“You Get what you tolerate.” (Henry Cloud)
Introduction: Are you resentful because you feel that people take advantage of you? Perhaps all you need to do is establish some boundaries.
What is a “Boundary”?
· It’s like a fence that protects your property. Without a fence, anything can just walk up in your yard.
Joyce complained to the Lord about being controlled by her boss. God surprised her by telling her that she was just as guilty as her boss was because although he was controlling her, she was letting him.
It is important to establish boundaries in all areas of our lives.
· Some boundaries we set are for ourselves
o Boundaries for our eating habits,
o Budgets
o How much we work versus how much we rest
o And other things that help us have healthy disciplines in our daily lives
· Other boundaries that we set are for people
o These boundaries prevent us from being hurt
o They help others realize that if they want a relationship with us, they won’t be allowed to take advantage of us in the process.
People who may be taken for granted or taken advantage of – Pg. 160 top
· Maybe you are a helpful person who ha a kind heart, but you need to be careful that you don’t develop a habit of taking care of other people who don’t make any effort to take care of themselves.
· Are you worn-out from trying to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped?
· Have you allowed a person to become so dependent on you to provide for and help them that now you resent them but continue doing what they ask you to do?
If you said YES to any of these questions, it means you need boundaries in those relationships.
God’s Word teaches us to be thoughtful, but it urges us to exercise wise thoughtfulness (Proverbs 1:3)
· This is actually saying that we are to use the discipline of wise thoughtfulness. In other words, you may want to help someone but need to discipline yourself not to, because deep in your heart, you know it will ultimately be better for them if you don’t.
· Parents who help their children too much and who do too much for them, always rescuing them when they have a problem, are not helping them prepare for the future. They are actually enabling them to be irresponsible adults.
· It’s not always good to tell people what they want to hear.
· It’s not always good to tell people YES.
· We don’t want to be put in the bracket of being “people-pleasers” instead of God-pleasers.
· When we are asked to do something for a person, we should give HONEST RESPONSES.
· Ephesians 5:14: God’s word teaches us to speak the truth in love because a dishonest relationship is an unhealthy one
The more God works in our lives and heals our wounded souls, the more we enjoy helping other people, and while that is good, we must be careful not to let people take advantage of us.
Stay away from one-sided relationships
1. Ones that you are doing all the giving and the other party did all the taking
2. You must set the boundaries
3. When you feel used, stop
4. When you feel that you’re not being loved, set boundaries
We should never merely to get something back, but all relationships need boundaries in order for them to be healthy. Even God reaches a point in His relationship with us where He is no longer willing to do all the giving while we show no interest in spending time with Him or serving Him in any way.
What kind of God do we serve?
He is a loving and generous Father who never stops loving us, and while we are in the baby stage of our relationship with Him, He gives and gives and gives, but eventually it isn’t good for us to not start giving back.
Love reproves and chastises in addition to helping and giving. We truly do not love another person if we let them take advantage of us. God confronts us for our own good, and He does it because He loves us.
Those whom I [dearly and tenderly] love, I tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten [I discipline and instruct them] (Revelation 3:19)
Healthy Boundaries
1. Healthy Boundaries are safety nets for us and other people, but we do need to be sure that we truly are setting boundaries, not building walls.
2. Most fences have a gate in them, if they don’t, they are no longer a fence but a prison.
3. When a fence has a gate, we can get out if we want to and let someone in if we want to, but walls have no gates. They wall others out of our life, but they also wall us in.
4. A healthy boundary in relationship might look something like this in our thinking: “You’ve been hurt a lot in your life, and you want to protect yourself and have relationships with safe people. Therefore, you are going to use discernment concerning the people you get involved with, and if a person begins to take advantage of you, you will confront them. If they continue to do it, you will open the gate and let them out of your life.”
In Contrast, a wall in a relationship might look like this in our thinking:
1. “You’ve been hurt in the past, and nobody is ever going to hurt you again. You will take care of yourself and protect yourself. You won’t let yourself get close to anyone, and that way they can’t hurt you.”
a. In this case, you may think you have established a boundary, but in reality, it is a wall.
Pg. 162 – Joyce’s coping mechanism…
After she got away from her father, she quickly erects a wall in her heart if anyone she knew that hurt her. She could feel the walls go up and the walls made her feel safe.
With God’s help, she realized that although He does want us to establish healthy boundaries, only He can be a true wall of protection around us.
If you have built walls in your heart to keep others from hurting you, only you can tear them down. If you don’t, you can never love or really receive love in return.
You will sometimes be hurt, but God will always heal you. Since there are no perfect people and we all have weaknesses, it is not possible to be in relationships and never experience being hurt or disappointed.
Inner Vows
A. We can make vows with ourselves that need to be broken.
B. If we try to live without people or needing anyone, we rob ourselves of any relationships.
C. We all get hurt from time to time.
D. Even very good and well-meaning people hurt one another.
E. We cannot live in society and never have anyone tell us what to do or give us any direction.
F. But many people today are trying to do just that, and the world around us is felled with rebellion and lawlessness.
G. Like it or not, we need each other.
H. God has created us in such a way that we are to work together, not isolate ourselves and be totally independent from one other.
I. You must change so that you can have a healed soul.
J. We are not created to be alone.
K. You have to break wrong vows that you’ve made.
L. You have to pray and confess that your attitude was wrong and ask God to help you have healthy boundaries, not walls.
M. When someone hurt you and you feel your walls forming, don’t permit it to remain because it’s not God’s will.
Isolation
When we have walls in our heart and refuse to let people in, those walls become hindrances that actually prevent us from growing spiritually in our relationship with God.
It is not possible to have a good relationship with God and isolate ourselves from people. God shows his love for us through others.
The bible is a great book about relationships. It is about our relationship with God, with ourselves, and with our fellow man. Part of the process of working out our salvation and experiencing restoration is cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that all of these relationships are healed and healthy.
There are some relationships that are too abusive to try to maintain. However God wants us to live in community
with others, loving and being loved, giving and receiving forgiveness, enjoying
one another and bearing with one another’s weaknesses (Galatians 6:1-3)
Some of us choose isolation rather than taking a chance on relationships after we’ve been hurt, but we cannot make spiritual progress toward becoming like Christ if we do that. For example, we can never learn patience if everything goes our way quickly. We can never learn to love unlovely people or those with habits that annoy us if we are never around them.
God uses people with rough edges to sand the rough edges off of us.
Being alone in life may seem to be easier, but it is also emptier. When we are alone, we don’t have to face the truth about who we really are. Only truth makes us free, and it is imperative to our spiritual growth that we have the “squeezes” in life that other people provide. It is not good to be alone. God created Eve because He said it was not good for the man to be alone. Even God is not alone because He is a Trinity –Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When we are alone, we are blink to our faults because there is no one to confront us. There is nothing to squeeze us so that we an see what we are like under pressure.
Joyce said that God put her husband in her life to help crucify her flesh. Joyce had to ask the question: “Are people really annoying, or am I too hard to please?” It was a painful, tearful, and difficult day when she finally admitted that she had a big problem and that she was almost impossible to please.
Do not isolate yourself because you just don’t like dealing with the messiness of relationship. Yes, there may be pain, but in the end it is worth it.
Alone in a Room Filled with People
Have you ever been a room filled with people and felt alone? Someone who is confident and secure will take the initiative and reach out to others.
We may also feel alone around people if we have our walls up for fear of being rejected.
Those who have experienced a lot of rejection in their lives often fear being rejected so much that either they isolate themselves or their fears create behavior traits in them that actually drive others away.
Story about Janet – Bottom of page 166