Hindrances to Relationships
1) BEING UNEQUALLY YOKED (JOINED) (II Cor. 6:14-16)
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
A) Attempting to join Christian and non-Christian in intimate relationships will bring strife and division!
1 Corinthians 7:13-15 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
* A clash of values and morals
* A clash of solutions to life’s problems
* Brings a spiritual war into a relationship (Mark 3:25)
Mark 3:25 " If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand."
2) SELLING OUT CHRIST FOR A RELATIONSHIP (Matt. 10:37)
37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
A) Many choose to seek out, get involved in, and conduct relationships with unsaved people and choose to live for the desires of the other(husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, et.) and not for Christ.
B) Some examples:
* " I would get saved but my spouse doesn’t want a saved spouse"
* " Maybe my spouse will love me more if I go out and party with him, won’t God understand?
* " We would raise our children in the Lord, but they want to dress and act like other kids so we let them.
* " If I profess my Christian faith on my job, my co-workers won’t want me around them.
* " I would fellowship with Christians, but my unsaved friends don’t want them around and they can help me move up on my job and go places in this world.
3) THE WORSHIP OF OUR CHILDREN (Matthew 10:37 )
37 "....... anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;....."
A) How we worship our children:
1) By lack of discipline
* Proverbs 22:6 " Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."
*Proverbs 22:15" Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him."
*Proverbs 13:24 "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.
2) Overlooking their sins
* Proverbs 20:11" Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right."
We have a tendency to overlook actions in our children that we would not approve of in others.
3) By spoiling them
* spoil : to impair the disposition or character of by overindulgence or excessive praise.
A) By giving them everything they want
B) By never making them earn anything
C) By teaching them that they are better than other children.
4) UNHEALTHY FRIENDSHIPS (JAMES 4:4)
".... friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."
A) Friendships are unhealthy when:
1) They cause you to compromise your Christian values
2) Those same friends want nothing to do with your interests; i.e. church, revivals, reading or talking
about the Bible; but always want you to attend their functions , and you always do!
* We are taught to befriend those in the world so we can be a light in a dark places. We will meet and become friends with some of them. The danger comes when we lose our anchoring line and begin to drift towards their way of life. This is the first stage in backsliding! There is nothing wrong with casual friendships, but close, intimate friendships with the unsaved bear our soul to spirits that are out to destroy our life in Christ.
Questions :
1) Why are the lines between the way of God and the way of the world stressed so? (read Hebrews 3:12-14, 6:4-7, 10:26-27,29
*Hebrews 3:12-14 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.
*Hebrews 6:4-8 4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6 if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
*Hebrews 10:26-27,29 26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
2) Why do we not take the above serious and blur the lines in our lives and relationships?