Place the Highest Value on Relationships

Principle #1: Place the Highest Value on Relationships. Welcome to Transforming Relationships; a six-week study following Pastor Tom Holladay’s book, “The Relationship Principles of Jesus.”

While reading through the Gospels, Pastor Tom noticed six relationship principles emerging from Jesus’ teaching. Holladay writes, “First, these are clearly not the only principles Jesus gave us with regard to relationships. Yet these six are at the core of his teaching and his example...My hope and prayer is that we’ll be encouraged to set off in a new direction—the direction of relating to others the way Jesus did.” 

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Matthew 22:37-39 (NLT)

Scripture leaves no doubt that Jesus deeply values relationships: our connection with God and with each other. Principle #1 challenged me to make my relationship with God and others a priority. Sounds simple enough, but in order to do that I had to break it down.

First things first; I must first have a healthy, strong, and loving relationship with God. The best way to to nurture that relationship is by sharing my emotions with Him in prayer. I just loved Holladay’s choice of using David as a pattern for revitalizing my prayer life: “(David’s) facing a huge problem, and he begins to pour out his heart. He talks to God with emotion about the problem. And before he comes to the end of the psalm, his heart is at peace. The problems are still there, but David’s heart has been refocused in the course of the twenty or thirty verses of the psalm....I have no doubt that one of the reasons for (our) lack of peace is that we never share our emotions with God. We pray logically. We pray consistently. We even pray biblically. But we don’t follow David’s example of praying emotionally.”

Secondly, God commands me to love others. I can measure my progress in a tangible way by targeting one relationship to improve upon and trusting God to help me do it. Come to think of it, it’s the best two-for-one value going! Not only will I benefit from a refocused earthly relationship, but I will have stretched my faith muscles by relying on Christ. Chances are my relationship with Him will grow, too.

My prayer for this week: Heavenly Father, Be with me as I strive to make my relationship with You a priority. Remind me to turn to You in prayer without hiding my emotions. Help me to be a better friend and guide me to become more Christlike in the lives of those I touch.