Your Relationship With Yourself

Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.

At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

• Luke 4:38-44

Yesterday in the sermon we looked at the crucial relationships that lead to flourishing - UP towards God, IN towards community, and OUT towards the world (see diagram at the bottom). Jesus demonstrates all three of those in the above passage, which we’ll ponder this week. But before we do that, let’s note the fourth crucial relationship Jesus had.

Jesus had a proper relationship with himself. He demonstrated that he had differentiated from others - able to both give and receive (healing Simon’s mother-in-law as well as being served by her), able to say yes to people and able to say no (staying up late to in response to people’s requests for healing and yet denying their demand for him to set up shop there), and able to spend time comfortably both with people and alone.

How is your relationship with yourself? Are you able to both give and receive, to say yes and to say no, to be equally comfortable with others and alone? Take some time to think about these things with your Savior and to gain insight before we move on to the other crucial connections this week.