ONE MONTH TO LIVE: TUESDAY "We Need Relationships"

Happy Tuesday!!! We are continuing our daily devotions on our theme: One Month To Live.
Today, I want you to read this statement out loud:
I need relationships even though they are messy.
Now that your whole family thinks you are crazy, let's continue.

God wired us for relationships. We need other people. God created humanity and said, it’s not good to be alone. In your genetic DNA code is the desire for relationships. That’s why we always feel that we need to feel loved and connected and interact with people in a genuine way. We are wired for that. That’s why if we had one month to live it wouldn’t be spent counting money, cleaning your room, spending more time at school. It would be with people.

I admit, I need other people in my life to be fully alive. I need people. My guess is you’d admit it too. I need others. You do! Everybody needs it.

But what about the messy part? What’s the deal with that?

I once heard a well seasoned minister after 30 years in ministry make this observation:
"Nobody’s normal. Everybody is whacked out to some degree. Flawed, weird, odd, strange. Some of them are down right creepy. There are no exceptions to that. If you think you are an exception to that rule it just means that you lack the self-awareness to know that you’re a total nut job. Nobody is normal. You might look normal on the outside but in the inside you have an inner weirdo".

Are you brave enough to admit that’s true about you? I am. So sometimes I’m messy.
What can we do? The first thing we can do is admit and list our own faults.

We should do this because I think this is an important factor in building healthy relationships. It’s having a realistic awareness of your own faults. If you don’t do this, here’s what you go through life doing. You go around picking on others. You go around criticizing and nagging and critiquing and accusing and piling on. But when you have an awareness of your own faults, you tend to lower the bar and be more compassionate and forgiving to other people.

Jesus said in Matthew 7 “Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own. How can you think of saying, Let me help you get rid of that speck in your own eye when you can’t see past the log in your own eye.” I love this image. I see a guy with a big ol' telephone pole out of his face. He’s got this log. The humor is he’s trying to get the speck in the other person’s eye and he’s killing people trying to do that. Jesus is saying, Don’t, look at yourself first.

I want to challenge you to do that. I challenge myself to do it on a daily basis. When you see fault in others (friends, parents, siblings, your youth minister), take a look at yourself first. Try to make an effort that when you find yourself getting ready to blast someone for something they do, think about yourself first. Ask yourself these questions:
*Do I have the same fault?
*Do I cause the fault in the other person by my actions? (example-you hear your younger brother using fould language...but he heard it from you first)
*Did I cause the fault in the other person because of my non-action?
In other words, think about how your influence, or lack of influence on others has an effect on them. Remember, sometimes it's not what you did but what you didn't do. Relationships are messy. But sometimes, we are the biggest part of the mess.

Spend a few moments right now talking to God about it.