Every relationship is based or founded on something. For example, some relationships are based on the fact that both people work for the same company, attend the same school, or sharing a similar interest in a hobby or sport.

With all of relationships, once a common bond is no longer present, the relationship will tend to deteriorate. For example, once a child graduates from high school and moves off to college, he or she will probably lose most of the relationships formed with classmates, because school is no longer a common bond and thus there is nothing holding the relationship together.

However, if your relationships are formed around a common belief in Christ, then no matter what else happens in life, as long as that common bond is still present those relationships will last.

Thus, it is clear why 2 Corinthians 6:14 instructs believers not to marry unbelievers: Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

If you want to maintain lasting, stable relationships, they must be Christ-centered.

In Exodus 20:3-5, God gives Israel this command: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God."

It is easy to label an idol as some wooden or bronze statue, or a golden cow, or something else like that. And certainly, such things could be idols; however, an idol is much more than that. An idol is anything you put in front of God.

Ezekiel 14:3 says that "men have set up idols in their hearts," meaning that their internal priorities are wrong. Today, although probably very few people in Western culture still bow down to statues or other such physical idols, many people bow down to idols "in their hearts."

For example, money and status are things that we often place ahead of God. However, God is "a jealous God," and He demands first place in your life. Therefore, take to heart the instruction found in 1 John 5:21: "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols."