Relationships

Over the past few weeks, I have really thought about the relationships that I have in my life. Are they relationships that help to build me up, or are they ones that are only bringing me down? After thinking about this, the question of why we would want to be in relationship with people that would bring us down came to mind. I know that there are some people in my life that truly do bring me down. What purpose do they serve in my life? Obviously they serve some purpose or I wouldn't have them in my life. Of course, I am the type of person that really doesn't want to hurt others, so I probably would keep people around even if they were truly destructive to me. But that is beside the point. We were created as relational beings, so of course I am not promoting that we go and get rid of every relationship that has even been negative to us. We are all sinful beings, so no relationship is going to be perfect. But, it is important to realize who we are surrounding ourselves with and what we are consuming our time with. The people in our lives tend to have a lot of say in what we do. My encouragement is that we fill our lives with other believers who are constantly seeking to honor Christ in all that they do. This is definitely an area that I need to work on, and I am nowhere near to being remotely close to achieving this.