BUILDING YOUR BEST RELATIONSHIPS (Part 1)
A friend loves at all times (Part I)
Relationships can be amazing, but sometimes they can be complicated.
“Every broken business, every broken home; every broken friendship is a broken relationship.” (Oscar Thompson)
Most of our problems centers around relationships with people.
There are two basic relationships in life:
Your Relationship with God — The Vertical
Christianity is about a relationship, not about keeping rules or rituals. It is knowing and experiencing God. He is not distant. You can talk with Him (prayer). You can listen to Him (God’s Word).
12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
- John 1:12 NIV
It’s the moment Jesus comes into your life. When was that for you? You see, you haven’t always been a Christian there is a point in time, a place in time when you receive Jesus personally. It must be a remembered experience.
Your Relationship with People — The Horizontal
This includes your wife, children, parents, grandchildren, siblings, the people you work with, and the people you worship with.
When your vertical relationship is right, your horizontal relationships can be right.
Today we want to delve into how to build and keep relationships:
I BE LOVING
Show it, say it, do it, choose it. Proverbs 17:17 “A friend loves…” The word love has been the most used and abused word in our language. Everybody seems to be for it, but few really understand it.
In order to build relationships, you need to: “Be Loving.” Let me explain. Love is not just a feeling. Proverbs 17:17 “At all times…” There are times you may not feel it.
Love is Two Things: Love is Something You Choose (Colossians 3:14), Love is Something you Do. Love is an action. Love gives a second chance. Love doesn’t demand— “It’s my way or no way.”
II BE COMMITTED
Proverbs 17:17 “A brother is born, for adversity.”
Proverbs 18:24 “A friend that sticks closer than a brother.”
Adversity means distress and trouble. Stick means to cling, to follow close, to pursue. Relationships can be costly. It’s a commitment to hand in there with people when the roof caves in.
Your relationships are too important to allow something, sometimes the least little old something, to break it. Not a misunderstanding. Not an argument. Not even when that person acts like a first-class jerk. Don’t be a fair-weather friend. Look at Jesus. He never left the cross until He died. He hung in there for us.
III BE FRIENDLY
Proverbs 18:24 NKJV
“A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Have you noticed that “people who like people are people that people like?” You’re not going to win friends and influence people if you act like Oscar the Grouch or Grumpy the Dwarf. It’s being kind to people.
Proverbs 3:3
Proverbs 11:17
Be nice. Speak to people. Be interested in people. Affirm people. Compliment people honestly. Friendly people are simply contagious. Try being humbly grateful instead of grumbly hateful.
It’s choosing to have a good attitude even when others don’t. It’s being positive even when others are negative.
Number One Phrase in Successful Relationships
Psychologists John and Julie Schwartz Gottman write:
While every partnership is unique, with its own set of challenges, there’s one thing that all couples have in common: We want to be appreciated. To be acknowledged for our efforts. We want to be seen.
The No. 1 phrase in successful relationships: “Thank you.”
A thriving relationship requires an enthusiastic culture of appreciation, where we’re as good at noticing the things, our partners are doing right as we are at noticing what they’re doing wrong. But it’s easy to fall into the trap of only seeing what your partner is not doing. You develop a narrative where you’re the one putting in all the effort, and you start to believe it’s true. Getting rid of this toxic mindset requires building a new one: scanning for the positives and saying, “thank you.”
You probably say “thank you” all day long, almost without thinking, to your colleagues, to the bagger at the supermarket, or to the stranger who holds the door for you. But in our most intimate relationships, we can forget how important saying “thank you” really is.
For many couples we found that when one person started the cycle of appreciation, it became easy for the other to join in and strengthen it. Notice that they washed the breakfast dishes, answered phone calls, picked up the toys strewn all over the living room, and made you coffee when they went to make one for themselves.
Thank them for something routine that they’re doing right, even if it’s small, even if they do it every day—in fact, especially if it’s small and they do it every day! But don’t just say “Hey, thanks.” Tell them why that small thing is a big deal to you: “Thank you for making the coffee every morning. I love waking up to the smell of it and the sounds of you in the kitchen. It just makes me start the day off right.”
Don’t forget to check out our podcasts on your favorite podcast site: The Wingman Men's Moment or The Papa Roc and Jay Pop Show.
Click here for more content from Wingman Nation: https://linktr.ee/wingman.nation
Click here for more content from The Papa Roc and Jay Pop Show: https://linktr.ee/PapaRocJayPopShow
