…why God doesn’t just make your relationship better overnight?

What happens in the messiness of relationships is that our hearts are revealed, our weaknesses are exposed, and we start coming to the end of ourselves.  Only when this happens do we reach out for the help God alone can provide.  Weak and needy people finding their hope in Christ’s grace are what mark a mature relationship.  The most dangerous aspect of your relationships is not your weakness, but your delusions of strength.  Self-reliance is almost always a component of a bad relationship.  While we would like to avoid the mess and enjoy deep and intimate community, God says that it is in the very process of working through the mess that intimacy is found.  Which relationships are most meaningful to you?  Most likely they are the ones that involved working through difficulty and hardship.

The fact that our relationships work as well as they do is a sure sign of grace!

Paul David Tripp and Tim Lane collaborated together on this excellent book, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making.  Above is only a small taste of the rich truths and practical wisdom available to all who find themselves in close relationships with others.

What more important relationship is there than the one between a husband and wife?  Certainly all marriages experience “messes”, but I don’t know if we consider them worth it.  Left to our own way of thinking most of us would prefer no mess at all; yet here is where growth occurs.

We invite you to add this excellent book to your collection of “must reads”.  You’ll find its worth it!