You will not live the productive, peaceful life God intends without personal boundaries.

Jesus modeled the meaning of personal boundaries in everything he did, from getting up early to pray alone to rejecting anything people said or did that contradicted what God called him to do.

Dr. Henry Cloud, in his book Changes that Heal, says, “When we think of relationships we think of love. When we think of boundaries we think of limits. Boundaries give us a sense of what is a part of us and what is not a part of us, what we will allow and what we won’t, what we will choose to do and what we will choose not to do.”

In relationships with those you love, sometimes a sense of being responsible for how they act and feel can develop. You are not that powerful. You cannot make someone mad, make them happy, make them do anything, etc.

Dr. Cloud describes the person without good boundaries as feeling responsible for someone else’s feelings yet out of control of their own.

God will help you determine what is right and wrong for you, where your responsibility begins and ends. Pray. Trust the Holy Spirit’s leading when he urges you to say no or yes. Remember that you can only control your own thoughts and actions; no one else’s.

Also, no one owns you – not a parent, boyfriend, friend, employer. Only God owns you. He bought and paid for you. The reason he did this was so you could be free to serve him and have eternal life, if you choose.

You are called to respect authority, but that does not include ownership of your body, thoughts, and, feelings.

“This is the essence of boundaries: where do I end and where does someone else begin,” says Dr. Cloud.

Carla G. Harper - Author, Publisher, Speaker