Making Sense of Relationships

Make It Make Sense Series | Part 2

Everything you carry shapes you.

A backpack full of books, a laptop, chargers, an Xbox controller (just in case) it all adds weight. And weight, whether it's physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual, always leaves a mark on the person carrying it.

That's especially true of relationships.

The people you carry closest to you are shaping who you are, whether you recognize it or not. Some relationships make you stronger. Some make you weaker. Some pull you closer to Jesus. Some pull you further away. And the goal of Proverbs isn't simply to help us find better friends. It's to help us become better ones, and to understand why any of it matters in the first place.

So today, we have three questions.

Question 1: Who Is Influencing or Shaping Your Life?

Proverbs 13:20 | 22:24 | 12:26

You don't have to call someone your best friend for their character to start rubbing off on you. All you need is proximity. All you need is to be close enough, long enough.

Think about the oldheads who used to spray their cars with cologne, not just for themselves, but because whoever rode with them was going to walk away smelling like them. Same truth with riding in a car with a smoker. You didn't choose to smell like Newport 100s. But you were there long enough, and now you're walking into school with a smoke mustache.

Relationships work exactly the same way. Hang around kind and generous people? You start becoming more kind and generous. Hang around people who cut corners? You start cutting corners. The people you spend the most time around eventually rub off on you.

This isn't a call to be cold and callous toward people with bad character. Jesus didn't treat people that way, He even kept walking with Judas, knowing exactly what Judas intended to do. But Jesus was also wise and intentional. He loved Judas. He even washed Judas's feet. But He never allowed Judas's character to shape His own.

Close enough to love. Wise enough to shield.

The real question isn't who should I cut off. It's: who has my ear? Who has my heart? Who has my attention? Because whoever those people are, that's also who you're slowly becoming.

Question 2: Who Is Benefiting From or Being Shaped By Your Life?

Proverbs 18:24 | 17:17 | 27:5-6 | 27:17

If the first question only asks who's influencing us, we become consumers of relationships, always measuring connections by what we can extract. But Jesus didn't live that way. And Proverbs doesn't push us there either.

Nobody accidentally grows a healthy garden. Plants need water, sunlight, attention, and care. And because the world is fractured by sin, relationships left unattended never drift upward. They always drift down. Like an escalator going the wrong direction, if you just stand there, it will carry you somewhere you didn't intend to go.

Proverbs teaches that a godly friend does five things: shows up, speaks up, lifts up, calls up, and sharpens. That last one matters most for iron to become useful, it has to be conflicted against something else. The sparks are not a sign that the friendship is failing. They're a sign that something is getting sharper.

Don't be the person who only wants a yes man. Don't be the person who never challenges your friends because you're afraid of conflict. If you love someone, sharpen them. Tell them the truth. Be willing to have the hard conversation. Because a dull knife doesn't serve anyone.

And the heart check question: whose life would be worse off if you stopped investing in them? Not because of what you provide or protect, but because they would lose someone helping them become more like Jesus.

Question 3: Who Is Transforming Your Life?

1 Corinthians 1:24-25 | John 15:13-15

This is the question where we can't spin it onto someone else anymore.

Because here's the honest truth: none of us can love the way Proverbs describes perfectly. None of us always forgive. None of us keep serving when we don't feel valued. None of us are consistently the friend, the spouse, the parent, the neighbor that we're called to be.

That's why Proverbs points us beyond wisdom to the source of wisdom itself. And that source is not a principle or a practice. It's a person. His name is Jesus.

In John 15:15, Jesus says something that should stop us cold: "I no longer call you servants. I call you friends." Think about that. How many people can say they're truly friends with the most powerful person in the country? Not many. But the King of all kings looks down at sinners like us, people who were at enmity with him, who were in active betrayals, and calls us friends.

It doesn't matter if your previous friend walked away. The King of Kings promises He will never leave you, never forsake you.

And here's the closing challenge that might sting a little:

If every area of your life is riddled with broken relationships, there is only one common denominator. It's us.

That's not condemnation. That's an invitation. Go before the Lord. Be honest about what's broken in you. Ask Him to build you into the kind of person whose relationships look like the gospel, because good relationships are redemptive. They mirror the redemptive reality of our relationship with our Savior.

Are you being a Christlike friend? Would anybody notice your absence in their life? Are you stewarding your relationships well? Or are you living like they belong to you?

Because they don't. And life starts to make sense when we see our relationships through GOD's lens.