Teaching Series
Jesus Manifesto
Monday—Getting Relationships in Order

Series: Jesus Manifesto
Message: Getting Relationships in Order
Preacher: Tony Hunter
Reflection: Japhet De Oliveira
Live Wonder: Zan Long
Live Adventure: Zan Long
Live Beyond: J. Murdock
Live Purpose: Lydia Svoboda
Editor: Becky De Oliveira

Refresh: Begin with prayer. Ask for the Holy Spirit to open your heart to new understanding and for God’s character to be revealed.

Read: Colossians 3:18-4:1 in the New Living Translation (NLT). Note 1–3 insights or questions. 

Reflect: Following Jesus, knowing Jesus, and accepting Jesus changes the way we interact with each other, and only for the better. 

If you did not have a chance to read the Daily Walk from yesterday, I plan every day this week to start the Daily Walk with the same opening sentence (as above). N. T. Wright, in his commentary Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, shares this insight into the passage: 

His command to wives has come in for particular criticism. In many translations, the key word comes out as “submit,” and this conjures up in many people’s imaginations the image of a downtrodden woman, the victim of her husband’s every whim, unable to be herself, to think her own thoughts, to make a grown-up contribution to the relationship. The fact that there are still one or two places in the world where women are treated like that is enough to make some people suggest that this is what Paul intended.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as his parallel command to husbands indicates. Indeed, Paul’s own fellow-workers included women, and married couples, where it appears that the women were, in our phrase, “people in their own right” rather than shadowy figures screened from view by a bossy husband. At the same time, Paul is quite clear that, in the mutuality of respect and love that makes a marriage what it should be, the roles are reciprocal, not identical. 

It would take a longer section than this one to explore why that is so, or how the differences on either side of the reciprocal relationship should best be worked out in different circumstances or with different people. But these are only, after all, brief guidelines. Paul must have intended his audience to work out the details for themselves, and it’s no bad thing if we do so as well.

I have, over the last couple of decades, prepared countless couples for marriage, helped others transition through complex times in their relationships, and met with so many wiser, older, happily married couples. This experience has been more useful than any of the research, books, or courses I’ve had in helping me to discover what makes a healthy relationship. For today, I will leave you with a recalibrate question; tomorrow we will unpack this a little further. 

Recalibrate: What do you think are the top three secrets to a healthy relationship?

Respond: Share a prayer of gratitude for the people in your life. 

Research: Read Boundaries in Marriage by Henry Cloud.

Remember: “In all the work you are doing, work the best you can. Work as if you were working for the Lord, not for men” (Colossians 3:23, ICB).

Japhet De Oliveira is administrative director for the Center for Mission and Culture at Adventist Health in Roseville, California.

You were made to love. Yesterday we opened something new with our little ones. How did that go? Did they know what to do with the thing that was opened? So many times I have struggled with something, trying to figure out on my own how it works. Have you seen your child do the same thing? Play a game of Follow the Leader with your little one and watch as they follow your every move, maybe even your expressions. Following Jesus, knowing Jesus, accepting Jesus changes the way we are with each other only for the better.

Yesterday I asked you to think about how you can love others. What did you come up with? If you couldn’t think of anything, I have two suggestions for you. Look and listen. Watch the person and see if they need help. They may need help packing up the toys or carrying their bags. Ask if they need help and listen to the answer. Ask if they would like to sit with you. Ask if they would like to play. Ask if they would like a friend. Ask them, “What you would like someone to ask you?” Ask if they would like you to stop asking questions! Always listen to their answers. Jesus loves everyone and He doesn’t want anyone to be left out, so your mission is to love your world and everyone in it.

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord” (Colossians 3:20. Well, that doesn’t leave much breathing room for interpretation, now does it? Paul spells it out pretty clearly for us to apply to our lives today. If your parents tell you to do something, you do it. No questions asked.

Everything?

If left with just this one verse, we would be in a pretty tricky situation overall. But the entire paragraph is necessary to read in order to understand what is going on here. Keep in mind, Paul first tells moms to be in tune with the Lord and His will for us. Then, he tells dads to be loving and not react harshly. Then, and only then, does Paul talk to the kids and tell them that they need to follow their parents’ instructions. So really, there is a math equation here that is pretty important. When your mom is always listening to God, and your dad is always making sure to be loving and cool-headed, then there is no reason to think your parents won’t always make the right decisions for you. The tough part is that you won’t always know the difference. So rather than playing God to determine the heart of your parents and break down why they say what they say and what causes them to tell you what to do, your goal is always the same. Obey.

Seems unfair maybe?

Think about how Jesus loved us enough to come to this earth to be with us. When He got here, we weren’t the best people, and we certainly didn’t always have the best intentions in mind when we spent time with Jesus. And yet, He still died for all of our sins on the cross. Whether it was fair or not, Jesus obeyed His Father and then gave us the ability to see goodness because of it. 

How do you think you can do more to be obedient to your parents? How might that help your own cause, to obey rather than challenge? How might your obedience be a testimony to your parents that you are living in the same way that God called them to live?

“Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (Colossians 3:18). Wives are to let their husbands act for them and trust their husbands to love them continually. Wives were never meant to be property. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). They are to be one. But in a structure in which God is trying to give yet another sign of His love for us, He gives this example of marriage in which one is not to take advantage of the other, but as the church submits to Him who lived and died for them, the wife is to submit to her husband who is to live and die for her.

Zan Long is GRC director for faith development for ages 0-17. She lives in Sydney, Australia, and serves at her local church in nearby Kellyville.
J. Murdock is associate pastor at Boulder Adventist Church in Boulder, Colorado, where he focuses on youth and young adult ministry.
Lydia Svoboda is a junior theology major at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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