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Are there some relationships in your life that need improving? Most of us would definitely have to say yes to that question. I’m sharing some thoughts from a book by Tom Holladay entitled The Relationship Principles of Jesus, which have challenged me and so if you’d like some help with some relationships in your life, this book gives you practical, biblical help.
I love this quote from the Peanuts character, Linus: I love mankind! It’s people I can’t stand! Well, Linus, the truth is it’s easier to talk about loving mankind than it is to love your neighbor as yourself. In his book Tom asks how did Jesus love?
He didn’t spend all night making to-do lists of which people he would show love to the next day. He didn’t have some kind of prioritization grid though which everyone who wanted his love had to pass. He simply loved people as the opportunity arose during the normal traffic patterns of his life (p. 74).
This is a powerful relationship principle from Jesus, if you and I would just practice it. I often remind myself that no one is in my life by accident, and yet far-too-often I treat some of those people that come into my normal traffic pattern as though they are a nuisance, an interruption. Loving the people who come into our normal traffic pattern each day is something we can do, by God’s grace and by asking God to help us see them as he sees them.
This doesn’t mean we hug everyone’s neck and have lengthy conversations with everyone in our traffic pattern. But it does mean that we see beyond the outward appearance and we intentionally remember that they are important to God, they are created in God’s image, they have souls that will spend eternity somewhere, either heaven or hell, and they deserve our respect. They deserve a smile, a kind word, a recognition from us that they are not a nuisance; they are important.
Tom says, “Make the choice to love the few you can love today, trusting in the greatness of God that he will put the right people in your path on the journey of life” (p. 75). We have to make a daily choice and pray this principle into our lives, and then God’s Spirit will remind us and empower us to simply love the people who come across our paths during the normal traffic patterns of our lives.
Can you even imagine the impact this one simply principle would have if we lived it out everyday?
For a donation of any amount in the month of November 2021 you can receive a copy of The Relationship Principles of Jesus by Tom Holladay – while supplies last.