Relationship 101 Course-- Levels of Intimacy

there are levels of intimacy think about it not every person you meet has the same access to you for example if you are married then your spouse should have the most access to you outside of God you wouldn't share your deepest secrets with a stranger you just met at church but you would share them with your spouse it's good to understand these dynamics and how they work in this session Dani dives into what healthy levels of intimacy look like does everyone have the same access to your time energy and resources do you control your yes and your no or to someone else I want to talk to you about boundaries and managing yourself in the levels of intimacy in your relationships we all have an imaginary line that people cross and it does affect the way our life operates and if we're not paying attention to that then we end up with a chaos in our life and a disorder because people who should not have time energy resources consumed in our life we're just handing it out because we don't see it coming we're not managing our priorities because we're not paying attention to these boundaries when I talk about levels of access I want I want to give you an illustration let's say this is your house okay this your your red house and there's a street out in front of your house and every day cars are running by your house you don't know who's in those cars you don't know what's going on but Xoom everyday people going by your house and then one day you notice that the blue car that's been driving by that you don't know who they are they just randomly for whatever reason they decide to pull in your driveway like oh my gosh they're in my driveway look this person is in my driveway I don't even know who that is what's going on this is justice just feels this feels like they've moved over that line and then before you know it they're standing on your front porch they're knocking at your front door and they're asking to come into your house now this person is not something you necessarily know but they've definitely crossed over another boundary and then before you know it you go to the door you open the door or you say hello and they say hey would you mind if I come in oh my gosh you you want to come in my house and so you for whatever reason you let them in the house as they walk in the door they walk right past you and they go to your refrigerator and they open your refrigerator they go ahead can I have something to eat oh my gosh you did not just go get in my refrigerator what is happening here and then they grab something out of your fridge and then they say hey is this your bedroom Wow see what's happening is these various levels of access to your most vulnerable intimate core are being crossed in this relationship healthy relationships have these natural filters when we see Jesus come to the earth he he chooses 12 out of an entire nation and those 12 are gonna be surrounding him and and he's going to give them access a unique access of anybody else and then within those those 12 there's three there's Peter James and John and they have more access to Jesus than do the other nine but mores going to be required from them they're gonna carry more Authority they're gonna carry more weight and then there's the one there's there's John who had the most access to Jesus this is the one who's described as the one whom Jesus loved and so even John John's gonna have even more required of him as Jesus is approaching the crucifixion he turns to John and says please take care of my mother I mean there is a increase in responsibility as there's an increase in intimacy and access so I want you to I want you to understand that in our lives as people we have a most intimate place in our life so if you if you look at your life you say alright there's room for you and there's Jesus he's the most intimate relationship you could ever have nobody knows you like him even if you didn't pray the prayer Jesus knows you like nobody knows you this place is not gonna ever be filled with a human being because they they cannot be omnipresent in your life they can't be all-knowing in your in your life and so outside of that is room for a most intimate human relationship so if it's you know if you're married then hopefully this would be your spouse this is the person who is your strongest soul tie now if you're not married then this would be possibly a sibling or one of your parents or a close friend or somebody that you've just spent a lot of time with and/or experienced a lot of vulnerability with the way we make soul ties is with time and vulnerability now let's stay with the family model if you have children then your children have the most access to your time your energy your resources outside of that maybe this is a your your immediate family and/or best friends and so you you have more room for more people but they have less access to your closest place and then outside of that maybe these are people that you work with or that you know you would stop and you would talk to them and or you'd help them if they you knew that they needed help and then let's say that maybe you're a public figure or that you just happen to have a lot of friends or a lot of acquaintances and so bam there's lots of people who can access your time and energy but still it's it's it's pretty selective because there's so many of those people but you're a believer and you've been paying attention to what I've been saying and you kept your loved one you refuse to turn it off for anybody and so we got to have a place for the scary people okay we've got to put the scary people in in in my life somewhere I'm not turning my love off just because of your character because of your poor choices because of your disrespect or irresponsibility so let's just refer to those people as the the grizzly bears and the great white sharks all right we have a place for everyone in our life while I keep my love on and there'll be a varied experience that people have in gaining access to me now these relationships are varied they move around you know they're there there's not a guaranteed place that somebody's always gonna have in my life because maybe I move from one city to another or so geography will change these relationships maybe my child grows up and they get married and they start their own house and I end up with other people that are have more access to my life than my own children do because my children live in Pennsylvania and I live in Hawaii which I would love to do I think that it's important that we realize that relationships are fluid and they move around but I'm trying to get you to see that there is an internal structure to the way that priority and access is given it's important to realize that boundaries communicate value and so when we set boundaries around things we're really telling people that what's in here is valuable to me if you know if you just take your wallet and toss it out in the street and walk away you just send a message to everybody that there's nothing of any value in your wallet if you take your wallet and you put it in a bank vault that everybody thinks well why wouldn't you keep that in your pocket why did you why don't you put your wallet in a bank vault there must be something incredibly valuable in there and so boundaries communicate value if we go downtown Los Angeles and we see a building that has no doors and no windows what if any value do we expect to find inside nothing why because just anybody can access it just anybody can go in and do whatever they want in there and so who would I expect to find in there I would expect to find people who have no value for what they found are thieves they're gonna steal what they do find a value and they're gonna vandalize whatever they can just because there's no respect required so when we have a hard time setting boundaries on our lives what we end up with is an attraction to people who bring low levels of respect and responsibility to relationship so it becomes so vital that we learn how to practice these these invisible lines if you will or requirements of people moving from one level of access to another if I if I consider this outer layer of of relationships maybe people where I go do conferences in it I'm giving these people access to my time my energy I'm giving them prayer and autographs and selfies and whatever else that we're working together but really they only have a limited amount of access to me because I'm a leave in town so if one of them come up to me and say Danny the engine on my car blew up I'll make oh gosh that's terrible did you tell your pastor the next layer in is the people that maybe are at a place where I pasture so the Bethel Church or Jesus Culture Sacramento if they come up to me and they say Oh Danny the engine of my car blew up on me oh my goodness let me give you the number of my mechanic and he's gonna help you and you'll give you a great deal one more ring in one of my good friends Bill Johnson or Chris valeton or banning Leap sure they come and they say engine on my car blew up like wow so I reach in my pocket I grab my keys I say hey Sheree and I got two cars use one of our cars until you get yours fixed then the next ring in it's one of my children one of my children come to me and say dad engineer my car blew up like oh gosh this is gonna cost me $3,000 right then there's a special someone a lady named Sheree silk she calls me she says honey smoke oil water's coming down the engine and I think to myself I am talking to the woman who's going to pick the color of my next car right because she has the most access to my time my energy my resources these boundaries communicate the value that I have for the people in those relationships so if somebody out here in the Jesus Culture ring says oh my car broke down outside of the road I need I need you to come and help me I say wow cuz this ring right in here my granddaughter it's her birthday I'll be here for the next two hours I won't be able to come and help you I choose to stay here I won't be giving you that time but you do need help so let me give you banning Leapster phone number okay the message to the people in these layers of my life is a message of priority and a value now this person had my phone number they could call me that's a message of access but what they found was they did not have access to my time because I had already dedicated it to my granddaughter and my granddaughter watches me protect her priority by the way I handle external demands that would otherwise take away from her place a priority so she sees that I will protect her place a priority by the way I handle those outside demands these things are so important and they're so fluid there are people who at one point were married to each other this was the most intimate relationship that I have I had children together and now that person is out here with the great white sharks they're that scary they've been moved all the way out here because they cannot handle this level of access to my life they can't they won't bring the level of respect or responsibility to this place of intimacy so they got moved out to a scary place maybe one of my children maybe one of my sons or daughters decides that they're going to see what heroine would do to their life and so this this place of being that close to my my core as my child they begin to move because they're erratic and unpredictable and then they start inviting people into my house that are stealing things and then pretty soon my son or daughter is out here because I changed the locks on my house and that my son or doesn't even have access to the house they grew up in because of what they've decided to do with their life boundaries moved their their fluid back and forth now I look for my son's return his place in my life is secure it stays right there but I wait for him because I don't control him but maybe he will return to that spot because I look on his I look on the horizon for his return you know I keep a hope in my in my heart that this relationship will be restored but there's no guarantee and in the meantime he gets that boundary and he's out here because that's all he can handle now a lot of folks think that I have to say yes to anybody that asks of me especially if I have a solution especially if I have a resource or I have the ability to help them and so what begins to happen is I end up saying yes when I really meant no I don't understand how to say yes or no I lose control of my yeses because I don't learn to say no see Jesus is a beautiful example here where he knows what his yes is regardless of the number of demands that are placed on his life yeah there's a story in Luke 8 where Jesus begins to approach a city they've all found out that he's famous for meeting needs and a miracle worker so desperate people assemble outside the city he reaches the outside of the city and a man named Darius gets to him first and says Jesus will you come to my house and heal my little girl and Jesus says yes now Jesus is gonna walk out his yes that's on the other side of this crowd of desperate people and so as he's walking through these this crowd people are grabbing on to him the Bible says they're thronging him there some translations say there they were they were going to suffocate him they're pressing so hard against him to get what they need because they know he has a solution for their problem they don't care about is yes and let me tell you nobody's watching out for your yes so if you don't learn to manage your yes you you won't accomplish why you're here Jesus is moving through that crowd on his way to his yes he put it like this I only do that which I see my father in heaven doing that's his yes and as he moves through the crowd they're there they're trying to get and so hey Jesus stop hey where you going hey what do you think you're calling you call yourself a Christian I can't believe you just walked past me I need some that you could supply and Jesus keeps on moving see Jesus manages Jesus everywhere Jesus goes otherwise he'd still be in Nazareth today he'd still be there today Brian for people I can't believe where all these people come from I guess what is the internet anyway people let me get to the cross would you let me get to the cross I 2000 years late cuz a yo no he's not doing that he is moving through his steps while he's here to accomplish why he's here this is what powerful people do powerful people take responsibility for their yes they don't blame other people for not saying no they don't end up with a life they actually build a life that they are intended to live in that God has called them to and ordained them in the vital behavior of setting limits of managing your yes is not anybody else's responsibility it's yours it's mine powerful people learn to say yes by learning to say no I know the first time I heard some of this some of it was familiar but most of it was really new information I encourage you to take some time to think through your relationships who are the people in your inner circles should they be there what adjustments do you need to make in your relational priorities the process may not be easy but it's really worth it remember that with every S you give you are giving a note to something else determining which people take priority in your life is a huge priority let's pray Jesus help us to have healthy boundaries to know what we need to say yes to and what we need to say no to thank you that you're with us in this process in Jesus name Amen [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Loving on Purpose

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Id: Z3l3ST7z7ps

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018