Ladies ~ 3.) Building, improving, and maintaining relationships and effective communication. What exactly do you want in a friend? Most of us want the same things - we want to be respected, loved, understood, and easily forgiven. We want honesty, longsuffering, unity, faithfulness, and loyalty (even behind our backs). We want friends that share common interests and that relate to us, that appreciate us, that overlook our quirks, and that enjoy us for who we are. We want an ear and a shoulder. We want someone that we can laugh and cry with. We want friends that hope in us, encourage us, help us up when we are down, and that truly rejoice with us when we are happy. It is so easy to identify what we want in relationships. Yet, on the other hand, it can be hard for us to focus on BEING those same things for our friends in those relationships. After all - your friends desire the same things from you that you want from them. Think of your closest friend (and your husband, and your child). Now…..with that person in mind evaluate the type of friend that you are to him/her as you read this: Your friends want you to - respect, love, understand, and easily forgive them. They want you to be honest, longsuffering, unified, faithful, and loyal (even behind their backs). They want you to share their common interests, relate to them, appreciate them, overlook their quirks, and enjoy them for who they are. Your friend wants an ear and a shoulder. Your friend wants someone that they can laugh and cry with. Your friend wants you to hope in them, encourage them, help them up when they are down, and truly rejoice with them when they are happy. Sometimes one of the biggest hurdles that we face in our quest to find and maintain meaningful friendships can be that we don’t take the necessary time to evaluate what WE must do on OUR end to BE a good friend to others. We can be so preoccupied seeking for true friends and meaningful relationships that will fulfill OUR desires and needs, that we forget the most effective method of building friendships – which is BEING a good friend to others. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers…..Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1Jhn. 3:16&18). Identifying this hurdle can be the very key to unlocking the door that we must walk through in order to build, improve, and maintain relationships and effective communication. Unlocking a door is a wonderful thing! However once it is unlocked we’ve got to actually walk through it. Instead of looking for meaningful relationships to satisfy our own longings - it is wiser to focus on BUILDING meaningful relationships by being that friend to others that are within our sphere of influence. God prescribed this method of relationship building; best known as “The Golden rule” - “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Mat. 7:12). Homework - Replace your quest to ‘find’ friends with, instead, a quest to ‘be’ a godly friend to everyone that comes into your life. Keep in mind that if your goal is to merely acquire a friendship you are apt to look for others to fulfill your needs and desires - and you may or may not find one. However, if your focus is to yield your life to the Holy Spirit and let Him use you to be a friend to anyone that He puts in your life (or you theirs) - He WILL orchestrate exactly who and what you need.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 12:44:40 +0000
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