Love Calls Us to Get Uncomfortable

The Bible gives us two pictures of loving relationships. The leading theme, the richer theme, involves the people you truly enjoy—your beloved brother, sister, wife, the child you hold in your arms, and dear friends. In heaven you will see face-to-face the One you love, the supreme Person. But heaven is also a place full of other relationships you enjoy. These people love you without pretense, competition, or manipulation.

But side by side with that call to joyous intimacy is a call to get out of your comfort zone. The harder call of the Bible is to love enemies, strangers, people who are different from you, and those who are needy, sinful, and broken.

This call comes for two reasons. First, it tests whether you are turning the innocent pleasures of intimacy into a stained pleasure. Are you and the people you enjoy turning into a clique? Second, the call tests whether we are willing to widen the circle of intimacy so that enemies become friends, strangers become like family, and someone you don’t know becomes like a dear sister. The goal is always the simple, joyous relationship with others—the mutual affection and give-and-take. God calls you to widen the circle of your friendships, and to avoid making a god out of those who bring you the greatest pleasure. Doing these two things will fill your life with the pleasure of relationships with others.

David Powlison

Abba,

How selfish are we, at times, with our relationships? We only want them for our own benefit, for how they make us feel. We only value them as deeply as we feel blessed by them. And the hard relationships, the awkward ones, the hurtful ones…well, we save little to no time or energy for them. Very often, we simply push them away entirely.

We know there is wisdom and discernment needed here, for boundaries need exist in all relationships…and in some…firmer boundaries still, for sin runs its course and leaves devastation in its wake. It is not always a simple, black and white answer…

But…

The greater challenge is not even found in finding and keeping those boundaries. The greater challenge is found in the examination of the heart. What are we wiling to endure? Why are we wiling to endure that? Where is our focus, our gaze, our intention?

For what purpose do we pursue relationships? Yes, we were designed and created to live in community and we do believe we need that to fully live out Your image in us…for You, God, are community. BUT…But…is our sole intention in how we approach relationships only about us? The answer to that question may be unsettling and convicting. Do we avoid connecting with some because we know they will take more than they give? Do we avoid connecting with some because we don’t see any personal benefit…all work…no pleasure?

Further, have we turned the relationships we do enjoy into idols? Have we turned them into “stained pleasures” investing them on our own personal benefit MORE SO than investing in them for the Your glory and their benefit?

Truth is, You desire for us to place OTHERS first in our relationships. Just like You, Trinity, do not seek Your own personal good, Your own glory, Your own selfish interests, but You seek to glorify one another, seeking one another’s best interests, so to, You desire the same for us. You call us to get uncomfortable, to approach every relationship selfLESSly, “unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.”

AND, when everyone does this…we also then receive from those relationships what we need and desire.

We see it in us, though, Abba. Selfishness when it comes to relationships.

The pursuit of friendship with another because they have something we desire and long for, but we fail to give any thought to their need and how we can put them first.

Frustration when we give and give and our giving is not acknowledged or appreciated.

Annoyance when the relationship only takes from us and does very little to give back.

Discouragement when the relationships we pursue, do not pursue in return.

Abandonment of the relationship when it fails to perform, for us, what we had hoped or desired.

Abba, you call us to get uncomfortable. To pursue relationships with others, NOT PRIMARILY for our own benefit, but for YOURS and for THEIRS. You call us to get uncomfortable in coming alongside those floundering in the mud, that we might help pull them out, clean them up, and set them on a path towards You.

And in the doing, You promise to be for us EVERYTHING we need, everything we desire. You promise to satisfy our hearts with Your steadfast and perfect love. Until this world is redeemed, until creation is set new, the only source of PERFECT love, of undisappointing love, comes from Your hand. We see glimpses of it here and there through Your body, Your bride, Your people, Your creation even, but the only place we will never be disappointed is in You. And when we are satisfied in You, we can endure the disappointment of relationship with fallen man and continue pursuing for Your glory and their good.

May we get uncomfortable, for Your name’s sake, and give of ourselves to live as one, just as You, Father, Son, and Spirit, are one. And in so doing, may the world, the body see You and grow deeply in their love for You.