Much of who we are, develops from the relationships we’re in.  Whether we like it or not – we model things that we see in other people, in our own lives.  So we need to choose wisely.

A few days ago on the program we chatted about the fact that relationships are a bit like a large jigsaw puzzle. We’re all kind of the same but we come in different shapes and sizes, and not every piece goes with every other piece, you have to put matching pieces together to get the whole picture, and that can take some time and effort. We’re not all the same, we seem to click with some people and not with others and sometimes we think, “Wow that’s a neat person I’d like them for a friend or I’d love to go and work with that person.” But then a bit of water goes under the bridge and we discover their true colours.

This week we’re looking at building lasting relationships because relationships matter, they’re what add depth and satisfaction to our lives. And tomorrow on the program we’ll talk about the most important relationship of all, but today, today I’d like to unpack this jigsaw puzzle a bit. Truth is if we’re going to build lasting relationships we need to choose wisely - what does that mean?

A few years ago man by the name of Chuck Swindoll who’s a great preacher and teacher out of the US, did a series called Christ at the Crossroads, and it was at a time when I desperately needed to hear that message. He said the only thing worse than not being married is being married to the wrong person, and that stuck with me through a time where I desperately, desperately wanted to be married. And I have no doubt that simple little message that God took and put in my heart stopped me from making a disastrous choice at the time.

Marriage is very special, it’s a life long relationship and it’s a huge investment, what if we choose the wrong one? The principle holds true for other relationships too, think about it, building a relationship is a process, we meet someone socially or at work or something like that and the relationship is quite distant and transactional.

All of a sudden a group of us go out or we get to know the person a little bit, it’s still superficial but at that point we have a decision to make, do we keep going do we invest time and effort and energy into a relationship with this person? If we say yes, well, we build a stronger relationship whether it’s a boy girl thing or whether it’s just friends or whether it’s a business relationship whatever it is. And then time goes on and the relationship grows and we get to know the person better, and the level of commitment to one another grows, and as time goes on people start to show their true colours.

The problem happens when we commit to deeper relationships before we really know the people, then we’re committed. Say in a business relationship, then we discover that the person is disloyal or dishonest or untrustworthy or lazy or so insecure that they’re useless at work or supercritical or…. You know we find stuff, we think we can never work with this person; it doesn’t become evident until down the track yet we’ve already committed into a relationship.

The problem happens when we kind of wander aimlessly through the landscape of relationships down this path without ever stopping to think, without ever evaluating. As a person’s character unfolds I mean it’s really easy when you don’t know me very well for me to keep pretty well self-contained and to look good, you know it’s just not a difficult thing to do. But as you get to know me more, as you spend more time with me, my character unfolds, I can’t help it and if it’s a good character, a good character will unfold, and if it’s a bad character, if its got some serious flaws a bad character will unfold.

So we’re wandering down this path, down this relationship path and we begin to see some signs, we begin to see some things that are a little bit disturbing, you know what most of us do? Most of us ignore them, most of us are so busy and we’re doing so much stuff we just ignore them. We want this relationship so badly we just completely ignore the warning signs as they start to appear as a persons character unfolds. We cannot even be looking, we can fail to see the bridge out sign in the fog and the further I go the harder it is to end the relationship.

You see that’s what this whole sex before marriage discussion is about, its not some prudish Christian thing it’s really practical. An intimate physical relationship binds two people together, if we get into that sort of a relationship before we really know the person, before there’s real commitment by way of marriage, it’s a dangerous and hurtful thing.

Now you might say to me, “But Berni on this whole relationship front aren’t Christians supposed to be lovey dovey, aren’t we suppose to kind of accept everyone and you know? Have a listen to this, this is the Apostle Paul; by the time he wrote this to his young protégé Timothy, Paul was a seasoned old campaigner. This is what he says:

Don’t be naive Timothy there are some difficult times ahead, and as the end approaches people are going to be self-absorbed and money hungry and self-promoting and stuck up and profane. And contemptuous of their parents and crude and course and dog eat dog and unbending and slanderers and impulsively wild. And savage and cynical and treacherous and ruthless and bloated wind bags, addicted to lust and allergic to God.

That’s a list isn’t it? “They’ll make a show of religion but behind the scenes they’re just animals. Timothy stay clear of those people, have nothing to do with them.

Quite a list isn’t it? Maybe we know a few people like that; maybe some of those adjectives in that list talk about us. Let me ask you, if you look at people with that sort of dog-eat-dog, unbending slanderous, impulsively wild savage thing happening can you really have a lasting relationship with someone like that? Can you have a relationship that’s going to be fruitful and fulfilling and rich and … ? No, of course you can’t. So if we want to have lasting relationships that count we need to choose wisely don’t we?

Can I ask you are you in any destructive relationships right now? Because the people we hang around with shape who we are. At work whether a person’s a colleague or a friend depends on how far we take that relationship, if we stand around the water cooler whinging and complaining and deriding and being self-serving with these people we’re going to hang around them because it’s going to rub off.

Truly I tell you I only am who I am because of some of the wonderful people I’ve been blessed to be close to. Learning from them, modelling my behaviour and my attitudes from them, I cannot imagine who I’d be today if I’d hung around with the wrong crowd. It can be hard when we’ve walked down that path of a relationship and we’ve gotten reasonably close to someone, it can be really hard to acknowledge that we’re in a wrong relationship. Even harder to step out of it because there’s pressure, there’s sneers; there’s rejection you know the stuff.

But can I ask you honestly to look around at some of the relationships that you are in and if you relate to that list that I’ve just read that Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy, its actually from the second letter to Timothy in the New Testament, chapter 3 and verse 5 if you’d like to go and look at it again. If you relate to that list in some of the relationships that you’re having, maybe its time to end some of those relationships, maybe there is a relationship or two in your life that’s dragging you down and ruining your life and as hard as it might be it may be the best investment you ever make.

Now understand I’m not talking about wives leaving husbands, or husbands leaving wives or severing ties with our children, those are life long relationships, we’re meant to work at them, we’re meant to sacrifice, we’re meant to develop character. But all these other people I would really encourage you just to look across the relationships and the friends and the colleagues and the people whom you allow to influence you and say:

“God are there any there that shouldn’t be, are there any there pulling me down, and if they are Father give me the courage and the wisdom to get out. In Jesus’ Name.”