Today how we relate to one another is changing, mass media and computer communication is beginning to make personal relationships a thing of the past.

It is becoming so easy now to send a 'quick email', or 'give someone a quick ring' . and yet how we relate to one another is one of the most important facets of  our personality.

The impersonal nature of electronic communication can cause us to become casual about devoloping long term important relationships with other people.

As a result of the bombarding of our senses by television and outside influences, families are communicating less an less and the divorce rate is soaring.

But is relationship so important, does it really matter?. Out of all our human experience, the only thing that we can take with us beyond this life is relationship.

 Everything we do in life is a relationship. We have a relationship with money, we have a relationship with each other, and we even have a relationship with our car. We have a relationship with everything! Life is about relationship.

Why are successful relationships so difficult to attain? For one, the element of trust is essential. We must arrive at a place where we trust ourselves and others.

Essentially we all want is to be honored and respected. We want to feel safe, nurtured, and protected. We want to be validated, loved, and cherished. We also want to make our own choices and have those choices honored. We do not want to be told what to do or how to live our life.

Every relationship we have is a reflection of the relationship we have with God. If we believe that God can love us, then we will believe that others can love us, and if we believe that we are not good enough for God to love, how will we be able to accept the love of others?

However, when his love is mirrored in our relationship with others, then it becomes a reflection of the God kind of covenant love, which we then share with others

RELATIONSHIP TO GOD THROUGH JESUS

The first essential in relationship, is to receive Jesus into your heart, to ask him into your heart and your life. The Bible calls this being 'born again, why is this so important?

Because Jesus knows how vital to us relationship really is and that all relationship comes through our relationship to God. If we are alienated, or cut off from God we cannot have relationship with Him, Jesus wants us to come into this relationship through him, by the Holy Spirit who wants to lead and guide us into all his truth

When we are 'born again' God begins to speak to us through our reborn spirit, this is our vertical relationship with the Father. He begins to teach us about our relationship with other people, which is our horizontal relationship, the way he teaches us is through his word.

Jesus learned the word, he is the word, Jesus prayed the word (I say only what my Father says, I do only what my Father does) why should it be different for us?

If we do what Jesus says (my words) we will get the results that Jesus gets, he said so himself

At first, as the Holy Spirit reveals in us the God kind of love, the love of the Father, his love draws us into him, we do it because of what he has done for us through Christ.

Then we cross the line, leaving our commitment to the world, to become of our own free will, fully committed to him. He will never force us, it is totally our choice to come to him.

When we do, the God kind of love, the love of God, propels or constrains us and pushes and presses us into the Father we are drawn by deep desire into deeper and deeper relationship with Jesus.

This leads us into true relationship that is beyond human understanding.