the points of our unlikeness to Christ are areas of our life where we are lord and Christ isn’t—areas where our agenda, our will, our desire, our purpose rules. Wherever this is the case, our relationship with others will be controlled not by God’s will but by our own agenda. Our relationship with others at that point will become manipulative as we attempt to impose our agenda on them. If others do not readily succumb to our manipulations, we will tend to become abusive with them or break the relationship entirely.
