After many years of studying psychology and the variables involved with behaviour it seems to me that there is one thing that is on the basis of everything else, namely to what extend somebody is connected or isolated in his or her relationships.
The first and most important thing you learn when you grow up is the ability to connect yourself to others. As a child you are helpless and vulnerable and you are completely dependent on the care of other people, most importantly your parents. When everything goes well the child learns that the world is a safe place, that he is loved and that other people are trustworthy. When it doesn’t go well the child learns relationships are dangerous and insecure and that he has to be in control in order to be safe, either by isolating himself or by manipulating closeness and affection. This will influence his thoughts, emotions and behaviour in a destructive way and is the basis of many difficulties and stresses throughout his life.
The more I think about this the more I realize how this connects to the way God created things. There is an underlying law in the universe that makes it that any living thing which is not connected will die. Nothing can survive on its own, without, food, without sun, without water, etc.
It’s also interesting to see how throughout the Bible eternal life is described as the result of being connected to God, knowing him, loving him and receiving his love. When this connection is cut off, death will be the result. Choosing other connections above the relationship with God (which is the essence of sin) will ultimately lead to the deterioration of our soul (‘the wages of sin is death’ Romans 6: 23a). Instead of Gods life flowing through us leading to goodness and light, sin will gain increasing power in our lives resulting in evil and darkness. Darkness does not connect to light, because darkness is in essence the absence of light (‘for what fellowship can light have with darkness?’ 2 Corinthians 6: 14b). Jesus by taking on our sin and freeing us from darkness restored our connection with God.
Still despite the fact that through Jesus our spirit is again connected with God we still suffer from sin and brokenness. We don’t trust God. We are like the child that hides or manipulates. We seek idols to meet our need for connection or we try to manipulate God to fulfil our needs in the way we think He should and when He doesn’t we question his love. When we learn to trust God we can feel loved even when things are difficult and times are dry because we are rooted and grounded in love.
God is the only one who can root and ground us in love because He is love.
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
…but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.
John 17:3; Hosea 11: 1-4; Ephesians 3: 16-19; John 4:13-14; John 15: 4-6; 1 John 1: 5b; Psalm 1: 2,3
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