Consider Lily Articles Gallery

All Things New - 9th in a series by Jessica Sheets After discussing the plans that God has for your future and how that may affect your relationships right now, there is one more thing that needs to be addressed--the past. What if you’ve already made poor choices about the men in your life (or are making them right now)? What do you do? At the camp where my husband and I worked the summer we met, I taught a girls’ class on relationships. It was always a joke at the end of each week to see how many girls I had convinced to break up with their boyfriends. Now whether or not God wants you to end a relationship is between you and Him. However, there are some definite truths that He wants you to know about the guys you have allowed to be a part of your life. What if you’ve already been in a relationship where you gave away too much? There is an illustration that I remember from high school. Someone takes a rose and passes it around a group of people, while giving a talk on abstinence. Then he or she would take that rose and put it in a vase with other roses and tell everyone to take one. Usually, the rose that had been passed around would be the last one chosen. The moral of the story was that, just like the rose, no one wants to marry someone who has been "picked over" by other people. The more I have come to understand about God’s grace, the more I hate that story. It (and other stories like it) is used as a scare tactic, and God isn’t about scaring people into a relationship with Him. The illustration fails because we serve a God whose plans are infinitely bigger than our mistakes...a God who "makes all things new" (Rev. 21:5). I know that verse is written in relation to the end of time, but it is so true about our relationships. God is the god of second...and seventy second chances. There is nothing that we have ever done (or will do) that God has not already forgiven (if we are His children). And He waits patiently for us to bring our hurts and mistakes to Him and let Him heal us. And when He heals...He heals completely. It is gone--no longer a part of our relationship with Him. The mistakes we made are not something that He intends for us to carry around with us. They are meant to be left at the foot of the cross...that’s one of the reasons it’s there. After understanding the truth of God’s forgiveness, you then have to give time for your emotions to heal. If you have been in an unhealthy relationship with a guy, you need to stay away from him. Sorry, but you cannot be friends...not for a while, probably a long while. You may know in your brain that your time with this guy is over, but your emotions won’t get the memo for a while. You cannot expect to be around him all the time and not struggle with the desire to be with him. You have to give yourself time...time to let God put back together the things that you allowed to be torn apart. And I’m not just talking about sex. Even if you didn’t cross that line, you may have still given away pieces of yourself, pieces of your heart, that need to be healed. And give your relationship with God time to grow. Don’t expect to wake up the day after a break-up singing "God is so Good." It will probably feel much like the opposite. He is good, but you’ve been away from Him for a while or forever and will need some time to learn or re-learn about His goodness. Whether you like it or not, your emotions play a huge part in your life...even your relationship with God. And they will have lots of ups and downs with each time He shows you something that you need to release to Him. You must remember that, very often, the way you feel is not true. He is what is true! So spend some time getting to know Him more; let Him show you truth. And slowly but surely, your emotions will start to follow what you know is real. And all the mess that you thought you had made of your life will begin to heal. And you will find that God has taken this broken, hurting heart and put it back together even greater than it was before...more able to love and receive love with the correct boundaries. You will know that you are complete in Him, and you can be confident that He has truly made you new.