Prior to my encounter with Christ some 20 years ago in a grocery store, my life was to say the least, pretty chaotic. Part of that lifestyle left me with a trail of broken relationships. Even skipping some of the wrongful parts of my life, I always seemed like I was moving on to a new relationship. Even coming into Christianity I was still unraveling many of the characteristics that caused me to “lose” relationships.

But I soon learned the value of retaining relationships. In part because Christ was “doing a work” in my life and godly men and women were participating in my growth. I am thankful for the participation of these folks. The result of losing relationships is predicated on a few traps of thinking.

One of the traps that is found in the previous life style you become a “ladder climber.”   You look for new relationships to establish you and secure more. You end up using others to get where you want to be.

Another sizable trap is you do not see the value of individuals or overlook the value they have. This causes you to “use” them only as you need them, causing them to be a fix and not a friend.

A sizable trap is the one where people do not fix the issues of a current relationship and replace it with the unknown, seemingly easier relationship that is new. Rather than working out the details of a relationship in a healthy manner, the dysfunctional thinker leaves destruction in their wake.

Finally, I think that too many people try to have quantity and not quality. Jesus was pretty good with a handful of people. That might not be a bad model.

An old Greek story told it this way.

The Goatherd and the Wild Goats

  A GOATHERD, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some Wild Goats mingled among them, and shut them up together with his own for the night.  The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold.  He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own.  When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains.  The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of them than of his own herd.  One of them, turning about, said to him:  “That is the very reason why we are so cautious; for if you yesterday treated us better than the Goats you have had so long, it is plain also that if others came after us, you would in the same manner prefer them to ourselves.”

 The moral of the story? Old friends cannot with impunity be sacrificed for new ones.

 As believers we have the ability to hold on to people by the power of His presence in our own lives. Admittedly not every relationship I encounter is for the “long haul” but I think we need to be a lot more careful about the method and manner we choose to grow in.