Did Jesus eat meat? Exploring His diet reveals key insights into His mission, cultural practices, and how food fosters fellowship.
Viewing entries tagged
relationships
Maybe starting a Zoom group in the first century wasn’t an option technologically, but there’s value in considering what would have been lost if Jesus had chosen to mentor His disciples online instead of in-person.
Many couples begin their relationships giddy and excited about each other. Love comes easily and romance feels natural. Along the way, many people find that love hard to maintain. What started as a blaze feels more like a flicker. How do you rekindle your love, and what can you do to make sure the flame never dims?
I think we do want someone who will love us just the way that we are. But we also need someone who loves us enough to help us grow and mature as well. So instead of asking, “Will this person fit into my life and not change me?” maybe there are some better questions we need to ask.
When it comes to dating, our instincts – even if you’re a Christian – are often influenced more by Love Island and The Bachelorette than anything Jesus ever said. Jesus gave two foundational principles to navigate all of life and they provide a roadmap for approaching areas, like dating, that hadn’t even been developed when He walked the earth.
Are you spending more time with cyber friends than neighbourhood friends? Are you focused more on quantity of friendships than quality? Are you listening to the kind of voices that are fuelling your anger? Or have you let charm and beauty take the priority that character and God’s grace were intended to have in your thinking? Let the Bible’s ancient wisdom guard your interaction with social media today.
It’s easy to confuse Jesus with a guru, philosopher or self-help speaker. Even Christians can often read His teachings the way you would read a self-help book. They look for principles to follow or rules to obey. But when you reduce Jesus’ teachings to principles and rules, you empty them of their power. The heart of Jesus’ message was a message of good news – God’s gift to transform us. Someone once came to Jesus for help in dealing with a hard relationship. Examining Jesus’ response helps us to see how distinctive Jesus’ message is and how we can apply the good news to our own relationships.
Couples that are dating will often talk about having a great “connection.” But in a survey developed by a doctor in psychology and family science and refined through over 4 million surveys in the last 35 years, there wasn’t a single question about connection.