It seems there is fresh interest these day from a number of people about Authentic Relationships, , especially the part about how our expectations of others destroy authenticity in those relationships

Here’s a question I got from Chris today:

Here was my response: Wanting people to respond rightly isn’t a problem. Demanding that they do, or treating them with disappointment when they don’t, is the problem. External conformity is never God’s goal anyway, but inner transformation that grows out of their relationship with him.

In that vain, all we have to do is love people! Take an interest in them. Serve them where you can, but never pushing our agenda on them. Servants never push anyway. They always are responding to what others are doing or desiring. I am having so much fun just loving people in their space and time, not thinking I love them by getting them to do what I think is best. It makes relationships so much more real and genuine and takes all the exploitation and manipulation out of it.

I hope that helps. That’s the way Jesus treats you after all. He loves you where you are. He invites you to better things if you’ll come, but he doesn’t badger you at every moment with his expectations or reject you when you disappoint him. Watching him do that with us, is the best tool to learning how to do it with others. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have wonderful desires for us. He does. But he realizes we can only experience them when we freely choose to come, not when we’re manipulated into it.

Another letter I got recently from Aida, might be helpful here as well:

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