I spent three years ministering almost daily to a relative I loved and desperately wanted to help. The person claimed to want help and even made progress for periods of time, but the person always fell back into the same pit. It cost money, time, effort, and at the end, nothing was different from how it had been the day we began.
I am not sorry I did what I did; I don’t regret any of the investment because I believe God often uses us to give people opportunity. All people are entitled to opportunity, but what they do with it is up to them. This individual had literally every opportunity to have an awesome life and still made a choice that brought more destruction.
I knew very definitely when the day came that I was finished. The desire to be further involved totally left me. I received phone calls from others telling me I needed to help, to do something, to provide an answer for the person, but I was finished. I could not let this person make me feel guilty because I knew that I had followed God not only in trying to help but also in letting go. I had to establish a boundary that in this case said “Keep Out.”
If I could have been emotionally driven or accepted a false guilt, I would have become entangled in something that God would not have given me the grace to withstand. When we do things without God’s grace, we are doing them in the energy of our own flesh, and it not only frustrates us, it also confuses and defeats us.
I wasted a lot of my life trying to do things myself, independent of God’s help and approval. I flatly refuse to do so any longer. I will not be entangled with people who want me to use my time and energy trying to help them, when they really don’t want to change. I will not permit them to frustrate me and therefore steal my peace.
Remember that Jesus said to stop allowing yourself to be “agitated and disturbed” (John 14:27). Some of the people and circumstances in life that upset us will never change until we establish boundaries and keep them out.
Of course, we have helped thousands of people over the years. People who had serious problems have received what we offered and completely changed for the better. We have also learned to recognize the signs of those who will never change. They have had eternal problems, they talk about them incessantly, their problems are always someone else’s fault, they are hurt if you try to get them to face the truth or take any responsibility, and they won’t follow a program that someone designs for their recovery. As before, they say they want aid, but they somehow never end up applying it.
You should never feel guilty about placing a boundary around your life that keeps out these types of people. You are actually not using wisdom if you don’t establish such boundaries. God’s Word calls us to peace, and boundaries are one thing that will help us keep it.
F
AMILIARITY
B
REEDS
C
ONTEMPT
Establishing and maintaining proper boundaries prevents familiarity. This is very important because familiarity breeds contempt or disrespect. Think of how a person treats a new car. He admires it, thinks it is beautiful, washes it all the time, and expects everyone to be very careful when inside it. He allows absolutely no dirty shoes or food in the car.
But what happens when the car has been around for a few years? It is now dirty all the time, dented, full of empty soda cans and hamburger wrappers. What happened? The owner became familiar with it, took it for granted, and no longer showed it the same respect he did when it was new. He could have kept it looking and running as if it was new had he given it the attention he had in the beginning.
When people first come to work for our ministry, they think it is the greatest thing that has ever happened to them, and they are amazed at and extremely thankful for the opportunity God has given them. However, if they are not very careful, after time goes by they find themselves complaining about the very things they previously thought were wonderful. Why does this happen? One reason and one only: familiarity.
We find a great example of the dangers of familiarity in the Bible concerning the ark of God. When David was attempting to bring it home, a man called Uzza put out his hand to steady the ark on the cart that was carrying it, and God struck him dead because no one was supposed to touch it (see 1 Chronicles 13).
Uzza knew the strict guidelines concerning the ark, so why did he touch it? I believe it was because it had been stored in his father’s home for quite some time, and he had become familiar with it. Therefore, he felt he could take liberties. His respect level had lowered without his even knowing it, simply due to his being around the ark too much. In this case, familiarity cost him his life.
Perhaps familiarity costs us more than we realize in our own lives. Perhaps we let godly relationships with people slip away because we have lost sight of their value in our lives.
It is the same thing that happens in a marriage, or a friendship, or with any privilege we are afforded. New things seem wonderful, but when we become familiar with them, we begin to have less respect for them, or even contempt. A new bride may hang on her husband’s every word and agree with him about each thing he says, admiring him openly for his wisdom. After ten years of marriage, she may be argumentative about all of his opinions, and yet someone she barely knows can have the same opinion as her husband and she will respect and receive whatever he says. Have you ever said to your spouse, “I told you the same thing they did, and you argued with me”? I have had it happen to me.
The Lord once spoke to my heart, saying, “If you would show your husband one half of the respect you show your pastor, your marriage would be a lot better.” I am ashamed to admit that He was absolutely correct. Why did I behave that way? Not because I didn’t love my husband, but I had let familiarity lessen my admiration and willingness to receive advice from him. The pastor was a newer addition in my life at that time, and I had not known him long enough for him to seem familiar.
How can we live with someone and not become familiar? Certainly we will know very well those with whom we spend a lot of time. But losing sight of
why
we first admired a person is what breeds familiarity and destroys the peace in God-ordained relationships.
For this reason, many people in authority feel they cannot spend a lot of time with those under their authority. Their experience has been that most people will lose respect through familiarity. It takes a wise person, who is very spiritually mature, to work under someone’s authority and also be close friends with him or her.
People usually admire and look up to “the boss,” which is a good thing; we are to give respect and honor to whom it is due. It helps us serve people properly if we really respect and admire those over us. Being around them a lot, however, can cause us to begin to look at them as “Good ole Joe” or “My buddy Charlie,” and something happens in the heart that eventually kills the relationship. Respect is a key in good relationships, and I feel the lack of it is one of the main reasons that relationships are destroyed.
We should not allow ourselves to become too familiar with the things and people in our lives that are now special. Some things I own are very special to me; I treat them as valuable, taking precaution that they encounter no harm. How we view things determines how we will treat them. Even more, the people in our lives who are special to us we should treat with great respect, handle them carefully, be appreciative, thanking God for their friendship. Don’t let what is special become mundane. To keep from taking each other for granted, we can practice remembering how precious people are and focus on thankfulness for their presence in our lives.
It may even be healthy to think about how it would affect our lives if we lost certain persons’ presence or friendship.
What if Soand-so and So-and-so were no longer in my life? What if suddenly they were gone?
It could help us keep in the forefront of our thinking how vital they are and assist us in treating them as such. I have done this with my husband, Dave. I have thought about how it would change my life if he suddenly was not in it. He is very valuable to me, and I intend to treat him with respect and honor.
S
ET
B
OUNDARIES ON
T
EASING
I am aware of a relationship between two men who really enjoyed one another that was ruined through excessive joking. The relationship began with tremendous respect and admiration; they were both fun-loving guys who enjoyed teasing people. As they became more and more familiar with one another, the teasing took on a more tense nature. At first, their jesting was cute and funny, but it soon became a point of rivalry, and I noticed they used the pretense of “I’m joking” to make crude comments to each another when they were upset.
They should have shown respect for each other by practicing honest confrontation during a disagreement, but instead one would make a comment to the other that he intended to bring correction, but he did it under the guise of joking. Then the other one would respond with similar statements. This bantering would go back and forth, all, of course, under the mask of “I’m joking.”
When someone’s character, physical appearance, or family members are the brunt of “the joke,” it ceases to be funny.
The comments became more and more rude and crude until these two men began to disrespect each other and lost the desire to have a relationship. I certainly did not enjoy being around them; their way of dealing with one another was uncomfortable. I could tell there was underlying strife. I could tell that the “joking” was not really as funny as they were pretending it was. The Bible says in Ephesians 5:4 that we are to rid ourselves of all “coarse jesting, which [is] not fitting or becoming,” because it causes problems between people that in turn grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
They could have teased one another and enjoyed it, but only with boundaries. Even something like having fun must have boundaries, or it becomes an evil thing. In other words, we need to know how far to go and when to stop. We can set boundaries on ourselves and never put someone else in a position of having to enforce his own boundaries.
I know within myself when I am spending too much, talking too much, working too hard, and not getting enough rest. I also know that when teasing becomes rude, it has gone too far. At that point, I need to apologize and stay within God-ordained boundaries, or I may ruin an otherwise great relationship.
Familiarity is often the root cause of coarse jesting. When we don’t know someone really well, we are more careful what we say, but it seems the better we know an individual, the more the “real us” pops out and the importance we place on good manners diminishes. It is better to remain respectful in all relationships and always to treat everyone with courtesy.
F
OLLOW THE
H
OLY
S
PIRIT
Our goal is to let the Holy Spirit of God lead us into what will produce good fruit in our lives, such as discipline, which is another way of saying we have boundaries in our lives.
Without boundaries, everything is out of control. God wants to be in control, but He won’t force us. We discipline ourselves to follow Him, which means we learn to live within boundaries.
We cannot follow the Holy Spirit and also follow people. We will either be God-pleasers or people-pleasers. If we establish boundaries for others as well as ourselves, we are on the pathway to being led by God’s Spirit.
If you really think about it, life is filled with boundaries. A bedtime is a boundary. It says, “I will stay up until this time and no later.” That boundary allows us to get good sleep and feel healthy the following day; it provides much needed energy. If we frequently ignore our boundaries in this area, it will adversely affect our health.
Stop signs and traffic lights are boundaries, as well as speed-limit signs and the yellow lines in the middle of the road. These boundaries are set in place for our safety.
Don’t look at boundaries as something to be despised, but as something that provides safety and security for all of us. If
boundary
is a word you are not familiar with, I suggest you learn all you can in this area. I highly recommend Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend’s book titled
Boundaries.
It was very helpful to me as well as several people I know. Without boundaries, we will never enjoy peace in our lives.
If you have made a decision to pursue peace, then establishing and maintaining boundaries must become a priority to you. Boundaries will protect you from being easily offended, which is the next way to keep your peace.
Peacekeeper #19
LET GO OF OFFENSES
W
e must learn to pick our battles. There are simply too many conflicts in life to fight them all. We will have many major things to deal with, so the least we can do is practice letting go of all the little things that people do that irritate us. As we saw in the chapter on esteeming others, God may lead us to confront people for misconduct, or even for crossing our set boundaries, but there will be many little issues that we need to just ignore.
We are not alone in our dilemma; even the twelve disciples whom Jesus personally trained had relationship problems with each other. Peter asked Jesus how many times he must forgive his brother for the same offense (see Matthew 18:21–22). This indicates that someone, maybe one of the other disciples, continually irritated Peter in some way. It may have been as simple as a personality conflict or an irksome habit, but whatever it was, Satan used it to steal Peter’s peace.
Jesus told him to forgive seventy times seven, which meant the perfect number of times. However many times it takes to remain in peace throughout our lives, that’s how many times we are to overlook the offenses of others.
People should enter into close relationships with their eyes wide open, realizing there will be things about people that bother them.
After
we enter these relationships, we will have to
close our eyes
to many things. It will not do any good to concentrate on faults, because some of them may never go away. Some things change with people as the years go by, and others seem to remain forever.