Investing your time with people comes at a cost. When you go to visit your parents, go to dinner with a friend, or stay after work to talk with someone you are investing your time with them. You spend time with them instead of doing something else. 

Frankly, it doesn’t always seem worthwhile. If I’m honest, sometimes I would have preferred to have just spent time by myself.

Recently, I was in a conversation with a few guys in which we were talking about the importance of relationships in our lives as Christians. We specifically thought about the need for having someone investing into us, someone at a similar stage of life to share openly with, and someone for us to invest in as well. These relationships are an important part of the Christian walk as we can see in the scriptures:

• Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. - James 5:16

• Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6:2

• Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. - 1 Thessalonians 5:11

• But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. - Hebrews 3:13

When you choose to attend a church worship gathering, life group, a prayer gathering, or discipleship meeting you are also investing your time. The time spent with friends, family, and coworkers further invests into the types of relationships that lead to the level of honesty needed to “confess your sins to one another,” “bear one another’s burdens,” and exhort one another away from sin.

The level of investment needed in relationships is huge if we are going to live out these commands. Our conversation forced us to think, is the investment worth it?

Building Relational Equity

In personal finance many people will teach the wisdom of having an emergency fund. An emergency fund is money saved that if something unexpected happened, such as a car breaking down, an unexpected medical bill, or a sudden loss of your job, there would be something to help weather that current emergency and keep you on your feet. A study at the end of 2019 showed that 45% of Americans surveyed had $0 of savings, or no emergency fund of any kind. Any emergency would lead to disaster.

Many of us also lack any relational emergency fund. Over time we have neglected to build any life-giving relationships and don’t have any relational equity, any sort of closeness or openness, with others. Then in our greatest times of need, those times that we do need someone to turn to, we don’t know where to go. We don’t have anyone that we feel comfortable opening up to about our current struggles.

I should be clear, the purpose of having good relationships and having relational equity with people isn’t only to cash that in when we are in trouble, and thus simply turning every relationship into a transaction. There is much joy to be found in godly friendships. As your relational equity grows with someone so does the joy and the ease of being with them. The small investment in time leads to a close friend.

When starting with $0 and building your emergency fund it doesn’t happen overnight. There are small savings made over time, a few dollars this month, a decision to eat out less the next month, and some surprise savings until eventually a good amount it built up. It often takes sacrificing something.

Building relational equity is the same way. It is the decision to invest into community, joining a life group, asking to read the Bible with someone, or choosing to spend a game night with friends instead of keeping to yourself. Those decisions aren’t always easy, but over time they build up to true life giving relationships that point you towards a whole-hearted devotion to God.

It is through Jesus that Christians are brought together to be united as one body, one family. We then have responsibilities as family members to the confession of sin, exhorting of one another, and the bearing of each other’s burdens. The investment into relationships in the body is worth it. How do you need to build greater relational equity in your life?

If you’re looking for a Boston church to call home and a community to grow with in your relationship with God, we’d love to see you visit King’s Hill.