Storms Of Life- Relationships Series

The Storms of Life

Relationship Storms

CCCAG July 14th, 2019

Scripture- Genesis 2:18

Intro:

One of the benefits of being a bivocational pastor is that I get to meet real people in real situations instead of sitting in a church office all day.

Over the years as a paramedic I've had dozens of different partners on the ambulance. A few of them have been Christians but most of them have not.

I once had a 19-year-old partner, we will call him Steve, who had just graduated from EMT school. He was young full of energy and willing to learn. He was also a nonstop talker which I found exhausting, but we got along pretty well.

One of the things he talked about the most was about his love life. He was a hopeless and frankly unrealistic romantic. His love life had a very predictable pattern-

1. He would meet a new girl, and they would go out on a first date. The next time I worked with him, he would talk about how she is “the one” and I’d hear all about the future he had planned for them.

2. Second date- again, she’s the perfect woman for me. I love her so much my heart is bursting and it’s almost a physical pain to have to come to work and be apart from her. He spent the entire shift texting her love notes.

Late into the second date, he says the magic words to her- “I love you”

3. Third date- he sees a flaw, and spend the next several hours exploring her flaws with me. About 50% of the woman never made it past this date.

4. Fourth Date- Man, this woman is a mess. I better break it off with her right now before it gets much more serious. You have to help me break it off.

Obviously, Steve was an example of a person who had difficulties in his relationships, and would often be tossed and turned in the waves of emotions that relationships can bring us.

Today we are going to be talking about some of the most gut-wrenching storms we can go through in life, and those have to do with our relationships.

The reason that a storm in our relationships can be so devastating is because the closer the relationship, the more your own emotional wellbeing is dependent upon that person.

As we all know, emotions can be messy things.

With all of that, our God is a God that is a relational being.

This attribute of God is seen throughout creation, in both in inanimate object such as the relationships between planets and their stars, even in the smallest unit of matter- the atom and the way the electrons are bound to the protons and neutrons.

We also see this in living creations between different animal species. Most animals on this earth live in some type of community.

Human beings being the highest level of creation on this earth were designed by our creator to live in community.

God is all about relationships.

In fact, when He created humanity, God created the male first, and had this to say about him.

Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him

Prayer

We are going to explore today is how to deal with relationship problems. To do that, let’s set a foundation and look at the different kinds of relationships we have.

First- The importance of Relationships

One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, is quoted as saying this about relationships-

“Be very slow in choosing your friends and be even slower about leaving them.” This is true no matter how superficial or how deep a relationship is.

The big idea today is this-

Our lives have never been meant to be lived alone. We are always called to live in community with others through varying levels of relationship.

I've said this over and over again but in case you missed it I am very much an introvert. So much so that when I was younger I had a dream of coming into a lot of money and buying a decent sized cabin with a ton of land and a good fishing pond somewhere in Montana where my nearest neighbor was at least 5 miles away.

I still carry a little bit of that dream with me today but I have also come to realize that if God gave me that dream I would never grow into the person that he wants and needs me to be to fulfill his Kingdom purpose.

God is all about relationships. Relationships are central to God’s nature.

You can see the importance of relationships just by looking at God Himself. God is three people in one Godhead.