“Life change happens best in relationship…”  It feels like we’ve said it a million times over the years.  And it’s true – God uses people to grow us.  God works through relationships to make us more like Christ.  But the question is, "Why?"  What is it about relationships that God uses?

Here's the cool thing about relationships.  Relationships have the potential to highlight the things about us that are both beautiful and broken.  The ways that we reflect Christ’s image in us as well as the ways that we've tarnished Christ’s image in us.  And in all meaningful relationships, sooner or later we will be confronted by this reality, which is the reality of our sinful nature.  Our egos.  Our self-centered, me-first heart attitude that is at the core of all our sin.

And when confronted by this reality, we are given a choice.  We can choose to face our sinful heart attitudes, or we can choose to run and blame someone else.  We can choose the path of life change, which the Bible describes as the process of sanctification - where we allow the Holy Spirit to change us more and more to be like Jesus – or we can choose the path of self-preservation – where it’s not our fault and we ignore the reality of our brokenness and our sin.   

The Bible talks a lot about this choice.  It talks a lot about “dying to self” and becoming more like Christ (for example, check out Romans 6:6 & Colossians 3:5).  And ultimately, that's what it means to grow spiritually – to die to ourselves more and more and to become more and more alive in Christ.  This is the kind of “life change” God wants to do in each one of us. 

And so what if we embraced friendship, not just as an opportunity to be social or to hang out with people, but as an opportunity to become more and more like Christ?  What if we allowed God to work through our friends to expose our sinful heart attitudes and to push us further down the process of sanctification?  I think then that more and more of us could say that, “Life change happens best in relationship!”