Just like your Facebook relationship can be complicated, your real life relationships can be complicated.  You like a girl, and you wonder if she likes you.  She acts like she likes you, she laughs at your jokes and she twirls her hair and then she says “you’re a great friend, I know I can always talk to you.”  Ouch, smacked back into the friend zone.  You thought she was into you, and then she made it clear that she’s just not that in to you.  Why are we interested in relationships, why do Myspace and Facebook have that as an option for your profile?  Why do people think that anyone over 20 who is single needs to be setup with someone – quick fast in a hurry?  It is because our society is in love with being in love.  The largest genre of movies on the market are ‘romantic comedies,’ it is difficult to find songs on the radio that are not about relationships.  We are in love with being in love.  But what is our response to all of this as Christians?  We know that anything that takes the place of God in our lives is an idol.  As such, we should rethink it. 

The past two weeks we have been discussing how to grow your relationship with your parents, this week is the last lesson on that subject.  Our parents may not be the kind of parents we want, they may be harder on us then we think we deserve, or they might be too lax.  Either way they are our parents, and we do have a responsibility to grow our relationship with them. Growing it will be hard because you might need to begin by forgiving them.  You might need to forgive your dad or mom for walking out on you.  You might need to forgive them for checking out on you; they are physically present, but emotionally distant.  Or, you might need to ask for forgiveness, perhaps you are not working at your highest potential and this creates fights in your life.  Perhaps you are the one checking out because you go hide in your room and play video games, or text, or Myspace all night.  Only you know where you need to start.  Remember fighting for a relationship with your parents is a fight worth having. 

We know that all families fight.  This week’s lesson is about why we fight.  We fight over differences in perspective.  We fight because our parents are looking at a situation differently than we are; we fight because we are looking at a situation differently than they are.  We say; “I want to go to this party because all my friends are going to be there and we are just going to hangout and play charades.”  Your parents see a different perspective  “I know for a fact that there will be college boys there because I talked to Lyric’s mom who had talked to Cada’s mom who said Derrick’s brother was coming home and bringing a carload of his friends, so no you can’t go.”  Why do your parents’ not want you to go to a party with college boys?  Well, college boys are really good at charades, and they would ruin all the fun, and also, because your parents’ probably went to college, so just trust them on this one. 
Part of building a relationship with your parents is by choosing your rights.  Yes you have the right to go to a party, but you also have the right not to be grounded.  So choose that one.   As you continue to fight for a relationship with your parents understand they have a different perspective, and seek to understand it. 

Every family fights, some fight actively - yelling, slamming doors, punching holes in the wall; some fight passively - ignoring each other, doing stuff to get on the other members nerves, or sometimes just pretending like everything is fine (trying to smile through the pain, which in this instance is very unhealthy).  Families fight for emotional reasons and real reason.  Emotional reasons like mom and/or dad had a bad day, so they start yelling at their kids, or real reasons like you went to a party when you were told not to go.  Sometimes you get so mad at your parents' that you want to run away.  This would only create more problems then it will solve.  These are the moments when it is very important to work on your relationship with your parents. Begin by honoring your parents.   The more time you spend honoring them, the less time you will spend arguing with them. 

Now I have to make something very clear here.  If one or more of your parents' are abusing you (physically or sexually) then you need to report it.  You need help.  Do not allow yourself to believe that you have to take it because it is honoring your parents.  Also, if your parents' are asking/telling you to do something illegal - you need to report it.  Honoring your parents does not involve breaking the law. 

Honoring your parents does involve stopping those petty arguments you start - your dad is not going to buy a new sweatshirt to mow the grass in, your mom thinks her hairstyle is hip and is not going to change it.  Let it go.   Honoring your parents' means when they make a decision that you think is unfair - abide by it.  It may be unfair, or it might be that your parents' love you and do not want you to get hurt.  These lessons are to help you stop fighting with your parents, and start fighting for a relationship with your parents.  Step one is to start honoring them.

Another way we use masks is in valuing ourselves.   The mask we wear is assigned a value, and we use that as an external source of our self-worth.  Maybe if I explain it like this, what I am saying will make sense.  If I put on the mask of a dirt-bag climber then people will have low expectations for me, and if I don't fit in, well it's because I'm a dirt-bag climber.  People will look at me and say "he's a dirt-bag climber, he doesn't have a real job, he's got long hair and doesn't bathe, don't ask him to do anything."  Then I can hide behind that mask,my real self is a perfectionist; my mask is an underachiever.  Why is that such a big deal, why can't I just be a dirt-bag climber?  Genesis 1:27 tells us we are created in the image of God.  When I put on a mask I am showing that I do not want to be who God created me to be.  I do not want God to value me, I want to create my own value.  This is where removing you mask gets hard, nobody says "I don't want you to value me God, I'm happy on my own."  We know that we are created in the image of God and that is more valuable than anything we can assign to ourselves, however, we don't always feel valued. 
 There is a lot more here that I can write, but I want to skip all of that, and write about taking off the masks.  Our problem is that we do not know what it is like to feel God's value, when we feel God's value it is easy to remove our mask, because when we experience it we know it is a greater value.  When we experience God's value we realize that we are worth more than the mask we are wearing.  We realize though people say things to us to devalue us, we have experienced God's value, and when that sinks in, other people can no longer value or devalue us.