Biblical Hope for Breakups

00:00:05.000 | Podcast listener Brian writes in to ask this.

00:00:07.000 | "Good day, Pastor John. I've been searching through the Internet on how to handle relationship breakups or rejection in a biblical way.

00:00:15.000 | I noticed that no pastors or matured Christians seem to care about this topic.

00:00:19.000 | I know we have all been through this, but do you have any suggestions or anything that would enlighten us and help us through a painful breakup?"

00:00:28.000 | Let me clarify first what I'm not talking about, because I think I get what Brian is asking,

00:00:34.000 | and I want to make sure we don't think what he's not talking about.

00:00:38.000 | I don't think he's talking about being persecuted for righteousness' sake.

00:00:42.000 | In other words, the kind of rejection you experience just because you're a Christian,

00:00:46.000 | although that could be part of why a girl or a guy might dump you, that's different than what he's really getting at.

00:00:54.000 | So the Bible has lots to say about "blessed are you" when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you.

00:01:01.000 | Yes, we can talk about that another time, but here's what I think he's talking about, and if I miss it, then he can write back.

00:01:09.000 | I think he's talking about the kind of thing that ranges from the early teen years on up into adulthood.

00:01:16.000 | So here would be a few examples.

00:01:17.000 | One, a 13-year-old girl has a best friend at school, maybe her only friend, and she gets a note.

00:01:23.000 | "I don't want to be your friend anymore."

00:01:27.000 | Number two, two 20-somethings are dating, and you, one of you, might be developing a sense that this could be going into something beautiful and lasting,

00:01:39.000 | and then she says, "I don't think we should keep seeing each other."

00:01:44.000 | Third, you're engaged to be married two months before the wedding when everything is in full swing.

00:01:51.000 | He says, "I just can't do it. I can't go forward. I don't think this is going to work."

00:01:57.000 | Or fourth, maybe you've tried over and over again to be a part of various groups, church, or work, and nobody ever reaches out to you.

00:02:09.000 | Nobody ever follows up.

00:02:11.000 | All your initiatives at friendship lead nowhere, and you're alone most of the time, and nobody calls, nobody invites you to go anywhere or do anything.

00:02:20.000 | Now, those are the kinds of things I think Brian is asking about, and they are incredibly painful.

00:02:28.000 | For a 13-year-old girl, I mean, sometimes we joke about drama in the house, but the drama is real to her, right?

00:02:40.000 | So let me mention six possible responses that are not addressing the issue.

00:02:48.000 | They are escape, and so I hope and pray that people will hear these and say, "There's another way forward."

00:02:54.000 | Number one, suicide.

00:02:57.000 | We have invested that much in this relationship that without it, life simply doesn't look worth living.

00:03:04.000 | Number two, we might express our pain with anger.

00:03:08.000 | "What a jerk! Who needs her anyway?"

00:03:11.000 | Number three, we might retreat into utter reclusiveness and become a social hermit and never risk that kind of relationship again.

00:03:22.000 | Number four, we might try to medicate our sorrow with alcohol or overeating or by throwing ourselves totally into our work with no attention to people at all anymore.

00:03:32.000 | Or fifth, we might respond with self-hatred that expresses itself in anorexic extremes or cutting ourselves.

00:03:41.000 | I once asked a young woman who was cutting her stomach every few months.

00:03:46.000 | "You have to go to the hospital to get stitches."

00:03:48.000 | I said, "Can you share with me anything that would help me understand what this means?"

00:03:53.000 | And she said, "I enjoy so much the attention I get in the emergency room and the touch of my body."

00:04:05.000 | So you could go to that extreme of cutting yourself or starving yourself.

00:04:12.000 | Number six, we might double down on external improvements so that we can finally earn somebody's admiration.

00:04:21.000 | So she's going to work on her figure.

00:04:23.000 | She's going to work on her hair.

00:04:24.000 | She's going to work on her wardrobe.

00:04:26.000 | And he's going to work out more.

00:04:28.000 | And he's going to take some classes on how to be a good conversationalist.

00:04:31.000 | And I'm going to fix my outward person so that somebody will finally like me.

00:04:37.000 | Now, all of those responses leave pretty much untouched the core issue.

00:04:44.000 | The huge, painful question mark that this breakup caused my core identity, my core relationship, my core joy.

00:04:58.000 | It all seems to be called into question.

00:05:00.000 | And none of those six responses address my core identity or my core relationship or my core joy.

00:05:09.000 | So here's where Jesus, the Lord of the universe, the Savior of the world, is absolutely essential in addressing those things.

00:05:20.000 | He does four things for us.

00:05:22.000 | Number one, he created us so that it is a matter of trust now in his wisdom and sovereignty and goodness that we not throw ourselves away as defective and worthless.

00:05:38.000 | If we do, we're not trusting him.

00:05:41.000 | He made us with our basic intelligence, our basic personality, our basic body.

00:05:47.000 | And if we make the judgment that we can't be redeemed, we can't be loved, we can't be useful, we are lying about him.

00:05:59.000 | We're not trusting him.

00:06:01.000 | So first, he gives us our basic significance on the earth since he makes no mistakes in what he creates.

00:06:11.000 | That's number one. He created us.

00:06:13.000 | Number two, he accepts us and forgives us and loves us in spite of all the effects or defects that may push others away.

00:06:24.000 | If we will trust him, he justifies us freely.

00:06:29.000 | This is the great precious doctrine of justification by faith alone.

00:06:36.000 | We don't first measure up and then get accepted with God.

00:06:42.000 | We may with others, but not with God.

00:06:44.000 | We are accepted because of Christ, because of Christ and his perfections, not our perfections.

00:06:50.000 | And we tap into that through faith alone.

00:06:54.000 | That's the rock bottom fact of our existence and identity.

00:06:59.000 | That is our core relationship, and it is a gift, and yet it outweighs in preciousness all other relationships.

00:07:08.000 | Number three, he satisfies us, Christ satisfies us with something infinitely greater than a good self-image, namely himself.

00:07:20.000 | The greatest happiness is not standing in front of a mirror and liking what we see.

00:07:26.000 | The greatest happiness is not standing in front of the world or your girlfriend and having them or her like what they see.

00:07:36.000 | It's not standing, our greatest happiness is not standing in front of God and having him like what he sees.

00:07:44.000 | I admit that's spectacular, and I want that, and I'm going to get that, Lord willing, because faith is tapped into Christ.

00:07:53.000 | But what is the supreme satisfaction of our souls is that we stand in front of God and are thrilled by the beauty of God outside of us.

00:08:05.000 | Not primarily, but subordinately, not primarily by what he thinks about us.

00:08:12.000 | He is all at that moment, and the highest joys are self-forgetful joys in the presence of infinite beauty.

00:08:21.000 | And the last thing is that because of having now a core identity as created by God and for God and a core relationship as accepted and loved by God through Christ on the basis of Christ,

00:08:38.000 | and a core satisfaction because we see God as supremely beautiful, on the basis of all of that,

00:08:48.000 | we now have the inner strength to move out into the world not craving other people's acceptance, but pouring ourselves out to serve other people.

00:09:04.000 | All our relationships, then, are not rooted in craving, but in serving, which may or may not have the spinoff effect of people wanting to be with us.

00:09:18.000 | But that's not the point. That's spinoff.

00:09:21.000 | So I'm not saying that life is without relational pain.

00:09:27.000 | All those losses that I described, they happen to Christians. They're going to happen.

00:09:33.000 | What I'm saying is that in Christ, we have all we need to live useful and joyful lives through that kind of rejection and pain.

00:09:45.000 | Amen. Thank you, Pastor John.

00:09:47.000 | And speaking of dating and singleness, we have a list of episodes in the podcast archive that we recorded with Pastor Matt Chandler.

00:09:54.000 | We talked dating and singleness with him back in February on the podcast.

00:09:58.000 | Those episodes are in the archive.

00:10:00.000 | And for written materials, be sure to check out the piece on breakups by our very own Marshall Siegel.

00:10:06.000 | It's titled, "It's Not You, It's God. Nine Lessons for Breakups."

00:10:12.000 | And you can Google it or find it at Zariagod.org.

00:10:15.000 | Again, it's titled, "It's Not You, It's God. Nine Lessons for Breakups."

00:10:20.000 | It's an article you won't want to miss.

00:10:22.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We return tomorrow with John Piper.

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