John Townsend

Just as homeowners set physical property lines around their land, we need to set mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries for our lives to help us distinguish what is our responsibility and what isn’t.

Boundaries

Consequences

Trespassing on other people’s property carries consequences.

We need to be able to say no to ourselves. This includes both our destructive desires and some good ones that are not wise to pursue at a given time. Internal structure is a very important component of boundaries and identity, as well as ownership, responsibility, and self-control.

Talents

Establishing boundaries in thinking involves three things.

1. We must own our own thoughts. Many people have not taken ownership of their own thinking processes. They are mechanically thinking the thoughts of others without ever examining them. They swallow others’ opinions and reasonings, never questioning and “thinking about their thinking.” Certainly we should listen to the thoughts of others and weigh them; but we should never “give our minds” over to anyone. We are to weigh things for ourselves in the context of relationship, “sharpening”

each other as iron, but remaining separate thinkers.

2. We must grow in knowledge and expand our minds. One area in which we need to grow is in knowledge of God and his Word. David said of knowing God’s Word, “My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times. Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors”

Probably the easiest distortions to notice are in personal relationships. We rarely see people as they really are; our perceptions are distorted by past relationships and our own pre-conceptions of who we think they are, even the people we know best. We do not see clearly because of the “logs” in our eyes

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?” (1 Cor. 2:11). What a great statement about boundaries! We have our own thoughts, and if we want others to know them, we must tell them.

Part of the problem lies in the lack of structured boundaries within our personality. We can’t define who the real “me” is and what we truly desire. Many desires masquerade as the real thing.

James writes about this problem of not owning and seeking our real desires with pure motives: “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures”

When parents teach children that setting boundaries or saying no is bad, they are teaching them that others can do with them as they wish. They are sending their children defenseless into a world that contains much evil. Evil in the form of controlling, manipulative, and exploitative people. Evil in the form of temptations

When parents teach children that setting boundaries or saying no is bad, they are teaching them that others can do with them as they wish. They are sending their children defenseless into a world that contains much evil. Evil in the form of controlling, manipulative, and exploitative people. Evil in the form of temptations.