Identity and Relationships

We were created to dwell in the Presence of God and experience His love continually and even the higher plan was for us to be one with love (union).  Remember there were two trees in the center of the Garden of Eden next to each other.  God said do not eat from the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil but did command them to freely eat of the other trees, including the Tree of Life.  Love must always include a choice, even the freedom to make bad choices.  It is religion that would come and try to get us to only make good choices but this really is the good side of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  As you grow up in a loving relationship with God, your parents, and others you would form a healthy and life giving identity.  Adam and Eve were created first in the image of God (identity) and how relationships function is always connected to identity.  Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil led them to believe that God was angry with them and holding their sin against them so they hid.  This same belief introduced fear into their relationship with one another, then avoidance, lying, and blame.

The Kingdom of God is consistent, united, and not fragmented like the kingdoms of the world.  Thus God continually connects identity and relationship throughout His Word.  For you to live in loving relationships is for you to receive revelation of who God is as love. Then to receive His extravagant love and for your relationships to be forever changed.  People so encountered Jesus that they were forever changed by His love and saw themselves completely different.  Mary Magdeline had been seen as a despicable woman, yet when Jesus stared into her eyes and she was overcome with the eyes of love she was changed.  Jesus even honored her worship of Him as she poured expensive perfume on His feet and wiped His feet with her hair.  He told these religious men who judged her that this story of what she had done would be told continuously and even held her up as a standard of worship.  She went from being despicable sinner woman to beloved daughter of God.

God's love for us is supposed to be manifest in our relationship with those in our lives.  As we receive His forgiveness for all of our sins, we forgive those who have sinned against us, and we then are transformed into a forgiving person (changing our relationships).  Of course, I am talking about us experiencing the identity that is already ours in Christ.  1 John 4:20 challenges us that we are deceiving ourselves if we say we love God and hate our brother.  Meaning that God's love for us leads us to respond to love for Him and then we love others.  Love gives.  Key to transforming our relationships is to receive Father's love and then give Father's love to others.

When you have problems in your relationships I can guarantee you or the person you are in relationship with is believing a lie (identity).  It is so common for us to believe lies about our identity that the fruit quickly shows up in relationship but we often miss the lie because we blame the other person, blame our self, avoid intimacy in the relationship, or make excuses.  Bringing the lies we believe to the Holy Spirit to receive truth will bring us into lasting freedom that will bring new life into our relationships as well.

In Father's Love,
Bret