How Stuff Works

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes (Matthew 7:24–29, KJV).

Life is full of relationships—some that are solid and some that are a little shaky. If we don’t have a good (working) relationship, we start to see broken friendships, broken families, and sometimes broken homes. If we don’t work and invest time in our relationships, they won’t work.

Keeping our relationships health and working takes a lot of time and effort; it takes work. But, how can we keep them all healthy? We eventually pour into the relationships we deem worthy enough to keep alive and let others dwindle. But, Jesus tells us that we cannot manage relationships based on our own rule set. When Jesus came to earth, He brought a relationship revolution.

Left to ourselves, we break stuff. We eventually learn the only way for anything to succeed is by doing it God’s way. If we seek God, keep Jesus in the center of our hearts and relationships, our relationships will withstand every test and trial of time.

Matthew 7:24–29 begins with “therefore” because Jesus had been sharing the relationship revolution—He was expounding truth that people had never heard before. Humans have a tendency to deal with relationships foolishly. We all have relationships that are “crashing down around us” and we pretend not to notice. There are “elephants in the room”—confines of our relationships—that we choose to ignore.

We are like the people described in Scripture (Matthew 23:23–26) that make big issues out of little things and ignore the big (important) things. In keeping relationships solid, we need to focus on what truly matters. We cannot “love” the elephant in our life and circumvent dealing with broken relationships. In order for our relationships to thrive and succeed, we must work on them!

Forgiveness is the key ingredient that will take care of every relationships issue. Forgiveness will get the relationships working again. We like to think everyone else is messed up, but in reality, it’s really us. Jesus told Peter—the Disciple who denied Jesus three times—when he asked for forgiveness, to convert and strengthen others (Luke 22:31–32). When we get Jesus in our hearts and He reigns in our life, we will have His supernatural power in us to help us make relationships work!

Jesus had to send the Comforter (Holy Ghost) to help us in our relationships (John 14:26). It is His Spirit living within us that helps others feel His love every day. We cannot forgive others until we accept that Christ forgave us. Today, let’s seek to restore the relationships we’ve allowed to break in our lives. Seek out the Lord, being willing to ask for forgiveness, and forgive others, and we’ll see the rebuilding of relationships in our lives that will last a lifetime!