not see it coming!

There is nothing more that our enemy enjoys than seeing a Christian attempting to stand alone in this world. Why? You are easy prey! He knows there is no 'back-up' in your life. We all need 'back-up' - like it or not. I think God may be trying to move some of us out of our comfort zone. We may not relish these relationships at first, but you can count on this introvert to tell it like it is - we ALL need each other. You extroverts out there - don't give up on us, but please be patient as we gain the courage to come out of our shells. Just sayin!

I need my friends

As we come to Jesus, we might expect the immediate healing of all our anxieties, hang-ups, and long-held issues. We know there are things in our lives Jesus forgives but then he "deals" with them for a while until we realize they are finally gone. The sinful stuff in our lives that gets our focused attention through God's eyes will get dealt with in pretty short order compared to the stuff we just let 'hang on' even when he is telling us to let it go.

 
Jesus and his followers came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch the man. So Jesus held the blind man’s hand and led him out of the village. Then he spit on the man’s eyes. He laid his hands on him and asked, “Can you see now?” The man looked up and said, “Yes, I see people. They look like trees walking around.” Again Jesus laid his hands on the man’s eyes, and the man opened them wide. His eyes were healed, and he was able to see everything clearly. (Mark 8:22-25)

We come to Jesus just as we are - complete with all our hang-ups and messiness - with no need to clean up before we say yes to him. We sometimes are with Jesus in our lives for a while with more than a few of these hang-ups and messy areas in our lives - not because he doesn't have the capability to immediately deal with them and remove them, but because there is something which happens in the continual washing over time. In those moments of seeking him time and again, we find there is a connection made much like the connection made when he led this blind man out of the village.

At first, we may not even realize how to get free from those things which have been "with us" for so long in our lives. This is where we need the faithfulness of friends who will walk with us to the place we come face-to-face with Jesus. This man might have known he was in the presence of Jesus, but he didn't yet see Jesus fully for who he was. The friends were the ones interceding for this man - it wasn't the man begging for his healing - it was the friends. We need each other - plain and simple. We may not recognize how much until we find our friends interceding for the mess our lives have become. Just sayin!

The 3-C's of "Turning Away"

What is it you actually walk away from?  In clothing stores, I find it easy to turn away from things which have a very low cut, loud prints, or some type of price tag which is out of this world.  In food stores, I find it easy to turn away from things I cannot identify displayed in the meat case, or pickled animal parts in jars on shelves.  In conversations this time of year, I find it easy to turn away from all those controversial ones about who to elect as our next leader in our nation.  Some things are easier to walk away from while others are a little more challenging - like the candy at the checkout counter or the plate of freshly baked cookies someone brings into work to share.  What we choose to walk away from may be the very thing which could take us down a path we don't really want to pursue!

Walk away from the evil things in the world—just leave them behind, and do what is right, and always seek peace and pursue it. (I Peter 3:11 VOICE)

Scripture is clear - we are to walk away from the evil things in this world.  This would include any unwholesome conduct, conversation, or company.  Conduct is really behavior - when we turn away from bad behavior, we are less likely to become engaged in the same behavior.  For example, when I was raising my kids, I would give them a little time away from each other in order to go through a "cooling down" period when they were behaving poorly toward one another.  It usually worked because they really didn't want to be alone in their rooms.  That solitude gave them a moment to consider their behavior.  Often, when we are considering a course of behavior we might be enticed to pursue, we will have this niggling inside which is warning us about that particular course of conduct.  It isn't quite right and we know it.  When we are willing to walk away from it - even when it seems enticing to us - we often find we look back upon that choice without any regret!

Conversation is another area where we often need to just "walk away" from the whole unwholesome path it is taking.  If we examine scripture, we are warned to avoid the kind of conversations which will lead us down roads where we are complaining, arguing, antagonizing, or even ridiculing another. It is probably one of the hardest things to avoid gossip, but scripture clearly tells us not to engage in this manner of conversational "sabotage" of another person's character.  Really, when we consider "walking away" from conversations we are not going to benefit from, or which will certainly not benefit another, it makes sense. There is no positive outcome from these conversations - they just end up creating a higher degree of dissatisfaction over whatever we were complaining about, get us riled up so we are likely to take pretty unwholesome action, or leave someone else exposed in the process.

Company is the third area where we might find ourselves faced with "companions" who are just not that committed to the same values we are, or are kind of deviant in their conduct. When we choose to walk away from these interactions and find different relationships, there may be a sense of abandonment the other feels as a result of us not choosing to pursue that relationship any longer. In some cases, it actually helps us become stronger in our commitment to what truly matters in this life. People are important, but there are times when some people are just not right for us because we are too weak to avoid the things they are doing which might lead us into compromise, or we are just being continually degraded in the relationship.  The company we keep matters - it affects our conduct and conversation, so it cannot be eliminated from this "walk away" process.

The important part of this instruction to us is not the "walking away", but the "pursuing" part.  We turn away from something, but it is always to turn toward something better.  We turn away from unwholesome conversation to pursue that which is uplifting, encouraging, etc.  We turn away from conduct which is a little sketchy and pursue conduct which is grace-filled, honorable, and trustworthy.  We turn away from company which is not pursuing the stuff God tells us is okay to pursue in order to avoid the trap that wrong conduct will actually create for us down the road!  Just sayin!