Your Relationship Affects Your Identity

The people you spend the most time with have a significant influence on your life, whether good or bad. As adults, we may or may not notice how much our lives are affected by those people, especially if those relationships are toxic, creating stress, drama, or conflict. Yet, the right relationships can strengthen your life and catapult you into a lifestyle of success, love, and prosperity. There is a story in the Bible in which a paralyzed man is carried on a mat by his friends to see Jesus. He and his friends believe that Jesus might heal him. When they arrive at the house where Jesus is staying, they find that the place is so jam-packed with people that they can’t get in. So they carry their friend up to the roof of the house, tear a hole in the roof and lower their friend into the room where Jesus is teaching. Their efforts and their faith paid off. Jesus healed the man, and he walked away carrying his mat by himself.

What's remarkable about this story is that these friends not only demonstrated great faith in Jesus, but they also showed great love for their friend. They were willing to go to extraordinary measures to get him where he needed to have a life-changing encounter with Jesus. We all need people like that in our lives: four or five people who would be willing to grab the corners of our mats and carry us when we’re unable to get ourselves where we need to go. And in turn, we need friends for whom we would do the same thing.