6 Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
We are looking at 1 Corinthians 5:6-13
Here are the questions/subjects -
1. Have you ever had something small in your life snowball into a large issue?
2. Have you ever had to break a relationship with someone because of their actions?
Look at the rest of the text and leave your feedback in the comment section:)
Yup. I bet we've all had something big snowball. The first thing that comes to mind is the story of my stalker. Yeah, I'm going to try and condense this, but I met a girl at Disneyland on Grad night in High school, I was dating the girl who would later become my wife, and This other girl I was hoping to lead toward a buddy of mine I was hanging out with... but somehow her eyes were fixated on me. We became friends and my goal in this whole thing was to lead her to Christ. She'd share deep stuff like suicidal thoughts, depression, and abuse so of course, the knight in me wants to destroy her dragons. Big mistake. This has happened other times, but never to this level--where a girl falls for me beause of my Christlike actions. In a world of jerks, someone who makes efforts to love like Christ is very attractive. This girl went off the deep end, and despite my rejections, she kept pursuing me. She even broke up with a guy, drove an hour and a half, and surprised me at work. She waited outside my work for four hours to try and seduce me. I was aware of red flags early on in this, but I was young, immature, and a bit too flattered to really put my foot down and expel this girl from my life.
ReplyDeleteThe result of this story answers the second question, I cut all ties. Blocked her email and IM, deleted her from my phone and if she'd call I'd instantly hang up. She then made me her worst enemy in her mind, shooting me insults that would cut rather deep if I actually allowed myself to care or even listen to her/read anything she'd send me. I pray for her as often as I can remember. I know my life is better for cutting her out of it, and I know me being an object of her desire never would have drawn her to Jesus as I initially hoped it would.
Wow! Cody, dang...I love hearing from different people, because this is not where I would have gone too...good stuff though:)
DeleteBig topic! It's hard to balance that "go out and get the lost lamb" characteristic of Christianity with "time to cut relationship ties because of sinful behaviors that aren't changing". We're uncomfortable with aggressive love and often mistake God's love as that we're supposed to be all warm and fuzzy. I've ended a few relationships that turned abusive and my fault was being too nice, not aggressively loving and maturing in Christ, standing up for what God was telling me was right and wrong in the relationships. I read Malachi over and over- great book on abusive relationships and what God really hates that leads to divorce and ending relationships. My measuring stick now for relationships is more Godly - is this relationship one-sided, if I assert myself or my needs/gifts/talents and it is met with emotional barbs to make me feel as if I'm doing harm to another's happiness, then it's time to set boundaries or even walk away. Individually we all need to level-up in maturity by realizing we are to be simple and flat- our joy/happiness comes from God's valuing and affirming our identity and our growing confidence that God knew what he was doing when He gifted us with our passions/talents. When we realize no other human being can define these two things in us, we are then able to see when another human is trying to get us to supply their need for identity, happiness, affirmation through us. It's unhealthy. If we serve those needs we enable the individual to stay immature. My Kairos moment in one unhealthy relationship was when the individual declared, "choose me or choose God." At that point in my life I needed to hear it put that simply - that phrase enabled me to "get it". God's pretty clear in telling us to chose him first, when we do, then when we serve others, we do it from a healthier place. We chose to serve based on listening to the Holy Spirit/God rather than serving from a place of fear that I'm responsible for anothers' identity/happiness. That's God's job and he wants us to trust that he'll take care of his declared responsibility for humankind.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree Kim - this is one of the toughest tensions in following Jesus...I hope to pull that tension out by talking about this dynamic... abusive v loving...thanks so much for the comments
Delete1.Have you ever had something small in your life snowball into a large issue?
ReplyDeleteWhen my wife and I were partners in a business, I should have paid more attention to small things. For instance, the first time my wife used her credit card to make payroll. It wasn’t a big thing but I should have paid attention. That was one small indicator of an upcoming larger problem. The problem was, we weren’t business people. Expenses were beginning to creep up without a corresponding rise in income. Business people know to look for this. We just hoped it would go away. The snowball effect for us was suttle. We were slowly mesmerized by financial problems until they were an idol in our lives. In the end many years later, we were in debt beyond our ability to pay it back. We lost the business, I lost my job, we lost our house and we still have huge financial obligations! I look back now and realize if I had only listened to the small voice in my head telling me it was bad that we had to use a credit card to make payroll!
2. Have you ever had to break a relationship with someone because of their actions?
I remember when I was in the Air Force, I loved to play pool. I would spend many of the hours I wasn’t at work in the base Recreation Center just practicing. If someone showed up that wanted to play, I would play with them. I made quite a few acquaintances and even some good friends. At one point, I met a guy who happened to be from Oregon, my home state. It was so great to have someone from my part of the country in a place so far away (New Mexico). We ended up spending a lot of time together, shooting pool, playing cards, drinking beer, going to parties and so on. It was a lot of fun. We even took a trip to Oregon together. He needed to pick up his car in Eugene, I just wanted to visit. We got back and basically continued our lives as friends. I began to notice early on that when I was around this friend, I would take on his mannerisms and it bothered me. For instance, he would talk about his co-workers, making fun of many of them or putting them down, bad mouthing them any way he could. At first I ignored it. Eventually, I found myself joining in with the disparaging remarks and laughing about them. As I began to reflect on this, I decided that wasn’t the type of person I wanted to be. I like talking about individuals in a positive way, even though that isn’t what I always do. After having him be such a close friend for 9 months, I decided to quit getting together with him. I was just not happy with myself and the way I behaved when I was around him. I did not formally break off our friendship, just managed to find other things to do or friends to hang out with. I found I didn’t miss our time together and would talk to him every few months when we would see each other at the store or something similar. It was a good learning experience for me as a young man.
Excellent feedback John...I think that everyone can relate at some level to the credit card thing...Also, great story about your buddy...unfortunately I can relate.
ReplyDelete