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In: Prayer, Tough Love
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Difficult relationships are worth praying for because: Prayer changes our focus. When we consider who we pray to—God, who is much bigger than our problem and ourselves—it helps change our perspective. Prayer takes our thoughts away from the relationship giving us angst to think about God and rely on him. Prayer changes things. It invites God to come and work in our difficult relationships to help put things right. Prayer is a channel for our despair. In prayer we can speak freely to God about how we feel. We pour out our pain. We can be honest with God, having full confidence in God’s understandingRead More →

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In: Prayer, Tough Love
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One of the problems I have when a relationship isn’t going the way I expect, or if it has already gone sour, is I imagine all sorts of reasons why this has happened. Usually my thoughts are negative and way out of proportion to the problem. For instance, a friend hasn’t returned my text message and I start to think she must be mad at me, when most often it’s because she’s busy. Perhaps you do something similar. These reflections are like damaging arrows directed at our minds and hearts, and aimed to change our sense into nonsense. We do not want to give themRead More →

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In: Prayer, Tough Love
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We can learn a lot about the part we play in relationships when we practice asking God for his perspective and listening to him. One thing I’ve discovered is I often react with envy and let this feeling hinder my relationships. I am envious if someone is more successful or looks better than me. My problem with envy is closely tied to my strength of competition, as competition is rooted in comparison. I am competitive. Just ask my husband. He refuses to play board games, like Monopoly, with me, because my aim is to win, and I am ruthless in achieving my goal. Being competitiveRead More →

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In: Tough Love, Prayer
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There’s a good reason why we should talk to God about our difficult relationships, and that is because the Bible tells us, in fact it does more, it promises us we will receive peace. Honestly, though this often seems impossible. I know I have prayed, pouring out everything to God, yet misery and anguish still plagues me afterwards and throughout the day and night. Relief doesn’t come easily. Leaving our burdens with God is easier said than done. In the book of Psalms in the Bible, we find David experienced the same problem. David asked God: How long must I wrestle with my thoughts andRead More →

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In: Tough Love
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Usually I am quick to be angry, especially when a another person’s words or actions hurt me. It’s hard to forgive when someone has been mean, or worse, to us. Yet, fury is a poor bandage for an injured heart. Instead, pouring out our distress to God in prayer is a remedy. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer says Matthew 5:44 (MSG). When we’re fuming, it’s better to fight back with the practice of prayer. So, how do we start to pray for a difficult relationship? First, we need to bring all those strong negative emotions to God.Read More →

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In: Prayer, Tough Love
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A difficult relationship can leave us drained and exhausted. On one hand, we feel like turning our back and walking away. On the other hand, we are not ready to give up. So, what do we do? We may share our relationship problem with a friend, but that doesn’t always lead to a solution. Or, we spend hours, usually in the middle of the night, thinking through what happened and wondering if we should have done something different. But, we don’t come up with any answers. We can’t depend upon other people or our own wisdom to resolve demanding relationships. But, there is one weRead More →

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In: Prayer, Tough Love
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When we’ve been hurt by another person and it’s not fixed, what do we do? When they neither seem to notice what they have done wrong, nor care about the misery they have inflicted, let alone say they’re sorry, how do we deal with it? Often our reaction to pain is anger and we want to hurt back. The thought of forgiving our adversary seems impossible to do. But, more than that, harboring bitterness and resentment make our lives miserable. We don’t want to be bound by the chains of discord; we want to be free to be peacemakers. Where do we find the strengthRead More →