Make Your Garden Grow: Navigating Relationships and Personal Development

Nature reveals that progress grows under the right conditions. Similarly, the seeds we plant in our personal development or relationships flourish as we invest authenticity and effort. We cultivate meaningful connections when we spend time, listening, and talking with one another.

Giving to others and gathering what we need is a bonus of abiding interdependently in a life-giving community, whether comprised of one individual or an entire tribe. A relational transaction isn’t the specific aim, but mutual exchanges do sustain our relationships, blessing us through the Biblical principle of sowing and reaping.

We harvest what we plant, and receive what we give (Galatians 6:7). It may not return to us in the same way or from the same place, but God stands by His Word. He ensures that we will reap benefits as we release blessings into others’ lives. The Father created us for community. It happens both deliberately and organically as we offer what the Father has given to us and enjoy what He has placed in others.

Hidden Treasure

God placed value for each of us in someone else. We weren’t created to remain in isolation, but rather to thrive in a healthy community. Though we may value relationships, they invoke challenges. We don’t have to look far to notice the toxic evidence of people maligning and gaslighting one another.

Often, people are absorbed in their own pain and resistant to the idea of embracing solutions to work through challenges. Evidence of soul wounds often reflects the areas where a small relationship issue evolved into a stronghold that can negatively impact how we view others or ourselves.

We may be able to recognize traces of unresolved relationship issues in our own lives. They often manifest in how quickly we become offended or angry and remain embroiled in resentment, forsaking any chance of forgiveness, communication, or mutual resolution. Instead of relationships representing high value, we treat them as commodities.

Disconnecting in favor of isolation or someone new who will serve our needs better than the last makes relationships difficult. Sometimes the connections we foster become strained under the weight of real life. Offense and hypersensitivity cause us to withdraw instead of breaking walls down, opening the gates of our hearts, and seeking to heal what has been fragmented.

When we see how people casually dismiss and disregard one another, it can act as a deterrent to the area of one’s personal development that relies on fostering intimate friendships and connections. People can seem unsafe. This is especially for those who have experienced trauma in interpersonal relationships. This could be connected to trauma from childhood or other impressionable seasons.

There is nothing wrong with making a healthy assessment to revisit and redraw boundaries as part of one’s personal development and emotional health. Still, it may be helpful for us to learn how to nurture the connections we have before we search for new ones. Having healthy Biblical guidelines will provide what we need spiritually to navigate our relationship issues from a place of love and grace. Embracing practical insight can support us in cultivating the kinds of relationships that give and sustain life.

God’s Idea

Relationships are God’s idea. While He is perfect and doesn’t struggle, Jesus is empathetic and knows how to meet us in the sensitive areas where it seems difficult to connect and share parts of ourselves. We capture a glimpse of the Father’s Heart for community and connection as early as Genesis. He consulted with Himself, saying, “Let us make mankind in our image…” (Genesis 1:26, NIV) The Almighty abides as one entity, yet with distinct ways of encountering us, in the way the Bible describes as Father, Savior, and Spirit.

When we ask the Lord to give us quality relationships, our definition may differ from His. Scripture describes human relationships as being like iron that sharpens another. The visual it produces involves heat, pressure, friction, and sparks flying. In this manner, our relationships don’t only bring out the best, they sharpen us by drawing out and purging what’s undesirable as well.

If we want to have quality relationships that add value, we may need to ask the Lord to help us to embrace challenges with those who love us enough to be honest. This is not about relationships with harmful or abusive motives. Rather, it is relationships that, with faith, help us grow into who God envisioned us to be.

As iron sharpens iron, So one person sharpens another. – Proverbs 27:17, NASB

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. – Proverbs 27:6, NASB

God’s Heart

The Father assessed all of His creation, pausing to appreciate and admire the works of His own Hands, calling them good. He did the same when He formed the first humans on the sixth day and rested when creation was complete on the seventh.

God created humanity to receive His love and to return it through worship. He was fully aware of the temptation and sin that would follow, yet thoroughly committed to being Love anyway. He didn’t only form us for fellowship with Him, but also to express His Heart through our connections with one another.

We must be present with one another in life’s highs and lows, whether we are rejoicing or mourning. It matters how we engage as well. While we are to speak truth, we can’t misuse this as an occasion to find faults, criticize, or condemn those we love with no regard for how the Holy Spirit may be working the Father’s Will in their lives.

Part of the love of Christ demands that we love people enough to speak truth and life to them through insightful conversation, honoring our loved ones as those created in God’s Image, not our own. We give the same grace we want to be extended to us. All we do as believers is informed by the love of Christ abounding in our hearts and flowing out to those around us.

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. – Romans 12:15, NIV

But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ. – Ephesians 4:15, NASB

God’s Hope

The problems that sin introduced into the world don’t change God’s Heart or eclipse His intentions where relationships are concerned. Eventually, the divine antidote to sin’s poison would be poured out in His sinless Son’s Blood. Christ’s sacrifice remits and redeems the hopes the Father held when He created Eden.

He knew in the beginning and knows now that the good He created needs more than the initial touch when He placed His hands in the dirt and shaped us. We need another touch now, for His Holy Spirit to heal and restore. This is especially true when the relationships He created for our enjoyment become messy and dirty, marring and causing us pain.

Healthy relationships are priceless. The value that we receive when we encounter a safe circle of people who understand us cannot be compared with anything that we could earn or exchange. For this reason, we need to steward and care for the people we share those intimate parts of our hearts and souls.

God knows the benefit of working through interpersonal challenges and conflict that teach what we can’t learn in isolation. In many ways, relationships can act as a mirror to reflect the depth and expanse of God’s infinite love and compassion while blessing us with the opportunity to grow into who He always intended as a son or daughter, and in His family.

Next Steps

Pause for a moment to consider where you are in relationships you either have or desire. What the Lord speaks to you in that moment of stillness can beckon you forward. Reimagine the possibilities of cultivating meaningful and healthy relationships with His wisdom and love as your guide.

If you feel that you are unable to do this, whether due to past relationship trauma or feelings of inadequacy or failure, you aren’t alone. The Holy Spirit is present. There is also professional counsel available through this site to support your personal development. You can find the skills needed to make your garden grow, as you navigate relationships with greater grace and joy.