Boundaries Chapter Two - Part two

What’s Within My Boundaries?

Story of the Good Samaritan

A man traveling to Jerusalem is mugged- he’s stripped and beaten.

A priest and Levite pass by and ignore him.

A Samaritan comes along , bandages him up and places him in an inn at his own expense.

Suppose the story took a different turn.

The Samaritan goes to leave for his business in Jerusalem, but is told he is being selfish for leaving the mugged man.

The man demands that the Samaritan stay and keep him company.

The Samaritan gives in. Three days later he is told that he has missed his business opportunity.

This ruins the Samaritans business.

Do you resonate with the story?

To avoid situations like these in our lives, lets look at what falls within our boundaries- What we are responsible for.

Feelings - though many times the church has been guilty of suppressing feelings, they do play a role in our motivation and behavior.

Feelings should neither be ignored or placed in charge. What happens when we do either one of these?

Feelings can motivate one to Good - think of the Samaritan’s pity, the father’s compassion toward the prodigal and Jesus compassion for the masses

Feelings serve as signal flags to tell us how things are going. Examples: feelings in relationships

“Your feelings are your responsibility and you must own them and see them as your problem so you can begin to find an answer to what ever the issue they are pointing to is.” Pg. 42

Attitudes and Beliefs - Attitudes are one’s orientation toward something, the stance one takes toward God, like, work, or other relationships. Beliefs are anything that you accept as true.

Often we do not take ownership of our attitudes, but place blame on others just like Adam did to Eve.

We must own our attitudes and convictions because they fall with in our property lines, our boundaries.

People who never question their attitudes or beliefs often can fall prey to the ways of the world (human traditions ) instead of the Commands of God.

Those with Boundary issues have distorted views of responsibility. They can either feel that to hold someone responsible for their feelings, choices, and behaviors is mean - or - they feel that their feelings, choices and behaviors are someone else’s responsibilities.

, calls for us to set limits

Behaviors

The Law of Sowing and Reaping- behaviors have consequences

Positive Examples: If you study, you will have good grades. If you exercise, you will have better health.

Negative Examples: if you are lazy, then you will not eat. If you are irresponsible, you will reap failure.

To rescue someone from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.

“This happens a lot with parents and children. Parents often yell and nag instead of allowing their children to reap the natural consequences of their behavior. Parenting with love and limits, with warmth and consequences, produces confident children who have a sense of control over their lives.” pg. 43

Choices - taking responsibility for our choices leads to a fruit of self control ()

a common boundary problem is disowning our choices and trying to lay the responsibility for them on someone else.

words like: “I had to” or “He/She made me” make us seem like passive agents whose control is in someone else’s hands

The reality is that we are in control of our choices no matter how we feel.

we are ultimately responsible for our choices and their consequences; not taking responsibility for them could be keeping us from making choices that we could be happy with.

Values - that which we love and assign importance to.

instead of valuing the approval of God, we may be valuing the approval of people.

misplacing value means missing out on life! We may think that the pursuit of power, riches and pleasure will fulfill our deepest longing, love.

when we take responsibility for our out-of-control behavior caused by valuing things of no lasting value, when we confess that we have a heart that values things that will not satisfy, we can receive help form God and his people to “create a new heart” within us.

Boundaries help us not to deny our values, but own our old hurtful values for God to Change them.

Setting Limits on others

Setting limits on others - this is sort of misleading. we really can’t limit others nor can we control them. BUT, we can set limits on our exposure to other people who are behaving poorly.

God limits his exposure to evil, unrepentant people as we should.

Separating ourselves protects love, because we are taking a stand against things that destroy love.

Setting our own internal Limits

The ability to say no to ourselves- to destructive desires and to Good ones that may not be wise to pursue at a given time.

self control with out repression; experiencing a feeling, an impulse or a desire without acting out.

Resources and Gifts

the servant was chastised for not using the talents to make his master more money.

we have been entrusted gifts that we are responsibile for (talents, gifts, income, etc.)

they are under our responsibility, and using them will make us

Fear should not keep us from exercising these gifts and resources.

Not confronting our fear denies the grace of God and insults both his giving of the gift and his grace to sustain us as we are learning.

Thoughts - what we think is not just an automatic passive process, but something that can be changed

Ownership of our thoughts - instead of blinding and uncritically accepted others thoughts and opinions we weight them as a separate thinker.

Growth in knowledge and expansion of our minds - Growth in knowledge of God and his word. Learning and using our brains can be worship of God.

Clarity of distorted thoughts - removing the Logs from our eyes so we can others as they are.

Desires

Each person has different desires and wants, dreams and wishes, goals and plans, hungers and thirsts - we all want to satisfy me.

The problem is a lack of structured boundaries within our personality.

we can’t define who the real me is, therefore; real desires a cloaked in unhealthy desires (ex: the sex addict is really looking for love).

we often do not seek our desires from God, and mixed in those desires are things we really don’t need.

God loves to give gifts to his children, but he is a wise parent.

Love

To be able to give and receive love is our greatest gift!

The heart, the seat of one’s being needs an inflow as well as an outflow of lifebood. we need to receive and give love.

We need to take responsibility for this loving function of ourselves and use it.

both love concealed and love rejected can kill us.

Let us take responsibility for ourselves, let us know and establish our boundaries

When we know and exercise our boundaries, we will be usable to God!