Introduction to Boundaries - 2/11/2007

INTRODUCTION TO BOUNDARIES

I want to welcome you to the ‘Hurts, Habits and Hang-ups” class, and our study of the subject of “Boundaries”. Before I start off the study I want to lay out a general framework of what to expect in this class.

A Christian theologian might say that we are going to study ‘matters of the soul”, a psychologist would say we are going to study “our inner selves”, but I am going to put it into more practical terms. We are going to work on improving our lives through the study of 3 things:

· The things we feel.
· The things we think.
· The things we do.

The challenge for each of us week by week will be to compare these three things with what God says in His word. At that point, we then all face a personal challenge, (ask class members to respond to this idea). My answer is that as God reveals how the state of our heart, our mindset and our actions don’t line up with Scripture, then we must decide if we are going to change or not. Romans 12:1-2 says it well “Be Transformed”.

Are you ready to be transformed?

Boundaries – Let us begin by asking three questions.

· What is a boundary?
· Do they apply to my everyday life?
· Are they biblical?

What is a boundary?

This is an open question. Everyone here has an idea of what a boundary is, and we are all going to be correct. Would somebody start us off with his or her view of what a “generic” boundary is? (Teacher’s note, have as many of the class participate as possible)

Webster’s says a boundary is, “something indicating a border or limit”. I also like this definition, a boundary is “where one thing stops and another begins”.

Let us take a quick look at what kind of boundaries exist, and cite some examples. We must start by acknowledging that God created the universe and put everything into two broad categories, natural and Spiritual. For those of us that have never considered this, when God created mankind He created the only thing that exists that is both natural and spiritual. This means that for us, boundary concerns cover both our natural and spiritual life.

Natural Boundaries – These are boundaries found in our “natural” world.

Examples are: (Ask for class input) Coastlines, the earth’s surface, our atmosphere/space, and your skin.

Next – How about physical, but man-made, boundaries? Great wall of China, (Rio Grande), my garden fence.

And third, are there any natural but unseen boundaries we have to deal with? Yes there are, (examples) gravity, physical distance (try speaking to someone in the next room), our physical capabilities (try running a marathon).

All these boundaries that we have mentioned so far are to a large extent manageable by most people and generally don’t cause us too many problems. Where we humans get into trouble is with spiritual boundaries. Before I move further into the lesson, why can I say that we all get into trouble with this, and say it with utter conviction? (Let the class answer this)

Example answers:

· Because we are all fallen people.
· Because they are unseen boundaries.
· Because they are impossible to observe.
· Because everybody has different boundaries.
· Because they change frequently.

All of these are of course, true. And God knows that we are fallen people and that we are sometimes clueless about right and wrong, about boundaries. And it was this way from the very beginning! For ten points, who can tell me the first boundary violation listed in Scripture? (Gen 3:1-7)

This brings me to my third question, Are boundaries biblical? The answer is obviously “yes”, but what significant evidence do we have to support this? I believe we can find it in Ex 20:1-17, which we ought to read.

What do we normally call this section of Scripture (Ten Commandments)? Today, we can rename them the Ten Boundaries! Please allow me to explain why this is fundamentally important to all of mankind. Using these boundaries means living a Spirit led life leading to God’s abundance, not using them leads to a life of hedonism and destruction, such as was on the earth at the time of Noah.

We have all broken one or more of these boundaries and we all know that we have personally suffered from our own actions. We also have all suffered because significant people in our life have violated some of these boundaries.

Before we move on to look at examples of spiritual boundaries, I want us to reflect, using the “Ten Boundaries” as a guide, on the following question:

· What is the purpose of a spiritual boundary?

Does anybody have thoughts on this? (Discuss this with class)

The answer is really quite simple, yet very profound.

· To keep good in, and to keep bad out.

(Discuss this with the class in the context of the Ten Boundaries.)

Before we go on I want to also introduce the concept of gates. As we all realize, most fences have gates, and these gates also have a purpose, to let things in or out. In the context of spiritual boundaries, what purpose do gates have?

· To allow good in, and let bad out.

We will talk a lot more over the coming weeks about our “gate keeping”, but for now we will just acknowledge that this could be a problem area.

The final part of what I wanted to cover is to identify some examples of spiritual boundaries from our collective life experiences. If it is okay with everybody, I will start the ball rolling.

I hate it when I’m in line and the person behind me gets too close to me, I have a large personal space issue! Can anybody identify with that? This issue that I have allows me to make a simple but obvious statement, boundaries define who I am and who I am not. (The same statement can be made by all of us)

My wife has a really good boundary issue that has caused some friction in our relationship, making the bed! (Ask her to talk for a moment about it) This brings up another important point, my wife is responsible “for” her issue, and I am responsible “to” her on this issue. (Ask if the class can think of a major spiritual example on this, Jesus saved us, even though He was not required to, we are the ones who had a boundary problem with sin!)

Would somebody else like to share? (Try to get everyone to say something)

As we can see from all these boundary issues, we’ll have plenty to talk about in the next few weeks.

Let me summarize today’s lesson:

We have defined a boundary, and identified that there are two major categories of boundaries, natural and spiritual. We have briefly discussed some examples of each of these and we know that we are going to focus on spiritual boundaries over the next few weeks.

We have discovered some “principles of boundaries” (A principle is a basic truth). These principles are:

1. Boundaries are Scriptural, God has boundaries.
2. Good boundaries keep good in and keep bad out.
3. Good boundaries have gates; gates allow good in and let bad out.
4. Boundaries define who we are, and who we are not.
5. We are responsible for our own boundaries.

I hope you have enjoyed this class today; next week we will be discussing the ten laws of boundaries.