Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Pastors’ Column – 08/25/08



The practice of our faith and friendship with our God is the most important relationship we have in life. It is where we receive healing, draw from His strength, and it is the source of joy and peace in our lives.

Our good relationship with our Creator is the foundation for a healthy culture and society. From it flows everything.

We learn to love authentically through the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death on the cross. Through our prayer life, we begin to realize how to tap into our relationship with God in order to overcome sin, evil, distractions, and temptations in the world.

It is by the power of Christ’s love that we heal, grow, learn, and become the children of God that we are meant to be. This leads to an ability to form good friendships that will ultimately end up, for most of us, in marriage.

Our relationship with our spouse needs to be the most important relationship in the family, next to our friendship with God. The spousal relationship needs to be one of deep friendship; rather, a best friend and a soulmate relationship.

When a husband and wife both have a strong prayer life, live a balanced life with good communication skills, and work hard at making sacrifices for each other, the foundation for a healthy family exists. The children of our society and culture have so many negative influences directed at them through television, magazines, the Internet, broken families, etc. . . . the list goes on. The importance of having a healthy family background is so apparent in today’s world.

When mom and dad are living an authentically loving life, filled with sacrificial love, they give to the children a good example and witness to living respectful and loving lives. When the family is strong, so the children are healthy. They will have a core group of family surrounding them that they can draw from for the rest of their lives. Equipped with a strong sense of moral values and deeply loving examples to imitate, our children can go out into the world and have a positive impact.

The work world can be a scary place. But if we can begin with a strong prayer life and desire to live a faith-filled life, our relationship with God can translate into a healthy marriage and beautifully loving children. Then, when our children enter into adulthood, they can go out into the world through the work place, but really in any place they find themselves, and can have a powerful impact in bringing about a more loving culture.

The culture of life is a life in which the culture itself will move us toward a more healthy, holy, deeply respectful love of neighbor. When we transform our families and the workplace, the culture will soon follow.

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