Setting healthy boundaries

"This far you may come, but no farther, and here your proud waves must stop!" Job 38:11. Just as God made boundaries for the natural world, He also made boundaries for our own personal space. These boundaries help you distinguish between your responsibilities and someone else's. Though we are to help bear other's burdens, each of us have to carry our own load (Galatians 6:2, 5). Each of us have certain responsibilities that nobody else can do for us. You are responsible for your own feelings, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, choices, values, limits, resources, talents, thoughts, and desires.

We're called to be "one" (John 17:11),  but like in any community, we need gates that let in the good and leave out the bad (Psalm 34:14, Romans 12:9). Poor boundaries lead to unhealthy relationships in which bad things going on are ignored and support from the outside is "walled off". No matter how much you talk to yourself, read, study, or practice, you can’t develop or set boundaries apart from supportive relationships with God and others. We need to be “rooted and established in love” (Eph. 3:17) and “rooted and built up in [Christ]” (Col. 2:7).

When we are not secure that we are loved, we are forced to choose between two bad options: 1. We set limits and risk losing a relationship... 2. We don’t set limits and remain a prisoner to the wishes of another. If someone you know is falling into the latter ditch, be the good friend who lets him or her know that this isn't healthy. Some people have been raised in dysfunctional families, or families where God’s ways of boundaries are not practiced, and have experiences similar to that of the alien. They find themselves transported into adult life where spiritual principles that have never been explained to them govern their relationships and well-being.

A common boundary problem is disowning our choices and trying to lay the responsibility for them on someone else... Making decisions based on others’ approval or on guilt breeds resentment, a product of our sinful nature. We have been so trained by others on what we “should” do that we think we are being loving when we do things out of compulsion. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.

Our hearts are deceptive, that's why we need to go to Jesus for ourselves and ask for the Holy Spirit to convict us of what's wrong (Jeremiah 17:9, John 7:37-39, John 16:7-8).  We need to know what we should say no to and mean it (Matthew 5:37). "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). If we have allowed evil to enter into our hearts, we need to give them up to God in prayer (1 John 1:9). Admitting when we're wrong and praying for one another brings healing to the soul (James 5:16). We need to let Jesus into our hearts (Revelation 3:20). As we abide in Christ, we can enjoy the fruit of "self-control" (John 15:5, Galatians 5:22-23).

God set a boundary for our first parents and our world is cursed by sin because this boundary was crossed  (Genesis 2:16-17, Genesis 3:17). God wasn't being restrictive when He said to them that they could eat of "every tree" except for one. The devil was the one who tried to insinuate that God was being unfair (notice how Eve began to focus that one tree and completely forget about all the other ones). The devil is a liar, God's word says ""For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly." Psalm 84:11.

Sin is destructive and leads to death, so when God tells us to repent and let go of sin, it's because He loves us and doesn't want us to perish (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 3:9).  If we love God, we will love the boundaries He has set for us, for they will be written in our hearts (John 14:15, Psalm 40:8).

The following passage tells us to recognize our limitations as mortals. "Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah. Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them." Psalm 39:4-6

We should to know our boundaries as mere mortals and understand our dependence on God. Nobody else can be God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit for you. You can't be God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit for somebody else. To place man where God should be is idolatrous and it's at the root of all unhealthy relationships.