Introduction
Your relationships can achieve a whole new level of love and intimacy!
Do you find that your relationships keep repeating the same struggles? Are you tired of having the same fights with your spouse or other family members? Or maybe you find that you seem to keep attracting people who mistreat or take advantage of you?
If you feel like you’re stuck in a destructive pattern in your relationships involving the same painful circumstances over and over, don’t lose hope. Troubles like these can often seem so out of our control, but the good news is you have a lot more power and influence than you may think!
In this ebook, we’re going to cover a few lies that may be affecting your relationships. As you take the time to think about and challenge these misbeliefs, get ready, because being set free from these lies can take you to a whole new level of love and intimacy in your life!
Lie #1 - Love Has No Boundaries
Do you ever rely on others for what you have no right to expect from them?
I’m not saying that you can never rely on others, or that you need to be able to handle everything on your own. You need healthy relationships to meet your relational needs, as well as some of your practical needs. But when you become overly dependent, things get out of balance. You create unhealthy relationships that are destructive to yourself and hurtful to others. This is not the kind of life God wants for you.
For example, it isn’t healthy to completely rely on the approval of your spouse or your friends to feel good about yourself or to feel happy. When you hold others responsible for your self-worth, success or happiness, you hand over an inappropriate level of control in your life. This can make you feel like a victim—helpless to change your situation and trapped in the relationship, even if it becomes abusive.
The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe. Proverbs 29:25 (NKJV)
If you suspect that you might have become overly dependent on others, you need to know that you can choose a healthier, more fulfilling path. Get help from a counsellor or from someone else you can trust if you need to, but realize that it is within your power to change your life. You can learn to get your self-worth and love needs met through your relationship with Christ and disengage from trying to get others to fulfil these needs for you.
Take the first step today. Although it will be a process, you can develop healthy relationships as you learn to access the phenomenal, overflowing, unconditional love God has for you. Love is not something you earn with good looks or a winning personality. Love is a gift that you give someone, and it’s a gift that God is giving to you.
Lie #2 - Love Must Be Earned
The truth is that love is not earned. Love is a gift!
It’s easy to assume that love needs to be earned. When our parents give us more love and attention after we bring home a good report card, we make a few assumptions. When we disappoint our parents with bad behaviour or failure and they give us the cold shoulder, we make a few more. And without even realizing it, we’re buying into one of the greatest lies on the planet: the lie that love must be earned.
The truth is that love is not earned. Love is a gift. “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8, NLT).
Now, trust certainly is earned. The fact that love is something to be freely given doesn’t mean that we should jump into relationships with just anyone. Relationships require both love and trust, so let’s not get the two confused. But when it comes to love, we have to learn to disentangle it from our performance.
Have you been trying to earn God’s love through good behaviour? I’m here to tell you that you can’t. This realization is the most freeing one you may ever have. In fact, the more you realize how loved you are, the more empowered you are to live God’s way.
Keep doing good things for others and for God, and always do your best to follow His ways. Just realize that you’re not doing it to earn His love, but because you want to live a great life, and you know that following His advice will take you there.
Lie #3 - My Beliefs Will Not Affect My Relationships
You need to develop an accurate picture of a loving Father God.
Do you find that you sometimes make poor decisions when it comes to your relationships?
This may be because you’ve based those decisions on flawed belief systems, which is why God’s Word is so vital. If you don’t discover the truths in the Word of God as to who you are and what you can believe, confusion will reign supreme.
One very commonly flawed belief system that affects relationships relates directly to what you believe about God.
You see, on the inside you’re craving God’s love. If you’re looking outside of God to meet this need for love, you’re going to be frustrated and confused. You may try to get this need met through your relationships with others, when the only one who can really fill that need for love is God.
It’s possible that you might not be looking to God to meet that love need because you see Him as judgmental and condemning. Maybe the word “father” brings up thoughts of abuse, hurt, criticism or neglect. Part of a father’s job is to show his child what their Father God thinks of them. If you’ve had an abusive, critical, neglectful or absent father, it’s time you developed a new picture of God from His Word.
And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. Luke 15:20 (NLT)
Start by reading Luke 15:11–32, the story of the prodigal son. Through this story, Jesus gives us an accurate picture of a loving Father God who eagerly waits for the opportunity to welcome you with open arms, no matter how far you might have wandered from Him.
Did you know that giving your life to Christ is just the beginning when it comes to living the incredible life God has planned for you?
Lie #4 - Building Self-Worth is Selfish
You have infinite worth to God, just as you are.
We all have core beliefs in our hearts that need to change, and we won’t fix them in a day. We need to plant seeds of truth by listening to great teaching and reading God’s Word. When we do, we hear that we are special, that we’re of infinite worth to God and that He has an awesome plan for our lives. A little bit of hope rises, but that seed is still in the soil. It has some growing to do.
As we keep coming to church, doing devotions, spending time in worship and building our relationship with God, that seed is watered. Pretty soon a little shoot comes up through the ground and it grows a few leaves. Then one day, we find ourselves harvesting great self-worth and amazing relationships.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:39 (NKJV)
It’s not an overnight fix. It’s a gradual growth of something new, just as a seed that’s been planted takes time to grow into a plant with harvestable fruit.
Do you want a harvest of great self-worth and great relationships with God and with others? Then plant more of God’s beliefs in your heart! I encourage you to write down at least one verse about God’s love and keep it close to you so you can meditate on it several times a day. Start with just one verse a week. As you keep planting God’s Word in your heart, your beliefs will change, and your harvest will come!
I have loved you, [just] as the Father has loved Me; abide in My love [continue in His love with Me]. John 15:9 (AMPC)
Lie #5 - My Need For Love Can Be Met By 'The Right Person'
God wants to fulfill the need you have for love.
Most people look to others for love. Unfortunately, our relationships with others can’t completely fill our seemingly bottomless need for love and approval. Although we all need healthy, fulfilling relationships, we also need a relationship with God.
God wants to fulfill the need you have for love. His love is a no-strings-attached kind of love that can’t be earned; it’s really just a matter of accepting it and letting it in. And His love is incredibly powerful. In fact, accepting the love God has for you has the power to improve your relationships like nothing else.
For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3 14-19 (NKJV)
As you begin to understand how God loves you, you learn that you don’t need to make others earn your love either. Everyone wants to feel loved as they are, so when you develop the ability to give out this kind of love, you take your relationships to an entirely new level.
You can experience God’s love for yourself. Read what He has to say to you in the Bible, His love letter to you. As you realize what you’re worth in the eyes of your heavenly Father, you will be empowered to reach out to others with the same love that He gives you so freely.
