Familiarity, the blinding shield (Part 2)

As promised, I will continue on the topic of familiarity and how it works to affect relationships. I hope you have had time to mediate on yesterday’s post and it has set your mind on the right track. I pray that this final post, will set your mind at the place where God wants it to be and your relations with those around will begin to flourish……

Familiarity makes us take friendships for granted just because we know that we always have that person to lean or grab on for support, but then what happens when the person gets tired of it? They begin to feel the lack of appreciation and draw back, it is not the best situation because you could have missed a divine helper. I am not saying we should welcome every person that walks into our lives but we must be led by the Spirit of God and more importantly make sure that we treat them well. Wherever Elijah went and he was well honored, you would realize that he would release a great blessing upon the household.

Familiarity never allows us to see the full potential in a person, because we see them in the flesh and not through God’s eyes. Yes, we can see that the individual is a blessing to us but if a blessing is not treated well, the glory that it was meant to bring would be moved elsewhere.

Joseph, in the bible, exposed the dreams that God had revealed to him, to his entire family. This stirred up a lot of jealously and hatred because of this, they failed to see the greatness in him. They had allowed themselves to be just stuck on the fact that he felt he would be greater than everyone else. Their familiarity with his constant stories and dreams, made them develop negative feelings towards him. They got to know so much of their brother, that overtime, he was devalued in their eyes. This should not be the case at all. You see when you become very familiar with a person and they are always around being a source of help to you, you begin to feel at point that they are a burden but their heart is in a right place. Joseph’s desire was not to make them feel jealous, but he just thought that he could share this great news to his blood brothers as it fascinated him. Although many find that point debatable. They cast him aside and he went through a lot but at the end of the day, God promoted him and gave him the heart to forgive his siblings. The one whom they had mistreated and looked down upon, turned out to be the greatest helper to the family. Let us try as much as possible not to treat people based on our feelings or how we view them, but let us be led by the Spirit of God. Remember the rejected stone, will become the cornerstone!

Now I am just not posting this to educate you but as I read through, I am learning a lot myself. As I grow older, I see how precious life is and the value of treating people well. We must make it our personal mandate to treat people well and not allow familiarity to block the blessing that the person could be to you. The fact that you know the person so well and what they are capable of, it does not mean that there is nothing more to know. David’s brothers never imagined that there was such precious wealth within him until the day when he was unveiled for the world to see. Don’t follow the worldly standard and treat people anyhow, remember you belong to the body of Christ and God sees you to be a  delicate pearl that must be well taken care of. Now if God cares about you so much and even states that we should thrust our cares and worries on Him, then it means that we should treat our fellow human beings as precious. Life has a way of taking away those we take for granted, they say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Don’t wait for that person to leave before you realize. Don’t make the person a reservoir to satisfy a need, whether emotional or physical, and discard them otherwise you will miss a greater blessing. Our environment makes us dependent, for examples in Pastoralism, we understand that humans and animals have a symbiotic relationship.  This means that the animals are dependent on human beings for food, security and shelter whereas human beings are dependent on them for food. We all need one another, in one way or another. Let’s work towards building stronger and better bonds.

 I have had experiences, where people took me for granted until they realized that I was of more value than they thought. God has used me to help those who found me to be of less value. I also find myself to be guilty of not taking care people well and allowing familiarity to be the blinding shield here but I am making a conscious effort everyday not to allow that happen. I lean on the Holy Spirit for help and I pray that you do same. Life is not all about chasing wealth and influence, we need to treat people well and love them irrespective of how familiar you are with them. Jesus was not given the best treatment in his own town when he began to minister to them:

54 He returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, “Where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles?” 55 Then they scoffed, “He’s just the carpenter’s son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers—James, Joseph,[a] Simon, and Judas. 56 All his sisters live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things?” 57 And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family.” 58 And so he did only a few miracles there because of their unbelief.

The people were too familiar with Jesus and his family line, they began to discredit his abilities and the anointing on his life. Their familiarity with Him crippled His ability to move as led within his spirit. Jesus did so much more outside his own town, this goes to show that familiarity cause you to stifle the person’s ability to be a blessing to you. You should not always think that you have seen all there is about the person. God makes a person very pregnant with blessings as the bible says that “out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water”. We are always pregnant with something to give out to humanity, we are life giving minstrels. Now how can you give birth beautifully, if the environment is not ideal and the people within, don’t make you feel loved. Life is quite unpredictable, you never know what is going to happen next. If the brothers had known what Joseph would become, they would have never maltreated him. As they say, had I known always comes last. Don’t ever let it be the testimony that comes out of your mouth.

If you find that there is a person in your life that you are not treating well or taking time to appreciate because of familiarity, please start loving on them. It could be your spouse ,brother, best friend or parents, whomever they are to you; I pray that God grants you insight on how to treat them well and be a greater blessing to them.

Please share this prayer with me:

Father in the name of Jesus, I thank you for the people you have strategically placed in my life to be a blessing. Holy Spirit, please help to appreciate and honour them. Help me to be a greater blessing to them and not allow familiarity to hinder my ability to flourish in glorious relationships with them. Thank you Father for renewing my thoughts and conditioning my mind to honour and appreciate people. I give you all the glory and praise in Jesus name! Amen!

God bless you for taking time to read this and I pray that you have been blessed by it, please do feel free to leave your comments or email me on akua95ofori@gmail.com.