We can all agree that some aspects of our being can be challenging, and most especially the aspect of building and maintaining relationships with people.
God, in his plans and purposes, knew that we needed each other to live an effective, fruitful and happy life. That is why he made sure that we are uniquely and beautifully made so that we can jointly support each other the same way different parts have to work together for the effective functioning of a normal body.
That means that in every thing defined as the process of life, we are going to need someone to walk with us in some way, whether it is in our career, academics, family, ministry or any other walk of life.
We need to appreciate the need for people whom we can gladly celebrate our wins with, but also those on whose shoulders we can lean on when life becomes a bit interesting
While it is easy to find people to celebrate life with or to be accountable to when life is smooth, it has not been quite an easy road to tread for our generation when it comes to situations that require our discretion and most especially when we are hurting or going through the chaos of life.
In our struggle to understand communication, conflict resolution and to build authentic relationships, we have ended up destroying one another and burning bridges we shouldn’t have in our quest for healing and restoration. Painful and true as it is, I believe this needs to change, and hence the reason for writing about it, because I acknowledge that change begins with me.
Healing is important; decluttering is important. We must understand and appreciate the reality that we need to become better people regardless of what we have been through. We must make a deliberate decision to be whole and healthy, to be happy and joyful, to be healed and restored. The enemy always comes to steal, kill and destroy, but we need to constantly remind ourselves that Jesus came, that we should have life, and to enjoy it to its fullness.
We must also appreciate that it is going to be a process, and because of that, it’s good to bring trusted friends or family into this process. When we are doing challenging internal work like decluttering our hearts, we need our people around us to help raise our arms when we get tired, pray for us, encourage us, and check in with us to see if we are making progress.
James 5:16 talks about the spiritual accountability between believers and how it is linked to our healing. It says, Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. (ESV)
We can’t be accountable to just anyone, though.
A relationship with someone we trust is a key to accountability. We need someone who has our best interests at heart and will speak truth in love to us. Some may abuse this trust, so we ought to proceed with caution when seeking accountability. Trust eliminates the idea of misunderstanding someone or being misunderstood during the process. It eliminates the fear to open up and to be honest about how you feel or how others made you feel in the process of decluttering.
If we know someone will be asking how our cleaning out process is going fairly regularly, we are more likely to keep going. And the further we go, the more we grow. The better our soul begins to look and the healthier we get from the inside out.
If we are able to understand this, and do it for others, then maybe just maybe, we could all be on the road to becoming a better race, a better generation, better families, a better church, because at the end of the day, relationships are more like the currency of life. If we are to make this place a better world for our children and children’s children, then we must be willing to work on ourselves and fix the things that need to be fixed so that we don’t knowingly or unknowingly transfer some of these abnormalities to the next generation.
May God help us to live more consciously and circumspectly as the world’s philosophy and perspective about life keeps evolving. That we shall not conform to the standard of this world, but rather constantly submit ourselves to the word of God and His standard.
Hallelujah.
Stay Blessed.
WiGTyT
