Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matthew 22:37–39 (NLT)
Over the past two days, we’ve talked about developing the ability to live in multiple worlds to experience a life of joy. With all that is going on in your life, you can’t afford to focus only on one thing.
We all need to develop the ability to focus on multiple things to experience joy and balance in every area of life. If you focus only on your career, you may move up the ladder, but your social life will be lacking. If all you focus on is your kids, you will neglect your spouse’s needs and you won’t build closeness into the relationship.
In fact, there are three specific things we need to remember to focus on in life. Today we will discuss the first of these three: relationships.
Our verse today says to love your neighbours, which applies to everyone in your life. If you want to experience a joy-filled kind of life, you have to learn how to build great relationships. And building great relationships requires time and attention.
If you have strained relationships, do what you can to bring healing to the broken areas of that relationship. Do you need to ask for forgiveness? Do you need to forgive? If there’s distance between you, can you safely open up a conversation?
To experience more joy in your life, spend time thinking about how you can improve your relationships. Take a marriage or relationship course, talk to a counsellor if necessary, but make your relationships a priority. You’ll be glad you did.