How can I incorporate divine principles into my daily interactions so that I can cultivate relationships that are both authentic and reflective of God's love? What is the practical strategy and where do I start?

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Welcome to a thought provoking episode of relationship realities.

Our hosts, Sam and Debbie Wood are thrilled to have you with us today.

Whether you're a single or married listener, get ready for a captivating journey where we explore the realities of relationships beyond the fairy tales.

Well, it's good to be back with you for episode two.

And in our last episode, we talked about where relationships originated, and that is in a triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, pouring out selfless love and receiving selfless love from each person of the Trinity.

And so the big question to me is, okay, yes, that's fascinating to think about, certainly a pattern for our relationships here on earth, but how exactly are we to incorporate this into our lives?

How are we to apply it to our everyday relationships?

Well, you know, since God made us as image bearers, certainly he made us to pour out that same selfless love and receive that love from each other in our relationships.

But you're right, that's the key is how do we do that?

And I think to think back to the original relationship again of God creating Adam and Eve.

And in the garden, there was a tree in the midst of the garden, the center of the garden, which I think represented that their relationship needed to be centered on God, don't you?

Definitely.

Every relationship is to find its identity in the person of Christ, in the person of God.

And I think this was what was going on with Adam.

He was communing with God.

I mean, we read about all the things that God said to him, all the things that God explained to him about, you know, I've given you every seed bearing tree, I've provided for you.

And then he presented Eve.

So there was communication going on the whole, whole time, you know, and in.

The environment there, if you think about it was just amazing.

I think because we think about them being put in a garden called Eden, which means an enclosed place of pleasure.

And they had all these beautiful trees, all these beautiful animals.

They had daily communion with God.

I mean, they had everything.

I mean, when you think about it.

And God wanted them to experience as image bearers of God, the same selfless love and receiving love from each other as the Trinity had from all eternity.

But how do we put this to practice?

How do we get practical about it?

And I, I consider that Adam was amazed with who God, who God is.

And, and I think that is the goal of our life as a Christian, that we need to increase in our understanding of the person of God so that we will commune with, so that our relationship will Be centered on him first and foremost.

And how do we do that?

To me, we do that when we really dig into the Word and that we pay attention to what the Word says about the person of God.

Like, what type of God would give us a directive for this?

What type of God would say, I've given you everything and you are free to eat all of this amazing food, but don't eat of the tree that's in the middle of the garden, that tree of knowledge and evil.

What type of God would say that?

To me, it's a God that is our protector.

Yeah, no, it's beautiful too, that God doesn't leave us guessing because he gives us a revelation of Himself in His Word.

I can't help as you're talking, thinking about, somebody asked you one time and said, if you had all over to do again, what would you do different in your parenting?

And you answered them, I would teach our boys to be more fascinated with God.

Do you remember that?

Oh, yes.

I think that's the key to everything, is to be fascinated with the person of God.

And the only way we can do that is not just build up a storehouse of knowledge about him, but we need to meditate on it.

We need to embrace it.

We need to, to wonder and be fascinated with who God is and allow that to permeate every fiber of our being and to find our identity in the fact that we are in relationship with him, that we belong to Him.

You know, in the Word of God, as you dive into it, it's like a treasure chest, right?

I mean, every time you open it up, if you're looking, God gives you new nuggets of gold.

He gives you new treasure that you can think about.

So I, I, well, I guess what we're saying right now is it's so important if we're going to have the right love relationships with each other, if we're going to pour out, if I'm going to pour out selfless love to you as my wife and you're going to pour out selfless love to me as a husband, and we are to image that love of God, then we have to have our vertical relationship with God continually growing and in relationship with him, where we're more fascinated with him and we're worshiping him daily, right?

That's the way that we receive his love is through worship and gratitude and realizing that He's God and I'm not and I need Him.

But it's not just that I need him, but he is there for, for me.

He will navigate life with me.

He is my stability.

He's my hope, he's my light.

And the way that I get that to move from my head to my heart is just daily digging into the word and not just reading it for knowledge, but worshiping my way through that word, pausing and really applying it.

What does this do for me, knowing a God like that?

How does that change my life?

What does it do for me?

And I have found out that it really impacts my relationship with you and my relationship with other people because it fills me with a sense of humility and gratitude when I think of who God is, Especially when I start my day with this.

And it's backed with the truth of scripture, not just me thinking these things up, but it's backed right from scripture.

Then it.

It gives me a mindset that I can call on the rest of the day, no matter what God brings into my life, you know.

So what you're saying, I guess, would be what we call a quiet time, right?

That is.

It's so important, and we have found it so important in our marriage, in our relationship with each other, that we daily have that time with God to start our day off.

And I like to start my day off that way because it sets the.

It sets everything up for the rest of the day if I spend that time with God.

So practically speaking, when we ask that question, well, how does this all work out?

We would say it starts with having a time daily with God, a quiet time with him in the word of God.

Not just.

It's not a time when you say it's not a time.

Because I know a lot of people might have a time with God where they just say, I'm going to get through this chapter, this chapter, this chapter.

I'm going to read so many chapters this month of this year, Read through the word of God this year.

But it's not just reading through the scriptures.

It's taking time to really meditate upon the scriptures.

Don't you agree?

Oh, absolutely.

We agree so much on this that normally, and I just finished a counseling session.

But when we do counseling sessions, we have people, the first question that we ask them is, what does your daily walk look like with God?

And tell us about it.

What did God show you?

How did it impact you?

And I want to find out, are they genuinely pondering the truths of who God is and becoming fascinated with them?

Because that stabilizes me.

When I'm stabilized in the person of God, then I'm going to respond to you differently.

I'm going to Respond to my children differently.

And even if I'm out on the road driving and a driver pulls in front of me and I have to slam on brakes, I'm going to respond to them differently.

It just means everything to really start our day centered on God.

And I can think in my own life of times when I get frustrated, I might say something more harsh to you.

I'm quick to respond in a wrong way, or I am, like you said, get out and start driving.

Get out here.

And you get fretted at people because they're in your way and you're in a hurry and all these different things.

And I reflect back on those days and think, wow, I didn't spend time with God this morning.

I didn't set my day up right to begin with.

I didn't take time to read scripture and in that scripture, to ask myself.

Even the question is, what is this scripture revealing to me about God?

What attributes of God do I see in this scripture?

What is it telling me about the person of God?

And then what is it telling me?

What is God saying to me?

It is a living word.

So God is speaking to us through his Word, and he's speaking to us and telling us how that we might be more like Christ.

And listening to this podcast, you might have been hoping that you would receive some nugget or something that was unexpected.

And you think, yeah, key, this is so basic.

But, you know, if we don't get the basics right, then everything else is going to be crooked and it's going to falter.

So this is so it's just really.

It's just the basis for our life.

It gives us stability, especially in interrelating with other people, gives us hope for them and for us.

So we might, you know, some people may be thinking, well, what does your quiet time look like?

And, you know, it's a lot of different ways you can have that.

I guess we could say we could go straight to scripture and just read just scripture verses in a chapter and have a plan and take time to journal that.

Or as we read and meditate and chew on it and think about it and ask the questions we mentioned a while ago.

Or it could be a lot of times.

I know we've been doing this so many years.

We've read commentaries together before, haven't we?

And as we read that commentary, we're reading the scripture and we're talking about it together, even as a husband and wife.

And I'm so glad you mentioned journaling, because that is.

It's recording your Thoughts.

It's recording what God shows, showing you, but at the same time, it's like a way of expressing it back to God and showing him your gratitude for, for who he is.

And I want to say too, Sam mentioned that his favorite time is morning.

To do this.

That is the best time because it starts your day that way.

But here I'm thinking about when I had all these little children.

I'd get up early and it just never failed.

Soon as I got up early just to spend time with God, one of them would wake up.

And it just like, it was so frustrating because I wanted so to be in the presence of God and to get my day started like that.

But hey, moms of young children, don't worry about it.

If you don't get it done in the morning, you can end your night.

You can review your whole day and filter it through scripture and you can see things that God's showing you about himself throughout your day by looking into his scripture at the end of your day.

And don't you think, Deb, that it's, it's.

This needs to be a priority.

I mean, we, we do.

We spend time with what we love.

And if we really love the Lord and we love our marriages, love our children, we need to spend time and make it a priority to spend time in the word of God.

I know that Satan will try to distract us so he can destroy us.

And one of the things he's going to try to distract you from doing is to have this time daily with God.

And especially, like you said, if you have small children, you're busy.

So it's so many distractions out here.

But we need to keep it a priority.

Absolutely.

We want to make sure, above all things that, that we commune with God daily.

And I know some people say they do it on the way to work, they might listen to scripture.

I think that's great to listen to scripture, but it's hard to really focus totally on God when you're doing that because hopefully you are paying attention to traffic and what you're doing and being safe.

So really to get alone, it's important to get alone with God and actually commune with him, hopefully around His Word.

So as we are sharing in this episode, we've talked about in the first episode again, the importance of understanding.

It's foundational to understand where relationships came from.

They came from the triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, as we shared last time, pouring out selfless love to each other.

And God made us in his image to do the same.

So we're saying this second reality that we need to understand in regard to relationships is we must daily keep our relationship with God vibrant through reading and meditating upon the word of God.

Yes, through worship.

Yeah, we want to, to expand that reading into embracing and, and, and expressing it back to God, expressing a gratitude back to God again, because that fills us with humility and gratitude.

And what we're doing is we're receiving grace from him as we do this and, and that empowers us with grace to give out in the relationships that we come across every day.

So I guess we might say the more we are filled with the love of God, the more we can overflow with that love.

It goes to the first and second great commandment that really in the Bible.

And I can't help but think as you share this to how wonderful and beautiful it must have been in the Garden of Eden as daily before.

Before they disobey God to commune with God that way and worship him through even looking at his creation.

Everything in the creation can remind us of the glory of God and what a wonderful, amazing God we serve and the greatness of God.

Even like it says in Isaiah 40, there's none that compare unto Him.

And we need to daily spend time.

Worship and we'll be praying for you all.

Anyone that's listening.

That you will commune with God daily, that you will become more and more fascinated with him, and that he will open up his word to you and reveal to you aspects of his character that either you've never considered before or you've not thought about lately.

Just things that just help you to know how blessed we are to have the God that we do.

And know that you can ask us questions.

If you got questions about any of these episodes, you can send a question to us@infoamily fortress.org and we'll try to answer your question maybe in the next episode or some way or directly.

And we'd love to do that.

And let us know about topics.

Yeah.

Or if.

Or if there's topics or areas that you want us to discuss.

And you think, man, I got this question and you'd like for us to discuss it or bring that up, then let us know that too.

We'd love to hear from you.

And don't forget to.

There's a down.

You can download a guide for this episode that'll give you some questions and things to meditate and think about and put into practice over the next week.

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