Connection: Exchanging Life With Others
God wired us for relationships, but for connections to flourish, they need the safety of love. The deepest parts of our souls long for this type of connection while fearing the authenticity and investment it demands. There's an inherent vulnerability in knowing someone else and, in turn, being known by them. Without trust, we resist sharing our true selves; unfortunately, due to the brokenness of this world we navigate our connections guarded and suspicious.
Our capacity to give love to others hinges on our ability first to receive God's love for ourselves. When we trust and believe that God loves us and we live from this source, we no longer have to demand it from those around us. Rather than give and take, our relationships become about what we offer and receive. Love is a force that breathes value and worth into one another; this exchange takes place in our relationships and serves as the framework through which love gets expressed and experienced.
Trust develops over time as these redemptive relationships encourage people to step into their identity in Christ, walk in faith, and allow God's love to transform them. In these connections, grace comes alongside growth, challenge amid compassion, and authenticity meets availability.
We love when we give ourselves away for the good of another. How we treat and love those around us sends a message to the outside world. Our relationships should cause others to take notice. The greatest gift we can give is to know one another deeply and love unconditionally.
But, for this to take place, it entails us being gut-level honest about our relationships and how we’re living with integrity, displaying transparency, being present, and providing a welcoming place that invites others to be known. Authentic relationships demand awareness, both about ourselves and our connections.
Read the verse below twice, sit with it in silence, meditate on its truths, circle words or phrases that speak to you. Then, try to summarize it in your own words.
1 John 4:7-12 (New International Version)
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Spend some time reflecting on the following questions:
How is the condition of your heart expressing itself in your relationships?
What message are you sending to the world through your relationships with others?
Where are you distancing yourself from others, and what fuels this separation?
Over the past year, have your connections with others deepened or drifted toward the shallow end?
Who are you breathing value and worth into? Is there someone else you feel God calling you to connect with more deeply?