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When we are faced with problems in our relationships, our sinful natures want to place fault with the other person while minimizing or even completely ignoring our personal responsibility for the situation. How can honest self-reflection contribute to improving our relationships?
Taking time to appreciate the other person’s perspective can help us to move forward in a positive direction.
The Protestant Reformation theologian John Calvin reminds us of our selfish tendency as sinful beings to justify ourselves over others:
“We are all so blinded and upset by self-love that everyone imagines he has a just right to exalt himself and to undervalue all others in comparison to self.” — John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, chapter II:IV.
In the midst of relationship problems, be humble, examine yourself, pray, and think of ways to grow in godly character. As difficult as it is to do, we need to self-reflect and consider how our own perspectives, values, expectations, personal history, and selfish desires have contributed to the present troubled relationship.
We also need to take time to reflect on the perspectives, values, expectations, and personal history of the other person as well, and how those factors may have also contributed to the relationship problems. It’s good to ask ourselves whether we have truly loved this person as an image-bearer of God.
In our prayers we humbly ask for God’s help to heal our relationships.
Humbly ask the other person for forgiveness for any wrongs you have done to him or her. Think of ways, both big and small, to encourage improvements in the relationship and try not to dwell on the ways you want the other person to improve.
As we pray to God we humbly acknowledge that we are in God’s story, not the other way around. In prayer we lift up our sins, worries, hurts, disappointments, and anxieties to our Creator who is all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful.
Recognizing our limits helps us to rest in God’s sovereignty as to the future outcome of the relationship.
In our prayers we ask for God’s help to heal our relationships because of our love for God and our fellow image-bearers. In his letter to the Ephesian church the apostle Paul exhorts fellow believers to remember how God has forgiven us in Christ:
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. — Ephesians 4:31-32
As we pray for forgiveness and a heart to forgive others, we also recognize that we can only control so much in our relationships and God is sovereign in all things. Rejoice that God is in control of all things, including our relationships, and even in seemingly hopeless situations he can bring restoration.
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