CHAPTER
FIVE
Priorities
In Relationships
You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect).
This is the great (most
important, principal) and first commandment.
And a second is like it: You
shall love your neighbor as [you do yourself.
Matthew 22:37-39
Relationships are a major part of all of our lives. We cannot avoid
them. God created us to need each other.
* * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
… You shall love the Lord your God….
Matthew 22:37
* * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
People who pretend not to need anyone in their life are only fooling
themselves. These are usually individuals who have been hurt and are trying to
avoid more emotional pain.
Relationships are vital, but they are one of the areas that can cause a
lot of confusion. We need people, but they can be very difficult to deal with,
to get along with and to know how to handle.
For
example, we want people's approval of us and try hard to please everyone. Yet
it seems that someone in our life is always displeased, and we are once again
experiencing the pain of rejection. Or, it may seem that the only time people
are happy with us is when we are doing what they want us to do. We want to share
with others our deepest feelings and desires, our fondest dreams and goals, but
we dare not for fear we will be ridiculed, rejected or even betrayed. And the
sad truth is that many times we have been treated unfairly by those we trusted
most.
Whatever your experience has been in the past, I want to assure you that
you can have great relationships. But to do that, you have to set priorities
and boundaries.
A priority is something of primary importance to us. To establish
fulfilling and satisfying relationships, you must decide which ones are the
most important to you, listing them in descending order. Doing that
You may, for example, discover that you have been putting a lot of time
into a relationship that is rather unimportant in the whole scope of things,
while ignoring others that should be given a place of priority.
One
evening after I had just finished a lengthy telephone conversation with a
friend, my husband told me that he really got tired of sitting alone in the
family room while I hung on the phone all night with my church friends. The
particular woman I was talking with at the time was one with whom I usually
visited by phone every evening. Today that woman is no longer even part of my
life. I might add that she withdrew rather abruptly at a time when I was being
falsely accused of some things and really needed her friendship. My husband,
however, is still around. That incident made me realize that I should have been
spending my time developing and nurturing my relationship with him instead of
with someone who obviously did not really care about me anyway.
Based on that experience, let's look at some of the relationships in
your life and try to establish a proper pattern of priorities among them.
God First
Who are you spending most of your
time with? The
Scripture quoted at the beginning of this chapter says that Person
should be God. He should be first in your life.
None of our other relationships are solid until we put God first. That
is because He is the cord that binds us together with each other. He is the
foundation on which everything in our life must be built. Without Him, and what
He teaches as our guidelines for relationships, we usually end up in strife
with a trail of wounded feelings everywhere we look.
Put God first, and He will take care of everything else. What do I mean
when I say put God first? Spend time talking to Him. Let Him be your Best
Friend. Read His Word; it is His love letter to you. Read good books like this
one that will help you be better at living for God and being the kind of person
He has designed you to be. Talk about Him to your other friends.
We always talk about what is important to us. If you want to be
successful in your other relationships, think about God and acknowledge Him and
His Presence in everything you do.
Right Relationship With Your Parents
After God, the next relationship in your life that should be solid is
your relationship with your parents.
Perhaps your parents have problems and are not doing their part to
develop and nurture a right relationship with you. You cannot do anything about
what others are not doing, but you can decide to do your part. God will bless
you for it.
Friends
are important, but I encourage you not to put your friends before your family.
Most of the people you give your life to today won't even be around in a few
more years, but your family will.
If you don't develop and nurture your relationships with your family
members, you may be disappointed someday to discover that you need them, but if
they are willing to help you at all, it will only be out of a sense of
obligation, not out of love.
Our family is very close. When any member has a need, all the others are
quick to run to meet that need. Sometimes we are so eager to support one
another that it is almost ridiculous.
For example, the last time I was in the hospital, I went in at 6:00 A.M.
for some outpatient procedures. My husband, whom I expected to go with me, did
so. But besides Dave, all my children, most of their spouses, my brother and
two of my best friends all went with me. We looked rather odd coming to the
hospital at six o'clock in the morning in this large group. I am sure people
must have thought that I had something really seriously wrong with me to draw
this many people out that early. Actually, it was a minor surgical
procedure, but my entire family insisted on being there.
The man who handled my registration asked if all those people were my
family. When I said yes, he said, “That is really nice; we don't see much of
that these days.”
My family's decision to be there with my husband and me was based on the
years we have had building good relationships and on the fact that we are
always there for any of them when they need us.
Too often we expect something from others for which we have never sown
seeds. If we want people to show love and concern for us, we must sow seeds by
showing love and concern for them.
As a teenager, your family members may not seem
very important right now, but actually they are one of the greatest assets you
have. If they are not, then they should be.
As I have
mentioned, your parents may not be doing their part with you, but someone in
your family has to start doing the right thing at some time, and it may as well
be you.
Romans 12:18 tells us, If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at
peace with everyone. Some people don't want to be peaceful, but God is asking
us to at
least try. The normal attitude
is, “If you treat me bad, I will treat you the same way.” But once again we see
that God's way is just the opposite. He says, “Do unto others as you want them
to do to you.”1 He does not say, “Do unto others what they do to you.”
Don't be so angry with your parents if they don't seem to understand you.
Believe me, when you have children of your own, things will have changed and
you will probably not understand them either.
The
things I wanted to do as a teenager seemed ridiculous to my parents, and the
things my children wanted to do seemed ridiculous to me. I have learned over
the years to be willing to change, but once we are set in our ways that is not
easy.
I remember my mother-in-law getting angry with Dave and me because we
bought a dishwasher. She felt that she had spent her life washing dishes by
hand and that we should save our money and not provide that luxury for
ourselves. She was a wonderful woman, but sometimes it was difficult for her to
change. Later, all of her children had dishwashers — and she even got one.
As I have said, change is not easy, but it is necessary for progress.
The way you want to dress as a teenager may seem to be a point of
contention with your parents. Just make sure you really want to dress in some
particular style
to express your own tastes and personality and not just because you want
to be like everyone else in order to feel accepted or “in.”
Make sure you are not acting out of rebellion. Try to find some middle
ground where you can have what you want without putting your parents in a
mental hospital in the process. Chances are they love you and want what is best
for you, even though you may feel sure they don't know what that is.
Baggy
pants and clothes purchased at the Goodwill store, bleached hair standing
straight up or hair colored in vivid shades of red, purple or green were the
style when our younger son Dan was a teenager and are actually still the style
as I write this book. Hopefully, by the time you read it, things will have
changed — though they will probably not be any more pleasing or appealing to
most adults than the teenage styles are now. But if not, I have learned that
how people dress does not always indicate what kind of people they are.
We adults have a bad habit of judging young people based on what we
thought was right for us in our youth. Judging teens by how they dress or fix
their hair (or often don't fix their hair) is not God's way. He has said
plainly that we cannot judge people's heart by their exterior appearance.2
Today it is the style for men not to shave their face completely but to
leave some whiskers showing, so
they will have what is called the
“rugged look.” Of course, I don't like this style, but my children say they do.
As adults, it is hard for us to understand how anybody could like
something we don't. But since that happens all the time, I have decided to get
used to not liking everything people do, but liking the people anyway. I
suggest that you adopt the same attitude.
If you want your parents to be patient with you, start sowing seeds by
being patient with them. Realize that some of the changes in every generation
are always hard on those who are still around from the previous generation.
When our
son Dan was a teenager, he really wanted to get a tattoo, and I really did not
want him to get one because I thought he might regret it later in life. We had
many conversations about it. Finally, he did get some, but one of them is my
name in Chinese, so I couldn't be too upset. There have been other things he
wanted to do but refrained from just to honor me. It would be different if I
were trying to run every aspect of his life, always coming against everything
he wanted to do. But that is not the case.
You may find that it will go a long way in your relationship with your
parents if you will give in (with a smile) sometimes just to honor them. Don't
try so hard to be like all of your friends that you
If you
have a tattoo, or even several tattoos, don't feel that I am judging you
critically because I said I did not want my son to have one. That is simply my
personal preference. You are free to do what your heart leads you to do.
I told my son that the only tattoo he could have
was one that said, “I love my mom.” It actually became a big joke between us.
Later, I had my eyebrows permanently put on because they were so thin
and short. When Dan found out that it was done by tattooing, he said that I
owed him two tattoos.
Believe
it or not, you can have fun with your parents, and they can lighten up and have
fun with you.
You may
feel that your parents and other adults treat you as if you are from outer
space. The truth is that as an adult I don't always feel accepted as I am by
teenagers, just as you may not always feel accepted as you are by adults. Once
again, you may be expecting something from your parents that you are not
willing to give them. I don't always like my son's clothes or choice of
hairstyle, but he doesn't always like mine either, and, I might add, he is not
shy about verbalizing his opinion. We voice opinions but don't try to control
one another.
I don't believe that parents are always right and teens are always
wrong. Actually, I firmly believe it usually takes two parties to have a
problem. But I am saying that more understanding from both sides is what is
needed. We can learn from each other.
We must be careful about heart attitudes. We can allow an attitude to
get in us that always leaks through into our behavior with others. If we want
other people to treat us right, then we must treat them right. We start treating
them right by having right thoughts about them.
Instead of thinking, My parents don't understand me, try thinking, My
parents don't understand me, but I believe they love me and are doing the best
they can for me.
Your parents may also need to change their thinking toward you. They may
need to stop thinking negative, downgrading and accusing thoughts about you.
In either case, we would all do well to remember
that love always believes the best of people.
If all of us, teenagers and adults, think better thoughts about each
other, we will get along better with one another. Regardless of our age, we can
all benefit by realizing (or remembering) that growing up is difficult. The
teenage years are a time when young people experience a lot of conflicting emotions.
It can be a time of pressure from peers,
Relationships With Friends
You will have a lot of different relationships with different people.
You may enjoy some very close relationships with a few, but that will not be
the case with everyone you know.
Even
Jesus seemed to be closer to Peter, James and John than He was to the other
nine disciples. However, I don't believe He slighted any of them or made any of
them feel left out or rejected. He loved them all the same with the love of God
that was in Him; but for some reason His relationship with Peter, James and
John seemed a little closer. Perhaps they responded better to Him than some of
the others, and it was more natural for Him to respond back.
Love can be given, but it also must be received. I have tried at times
to be friendly with people who did not return my gestures, and no relationship
ever formed. I did not dislike them, but I had to move on to relationships that
included give and take, not just take and take with no giving back.
You cannot be best friends with everybody. I encourage you to let God
develop what I call “divine connections” in your life.
We are often guilty of trying to choose those with whom we want to be
friends and sometimes get hurt in the process. Our motives for our choices are
not always pure either. We may want to be friends with certain people because
they are popular or because we see them as a doorway to what we want. They may
know someone we want to know or have something we would like to have. These are
wrong motives on which to try to build a friendship.
Make sure your motives are pure as you select your friends. Never try to
use people to get something you desire. If you will pray about your friendships
and let God lead you in making them, He will bring you into relationship
naturally and easily with the people who are right for you.
If you
are in relationship with someone right now with whom you are uncomfortable, I
suggest you start moving out of the relationship. It can be done gradually or
in such a way that the person doesn't get hurt. If you don't follow your heart,
you may end up in trouble.
Relationships are a great area in which to pray for discernment. Some
people may seem to have it all together and look like the perfect ones to be
friends with, but down deep inside they may have serious problems that will
cause you problems if you get involved with them. Discernment is not just “skin
deep.” It sees beyond the surface and discerns the true character of people.
If you are in relationship with someone who keeps trying to tempt you to
do things that you know are wrong — get away from that person! You must guard
and protect yourself. Don't let people control you or use you.
If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, and your friends are making
fun of you because of it, don't allow them to get you to change your mind about
your decision. You might tell them what I heard one young woman tell her
boyfriend who was trying to get her to give up her relationship with Jesus: If
you won't go to heaven with me. I won't go to hell with you. I think that
statement says it all.
Always
remember, when you make right choices that are going to help you go forward,
Satan will provide someone through whom he will try to pressure you into going
back where you came from. This is called backsliding.
Don't go to jail for someone else. Don't get hooked
on drugs for someone else. Don't give up your virginity for someone else.
Don't get talked into doing anything you don't want to do!
What about your real friends? What kind of priority
should you set in your relationship with them? You obviously need to spend good
quality time with
them. You need to be available
for them when they need you — unless, of course, their needs are out of
balance.
Some people are so needy they suffocate us. The Bible encourages us not
to get “entangled” with people or things that will draw us off our intended
course.
Help your friends all you can. Pray for them. Do things with them. Talk
to them on the telephone. But don't get “entangled” with them or their
problems.
There is a difference between entanglement and balanced relationships
within proper priorities and boundaries. If you don't have proper boundaries in
relationships, you will almost always get out of balance and end up ruining
what could have been a great relationship if it had been kept in balance.
I once had a friend who had a lot of personal problems. She was never
very happy, and her constant unhappiness was conflicting with my happiness. She
became angry when things did not go her way, and I found myself being
controlled by her. I was doing lots of things I did not want to do just to keep
the peace. I should have confronted her and learned to say no, but my own fears
hindered me from doing what was right.
In order
to set boundaries, we have to learn when to say no and when to say yes. If we
always say yes even
when our heart is saying no, then we have no boundaries, and without
boundaries we are not protected.
This
friend wanted to be with me all the time, but her sadness and depression began
to drag me down. I felt that I was always trying to “prop her up” or “fix her
problem.”
People cannot give you their problems if you refuse to take them.
I wanted to help this woman, but the truth was that her problems were
perpetual. I really could not help her because she needed an attitude change. I
allowed myself to become entangled in her problems, and it basically ruined our
relationship. If I had set some boundaries in the beginning, we might still be
friends today.
Boundaries are good things. They give us safe places in which to live. A
life without boundaries will ultimately end in disaster.
All relationships should have boundaries, including the parent-child
relationship. We have already discussed this kind of relationship, but one more
point needs to be made in regard to boundaries. Parents must begin releasing
authority and responsibility to their children as they grow toward adulthood.
Sometimes children want authority without responsibility, and sometimes parents
want
to give children responsibility but no authority to make any of their
own decisions. Both of these unbalanced scenarios are wrong.
Parents should not expect their children to be responsible to obey them
if they never release any authority to them. Good behavior should always be
rewarded with an increase in privileges.
This same
principle holds true in other relationships such as the relationship between
employer and employee and between God and the believer. The believer's
relationship with God is another kind of relationship we have already talked
about, but I want to point out that it also has boundaries. God releases both
authority and responsibility. Unless the believer is willing to take both, he
can have neither.
As believers, God is our Friend (among other things). Along with that
friendship comes responsibility; we are responsible for walking in obedience to
Him.3 As we do so, He releases authority to us.
I realize your friends are a very important part of your life. I
encourage you to have lots of wonderful relationships. Just be wise not to
allow them to get out of balance. Don't spend so much time with your friends
that you have no time for God or family.
You have lots of years left to live; therefore, you don't have to try to
do all your living right now and act as if you are almost out of time.
I believe the teenage years
should be some of the best in your life, years you can look back on with
enjoyment.
I regret to say mine were a nightmare. I had no
real friends. I was very lonely, enduring abuse and living in a home that was
very dysfunctional.
I pray this is not the case with you. But even if things in your life
are not up to par, don't try to make up for it through relationships with
friends who cause you to get all your other priorities out of balance.
According
to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NIV, there is a time for everything in life. I believe
there is a time to be with people and a time to be alone, a time to build
relationships and a time to walk away from some of them. There is a time to be
with friends, but not during the time you should be with God or with family.
Your Relationship With Yourself
Perhaps it never occurred to you that you have a relationship with
yourself. Actually, you spend more time with yourself than with anyone else. If
you think about it, you literally never get away from yourself — so you had
better like yourself.
Today in our ministry and in our
own youth
outreach called Rage Against Destruction, we deal with many teens who
are filled with self-hatred, self-rejection and deep-rooted shame. Many of them
are self-abusers and some are even suicidal. Much of the time, addiction to
drugs and alcohol, eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia, and even
premarital sex are attempts to find fulfillment, love and acceptance. Those who
engage in these kinds of activities don't know the love of God, and they don't
love themselves in a balanced way.
We are
not supposed to love ourselves selfishly, mistreating others in order to get
our own way, but we do need to love ourselves properly. Sometimes we spend so
much time comparing ourselves with others and competing with them that we never
get to know ourselves.
You have
tremendous worth and value. In fact, you are a great person to get to know. But
like everyone else, you have strengths and weaknesses. I encourage you not to
major on your weaknesses but to turn them over to Jesus and let Him be strong
through them. His strength is made perfect through our weakness.4
Learn to get along with yourself. If you don't, you will always have
difficulty getting along with others.
For many years I could not seem to maintain a good relationship with
anyone, and I kept blaming everyone else for it. I thought if they would
change,
then we could get along. I finally learned from the Lord that my real
problem was that I was not getting along with myself.
If we don't get along with ourselves, we won't get along with anyone
else either.
When you meet someone who seems to hate everyone and everything, you can
be sure that person's self-image is rooted in self-hatred.
It may be new to you to think that you have a relationship with
yourself, but it is a very important relationship, one that can cause lots of
other problems if it isn't healthy. Like every other relationship, getting to
know yourself will take time. Therefore, you must give it a place of priority
in your life.
Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses. Think about
what you like and dislike. Don't determine your worth by how other people view
you, respond to you or treat you.
We always assume that we have something wrong with
us if someone rejects us, but that may not be true — the other person could be
the one with the problem.
Satan convinced me that I had something wrong with me because my father
was sexually abusing me, but I realize now that a small child is not the
perpetrator
in a case of incest. I suffered
self-hatred for years and, therefore, had a bad relationship with myself
because I believed Satan's lies.
What lies are you believing about yourself? What is it that you don't
like about yourself — your level of intelligence, your looks, your body size,
your talents and abilities, your standing in society, your family background?
We all have things about ourselves we would like to change. Some of the
things you don't like about yourself, however, may be things that are not going
to change. You may have to accept them and realize they are not the big deal
you may be making them out to be.
Having
one pimple on your cheek does not ruin your looks. Everyone has flaws; we
hardly notice other people's, but we sit and stare at our own. Some of the
things that you think are your greatest flaws may be the very things that God
will use the most.
I always hated my deep voice. I thought it sounded more like a man than
a woman. I wanted a soft, sweet voice. I was (and still am) often thought to be
a man when answering the phone, unless the person on the other end of the line
knows me really well. I hated my voice and was insecure about it, but God is
using it worldwide today.
Who would have ever thought that
God gave me a
unique voice, not a weird voice
as Satan would have had me believe, and that He gave it to me so it would be
distinct, recognizable and attention getting?
Don't be too quick to decide what things about yourself are usable or
unusable. God may surprise you.
God does
not make junk, and He made you. As the psalmist said of himself, God formed you
in your mother's womb with His very own hands. (Psalm 139:13.) You were an
intricate, special project, and you should accept yourself as such, even with
your faults, and then give your entire self to God. He loves you. Receive His
love, and love yourself in a balanced way. Then you will be able to reach out
to others with love and acceptance. As you learn to trust God, He will help you
make the changes in yourself that are really necessary.
Perhaps you don't like your body size. I had that problem in my life. I
was always chunky. As a teenager I was just pudgy enough to get teased and not
get asked out on dates very often. At least I was sure that was the reason I
had no dates, but it was probably my attitude more than my body size. I kept hoping
to be really thin. After years of emotional suffering, I finally realized I did
not have the bone structure to be thin, so I began to ask God to help me weigh
what He wanted me to weigh.
I know that lots of young girls
today are obsessed
with being thin. Many of them even get drawn into eating disorders like
bulimia or anorexia. These eating disorders will not solve their problem. The
girls may lose weight, but they may also die and not be around to enjoy being
thin.
God's Spirit is sent to you to be your Helper. You
can feel free to talk to Him about anything you need help with, knowing that He
will support you and give you aid.
Your Dating Relationships
There are many books to read and various teachings available on the
rules of dating. Everyone has a formula, but I don't believe all of us can
function under the same rules. Some teens are more mature at fifteen than some
adults are at forty, and then some teens at eighteen still act as if they were
ten. You should be led by your heart, and parents should be led by each teen's
situation instead of setting hard and fast rules and trying to apply them to
everyone.
I have
two children who got married at age nineteen, and they both have very good,
stable marriages. They always seemed to know in their heart that they would be
married early. Neither of them had any great desire to date lots of different
people; they just wanted to find the person God had for them and get married.
Our other two children were in their early twenties when they got married, and
they also have
I don't feel I am qualified to say what age you must be to date, or to
marry — obviously you should be mature enough before doing either, and only
you, your parents and God know when that is. Some people say you should not
even kiss someone unless you know it is the person you are going to marry. I
don't feel that way, but the advice I would offer would be based on my opinion.
Most people giving advice are giving their opinion, which is fine, but we must
all be careful not to set forth our opinion as law.
However, I can say, and say very strongly, when it comes to dating and
marriage, it is best to take it slow and easy. Don't be in a big hurry and end
up getting in trouble. You have lots of time; the important thing right now is
to grow up and enjoy life in the process.
Don't be pressured into having sex before marriage.
Premarital sex may be popular with teens today, but it is not popular with God.
Remember, if you follow His commandments, your life will be blessed. If you
don't, you will reap what you sow.
The claim
that “everybody is doing it” is not a reason for you to do it. If you have
already been involved with someone sexually, that does not mean that God will
not forgive you. You don't have to live under condemnation the rest of your
life because you made
This is
another area in which everyone needs boundaries. Draw a line beyond which you
will not go, and don't keep moving it to suit the person you are dating. Don't
put yourself in a position where you will be overcome with temptation. Do more
double dating. Get more involved in group gatherings and activities. Avoid
occasions when you are alone with your date without anyone else around. Do
whatever you need to do to remain in a position where you can respect yourself
and have the respect of others.
If someone asks you to live with them without being married to one
another, “just say no.” If the person doesn't think you are worth a full
commitment, let God lead you to someone who does. Don't cheapen yourself by
giving yourself away too freely. Don't allow someone to use you, then dump you
when they are finished with you.
Don't try to replace the love you may not have gotten from your parents
or others with a wrong relationship that will ultimately deepen your pain.
Above all, pray, pray, pray! That is the only way I know to avoid
deception in relationships.
Our emotions can easily deceive us and make us think we are “in love,”
but we must know what love is — and it is certainly more than goose bumps, a
It is your right to own your emotions. By that I mean that you can have
feelings and yet not permit them to rule you. You can really care about someone
and yet have standards in your life that you refuse to compromise. If the other
person truly cares about you, they will respect you for it.
There may be a lot of wickedness in our society today, but don't kid
yourself — most people still know right from wrong. If you make right choices,
others may act like they think you are “off the wall,” but deep down inside
they will respect you for it.
I believe most people in society are looking for someone who will stand
up and make right choices
— and you can be that “someone.” You can be an example to your friends,
not just another statistic of teenage pregnancy, drug addiction or alcoholism.
If you
are confused about your feelings toward another individual, I recommend that
you pray and be patient. God will reveal the truth to you in due time.
Meanwhile, keep all of your relationships in the right priority, and they will
be a tremendous blessing to you; otherwise, they can cause heartache and
misery.
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