I had shared this post earlier in the year on January 5th as a Facebook devotional and its written in a style different than how I usually write now, yet it ties so well to the next post I'm about to share with you all that I thought I would reshare it here. :)
I was emailing a friend of mine yesterday. Like me, she's single, and among many other topics, we share thoughts with each other about godly relationships.
I had reached the part in my super long reply when I was responding to the part of her email about godly relationships and God just gave me this little illustration. I wanted to share it with you all. While it's geared toward singles, it can really be applied to any of our lives.
I was typing away at rocket speed on my iPod when this came to me:
Fellow singles, you do not need a relationship. You do not need a boyfriend or a girlfriend. There is one single relationship that you need in your life and that is all. Your relationship with God.
However, while you don't NEED any other relationship in your life, that doesn't change the fact that you may WANT other relationships in your life. That's healthy and normal. But in application for anyone, you don't NEED any other kind of relationship, romantic or not, other than your relationship with Jesus Christ.
He illustrated it to me this way: your relationship with Him is like a bowl of mashed potatoes. It's the main food. The important part. The food you NEED. All other relationships are just blessings that are meant to be complements to the main relationship in your life- your relationship with Jesus. They are the salt and pepper that add to your relationship with Christ. That are meant to build us up in Him and contribute to our relationship with Him by encouragement, edification, love, prayer, support, inspiration, motivation for spiritual growth, etc. They are always meant to complement our relationship with God.
Relationships in our lives that don't complement that main relationship in our lives should have no place on our plate. They might need to be on the tablecloth beside our plate. This doesn't necessarily mean we should cut people out from our lives completely. We need communication to minister and reach out to people. But maybe they need to be moved to the tablecloth instead of being allowed to affect the taste of your mashed potatoes because they may be detracting from its taste rather than complementing it. Not everyone needs to be in the inner circle of our close personal life.
But for the people that are in our inner circle, it's important that we remember to always keep those relationships in the context of our relationship with the Lord. When our relationship with Him is no longer a part of another relationship, we've taken away the mashed potatoes and are left eating a teaspoon of pure salt and pepper. And that's just yucky.
Never forget, Facebook friends, that our relationship with Him is the only relationship we need. He's enough, He's everything, He's all we could ever need. Any other relationships He blesses us with are just meant to add to that relationship. They aren't meant to stand independently outside of the context of our relationship with Him.
Needless to say, don't allow your identity or security, self-respect or satisfaction and fulfillment to be tied to any person in your life. That should all be found in Christ and Christ alone.
And in speaking specifically to my fellow singles again, this is SO important for us to get. Until we can realize that we don't need any relationship in our lives besides our relationship with Jesus, we will never be ready for Him to bless us with any other relationships. This is the key to contentment right where you are. This is how Paul found happiness and contentment and reason to rejoice in his singleness.
Until we realize this, we will forever be restless and discontent and unsatisfied without a love relationship besides our romance with our Heavenly Bridegroom. And if we enter into another relationship without having learned this first, we'll be needy and possessive girlfriends and boyfriends. And that is not the kind of seasoning that would complement our significant other's own relationship with the Lord.
If we have a relationship with Jesus, we already have all that we need. ALL that we need.
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