Is My Relationship Toxic? by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Danger of Mislabelling

One sign of a toxic relationship is that the word "toxic" is thrown around carelessly. The goal here is not to create a trigger for misdiagnosis, but to bring clarity — so that what is real can be identified and what is simply the friction of two people learning to live together is not mistakenly condemned.

Over time, people lose the ability to discern what healthy love even looks like — because dysfunction has been rebranded as loyalty, patience, submission, or strength.

What Is a Toxic Relationship?

A toxic relationship is one that consistently damages your peace, your clarity, your identity, or your walk with God — even when there are moments of affection and attraction. What qualifies something as toxic is not that there are bad times, but that the bad times consistently outweigh and undermine the good.

A note on peace: peace is sometimes overrated as a leading. When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was not at peace — he said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Yet that was the will of God. Peace is better understood as an answer to prayer rather than a constant feeling. Philippians 4:6–7 — Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will garrison your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. In other words, peace is the token God gives in response to prayer — not an emotion to chase.

This definition does not apply to a couple in the early stages of marriage who are learning each other, working through friction, and having disagreements. That is not toxicity — that is two human beings becoming one.

The pattern being described here is one that constantly steals your peace, your joy, makes you lose yourself, and sucks life out of you.

James 3:16 — Where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

Wherever selfishness is at the center of a relationship, confusion and every kind of evil will be present. Selfishness is the major root of toxicity.

Case Study: The Life of Samson

The life of Samson is a biblical case study in repeated toxic relationships. The goal in examining it is not simply to identify the toxic pattern — but to understand the internal conditions in a person that make them a target for it. Because while there is always an abuser, there is also a pattern of behavior in the person being abused that can be changed.

Romans 15:4 — Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Judges 16:4–6, 16 — Afterward it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, "Entice him, and find out where his great strength lies… and every one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver." So Delilah said to Samson, "Please tell me where your great strength lies…" And it came to pass, when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death…

He was going to Delilah daily. He was supposed to be a judge over Israel — a man of consecration and calling — yet he kept returning to a woman who had been hired to destroy him. And this was not his first time. The pattern predated Delilah.

Judges 14:3 — His father and mother said to him, "Is there no woman among the daughters of your brethren, or among all my people, that you must go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?" But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, for she pleases me well."

What was correct to Samson was what he felt. That is the first and most dangerous problem. Pride is to believe that if something is unknown to you, it cannot be right. Samson's entire compass was internal feeling — which made him easy to manipulate and impossible to counsel.

The Roots in Samson's Life — and What They Mean for Us

1. No accountability

   • There was no voice over Samson's life. His parents could not speak to him. He answered to no one.
   • The difference between David and Solomon is instructive: David had Nathan. There is not one recorded instance in scripture of anyone advising Solomon — and the wisest man who ever lived became a fool.
   • Once a person begins running their life with no voice over them — believing they already know everything — they have removed the very mechanism through which wisdom enters.

2. Indiscipline — a broken consecration

   • Samson was a Nazirite from the womb. Judges 13:5 — For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb.
   • The Nazirite vow, found in Numbers 6:1–7, included: no razor on the head, no contact with dead things, no strong drink.
   • Samson broke all three — repeatedly and without remorse.
   • Judges 14:6–9 — He tore the lion apart, but told no one. Later, he returned and took honey from the lion's carcass and ate it on the road — touching the dead thing he was forbidden to touch, and keeping it secret from his parents.
   • The explanation for how he fell asleep on Delilah's lap while she called for a razor is telling: the vow against strong drink was likely long broken. A man who cannot sit still on his consecrations cannot be surprised when it costs him everything.

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Pastor Dolapo Lawal
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3. Emotional attachment without discernment

   • Samson fell in love with people he should not have — and when everyone around him said so, his response was: they don't know how I feel.
   • Desperation deadens discernment. In a right state of mind, certain choices become impossible. But when scarcity mindset takes over — the fear that if this one doesn't work, no one else will come — a person will choose what they know is wrong.
   • If Elijah is not available, God has 7,000 other prophets. The fear that this is the last option is not from God.
   • And do not make the mistake of staying in the wrong relationship temporarily, planning to leave when the right person arrives. God does not pour new wine into old wineskins. Staying where you should not be is not strategy — it is delay.

4. An unhealthy familiarity with danger

   • Adventure is not recklessness. There is a pull in some people toward relationships that feel dangerous, unpredictable, and intense — and they confuse that feeling with depth or passion.
   • Proverbs 5:3–6 (Message Translation) — The lips of a seductive woman are oh so sweet, her soft words are oh so smooth. But it won't be long before she's gravel in your mouth, a pain in your gut, a wound in your heart. She's dancing down the primrose path to Death; she's headed straight for Hell and taking you with her. She hasn't a clue about Real Life, about who she is or where she's going.
   • The instruction is not "be careful around her." It is: stay out entirely.

5. Oversharing

   • Samson told Delilah the secret of his strength. This was between him, his parents, and God — and he handed it to a Philistine woman in a moment of emotional vulnerability.
   • Transparency is healthy. But trust must be earned before full transparency is given.
   • When a person shares all the details of how they were previously hurt — what they can tolerate, where their breaking point is — they have handed a manual to the next person on how to exploit them.
   • Oversharing also signals to predators that the door is open. Those who are looking for vulnerability will find it in a person who gives it away too quickly.
   • God's approach to past sin is instructive: he puts it in the sea of forgetfulness. There is wisdom in what is held back, and when, and from whom.

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Delilah is not just a woman. Delilah is any situation that exploits your weakness to aid your self-destruction. She represents what you want that God has said is not good for you.

Because you are in love does not mean they are in love with you.

What a Toxic Relationship Sounds Like

These are the phrases and patterns that signal a toxic dynamic — not a difficult season, but a damaging one:

• Minimizing harm — "It's not that bad." / "They didn't mean it like that." / "They were just angry."
• Spiritualizing abuse — "God is teaching me patience." / "This is a test of faith." / "Love suffers long." Scripture is being weaponized to silence pain instead of exposing what is wrong.
• Self-blame — "Maybe I'm too sensitive." / "If I were better, this wouldn't happen." The responsibility consistently shifts from the one causing harm to the one being harmed.
• Confusing fear with respect — Avoiding topics not because of wisdom but because of fear of their reaction. Walking on eggshells is not honor — it is fear.
• Defending the person who hurts you — "You don't know their heart." / "They've been through a lot." This is trauma bonding — an unhealthy compassion for the abuser that replaces compassion for oneself.
• Making excuses for absence — "They're not expressive." / "They're just busy." Busy means priorities have been set and some things come first. If someone is genuinely in love, that person is a priority — not an afterthought. If they struggle to call, to text back, to show up consistently, they may not be as invested as assumed.
• Feeling guilty for wanting basic kindness — "I know I shouldn't expect too much." When healthy, reasonable expectations begin to feel like demands, something is deeply wrong.
• Fearing leaving more than staying — "I don't know who I'll be without them." / "What if this is the best I'll get?" When bondage feels safer than the unknown, that is a sign of how deeply the relationship has damaged the sense of self.

What to Do

1. Reach out to qualified help if you are in danger

   • A pastor is not a therapist. There are situations that require professional and trained intervention.
   • National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788 or visit thehotline.org
   • RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-4673 or visit rainn.org
   • Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741

2. Leave

   • Because your life may be in danger
   • Because your mind is being damaged
   • Because you are being conditioned — slowly, without realizing it — to become another abuser
   • What is learned in a toxic relationship is a distorted version of love. There are people who genuinely believe that if someone is not hurting them, that person does not love them — because that is what they were taught by experience. Staying longer deepens that conditioning.
   • If you cannot leave for yourself, understand that what you absorb, you will eventually pour out onto the people you love most.

3. Heal with the right foundation

   • For those coming out of a toxic relationship, the two areas of teaching to immerse in are: the fatherhood of God and identity in Christ.
   • Not affirmations spoken into a mirror — but the word of God taken in as a capsule, conditioning the mind toward who God says you are.
   • Romans 8:32 — He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Understand God's goodness to the point that when something is withheld, the interpretation is not deprivation but protection.
   • Consider Elizabeth — she appeared barren for decades. But she was not delayed. She was being positioned. The child she would carry had to be the forerunner of Jesus. God was waiting for Mary. What looked like barrenness was preparation to carry John the Baptist. It was not delay — it was appointed time.

No one can receive anything except it be given to them from above. A "no" from a person is a "no" from the Father — and when the Father says no, it is not cruelty. It is protection. When plans fail, God's counsel is standing.

The anxiety around being single, the pressure to settle — none of it holds when weighed against the pain of being in the wrong marriage. Many are praying to enter what others are praying to find their way out of. Being complete in Christ is not a consolation prize — it is the foundation from which everything else, including the right relationship, is properly received.