What We Don’T Understand About Relationships

By Dr. Larry Adams

Keeping a relationship alive and successful can be immensely challenging in todays world. More often than not, relationships fail because the nucleus of the partnership has been based on selfish needs, desires, and purposes instead of spiritual truths. In his guidebook What We Dont Understand about Relationships, Dr. Larry Adams offers practical tips, Scriptures, and advice that will help anyone learn to apply Christian values and principles to their relationship, ultimately realizing a lasting and loving partnership.

Dr. Adams, a biblical counselor and Bible teacher for nearly thirty years, relies on his education and the word of God as he carefully reexamines relationships from a spiritual perspective and reveals misunderstood truths about relationships and why they fail. By teaching concepts that relationships are not natural and should not be based on emotional or physical feelings, Dr. Adams introduces a fresh perspective that focuses on spiritual commitments, effective communication, forgiveness, and thinking of others first before ourselves.

What We Dont Understand about Relationships shares practical advice and applicable Scriptures that will help anyone struggling within a relationship to lay a new foundation based on seeking oneness with God first, and then each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781458201652

Dr. Larry Adams

Larry E. Adams earned his BS, MS, and PhD from Lael University and has received certifications in advanced biblical studies from Missouri Baptist College. He is a board-certified biblical counselor and has been a Bible teacher for over thirty years at the St. Timothy M.B. Church in St. Louis, Missouri, where he and his wife, Julia, continue to serve the Lord.

Book preview

What We Don’t Understand about Relationships

Dr. Larry Adams

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What We Don’t Understand about Relationships

Copyright © 2012 Dr. Larry Adams

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ISBN: 978-1-4582-0166-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0165-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963434

Printed in the United States of America

Abbott Press rev. date: 2/09/2012

Contents

DEDICATION

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I –

What Is A Relationship?

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Part II –

Developing A Godly Relationship

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Part III –

Reinforcing What God Has Given Us

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Part IV –

Discipline Model Survey

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

About The Author

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to the church families whose doors stand ajar in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We pray for the faithful ministers and counselors who stand fast on the word of God that proclaims the authority of the word in every area of life given in the scriptures of the Bible, which is the hope of healing the wounded souls and changing lives in the name of Jesus Christ.

Foreword

As I think about relationships, what it means, and how God meant for it to be in terms of creation. There is really too much assumption about the subject of relationships. And in considering my own thoughts about relationships, I wondered what God really had in mind when instituting relationships as a part of creation.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26a KJV)

Truly, in the unity of the God head there was a distinct but binding relationship expressed.

Our definition and perception of relationships today has taken a different worldview, value and purpose. We seem to have lost the understanding in light of scriptural meaning and purpose of relationships. Men have struggled with the understanding of relationships since the fall of man. And since that time men have not considered the foundation for which the relationship must stand. They selfishly bind themselves together in unity that has no real purpose or substantial foundation. We continually misuse relationships to get what we want, security, recognition or even to cure a problem. Relationships have been taken so lightly these days that they have actually lost their purpose and value.

As I think of all the different kinds of relationships, I notice that many are based on temporary or selfish expectations. For example, if a relationship doesn’t fit our needs we cancel it. Unfortunately, a lot of people have suffered and feared relationships because of their past experiences but yet they still repeat those same experiences. We say that we have learned from our experiences. But what really did we learn?

Many authors, lecturers and psychologists have focused on the marriage relationships as having specific problems that were either brought into the marriage or developed as the result of the marriage. Believe it or not many people believe that getting married is what a relationship is all about.

In this book, I attempt to re-examine relationships in light of the scripture for the purpose of revealing some misunderstood truths about relationships. Taking into consideration what has been said by popular psychologists and writers about the problems with relationships, I hope to provide the reader with a view of relationships in light of how God would have us view it from a spiritual perspective. A relationship is the process of becoming one with each other. And a healthy relationship is a spiritual relationship. But because of man’s view and definition of relationships, it has become strictly physical and that imposes a problem. My concern about the perspective of a relationship is that we really need to look deeper into the word of God for understanding what it is about relationships that we don’t understand.

Acknowledgements

I thank God for His Holy Spirit and for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who has blessed my life in so many ways and has allowed me the opportunity to praise Him for who He is.

My primary thanks go to my church family, my former Pastor, Dr. A. L. Hamilton Sr. and my present Pastor, Rev. Spencer L. Bartlett Jr. These great teachers have inspired and guided my life gracefully with the word of God. I am deeply grateful for their encouragement and confidence in me as I press towards the mark of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.

I also want to express my deepest gratitude to the Lord for having blessed me with a wonderful wife who has demonstrated such love and trust that is beyond