PARENTS AND IN-LAWS

Today we are covering chapters 9 (The Pushy Parent) and 10 (The Invasive In-Laws) as a combined lesson. I am planning to talk a little less than usual; and stop cheering in the peanut gallery! I want us to share a little more intimately about growing up in our family of origin, particularly focusing on our relationship with our parents, grandparents and stepparents. Later on we can look at and compare this with our interactions with our in-laws.

First though let us look at the definitive verse on dealing with our parents, which to me also includes grandparents and any stepparents we may have had. Can you guess what it is? Let’s all pick up our Bibles and head into Exodus 20, verse 12:

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. NASU

This verse is repeated by Moses in Dt 5:16 when he starts giving the Israelites the whole law, and Moses offers us a slightly expanded version.

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you. NASU

Before I comment, I want to open it up for people’s views on what this means to them.

This verse has some unique characteristics.

· It is the fifth commandment, but the first with a personal promise. (Which is?) That your life will be prolonged, and that things will go well with you.
· It is the commandment God selected to come right after the first four, which deal with our relationship with Him. (What does that mean?) I think it signifies that is only just behind the first four in importance.
· It is the only “human relationship” commandment.
· God is specifically implying something here; the version in Dt will help the most. (Which is?) That honoring your parents is honoring God. (Why might that be true?)
· It also deals with other relationships, although they are not spelled out, what are they? The in-laws and grandparents of course, but also the judges, kings, prophets and teachers, these people were often called “father” in the Hebrew culture.

Another quick observation here from my second point about the fifth commandment being right behind the first four. Traditionally we are taught that the commandments are broken down into the four/six arrangement. I want us all to consider that God had something else in mind. Do you remember the scene in the original “Tem Commandments” where the stone tablets were etched by the fire of God? It is done as a five/five arrangement! This is what I think God intended for the Israelites, and now us, to understand. The first four mention His name, and are clearly about the God/Man relationship. The fifth does not mention His name, but it is implied that since He is our heavenly father, He regards this commandment as also being part of the God/Man relationship. The fifth commandment is a very unique instruction.

Now it is time to go back to when we were children. What happened to you in your home, that you are willing to talk about? Some example questions:

· Did your parents fight, and did you get included?
· Were you the family “clown”?
· Did your parents do drugs or alcohol, and how did that affect you?
· Were your Mom or Dad angry people?
· Did a big fat pink elephant reside in your living room, but nobody talked about it?
· Did you always have to comply?
· Did you have to constantly please others in the house?

As we talk about what happened in our lives, think about what kind of “automatic” behaviors you exhibit. Are you:

· Frequently depressed?
· Negative, when presented with something new or different?
· Avoiding change?
· Constantly “up”, but internally tired?
· The life and soul of every meeting?
· Always helping others, even to the point that your family is ignored?

(Spend some time on this, as much as the class wants)

Now we are going to go where the rubber meets the road. How are you as a parent?

· What would your spouse say?
· What would your kids say?
· What would your parents say?
· What would your close friends say?

Here are some interesting statements from others.

· Honey, don’t you think you are being a little too demanding of Johnny?
· Don’t you think you should let them play a little before homework?
· Son, when I was parenting, I would never let you do that!
· Sweetie, aren’t my granddaughter’s clothes too revealing?
· Mom, I can go forty here, you do.
· Dad, don’t tell me to quit smoking weed, I’ve seen you do it.

What are some things that came up as I read these statements? (Allow some time here)

The author does a terrific job here of helping how to deal with “pushy parents” and “invasive I-laws”. I am going to highlight some points, and we can discuss them briefly.

1. Put your self in their place. East to say, hard to do well. We have to make every attempt to understand where they are coming from. This is longer term activity because we need to be in an empathetic place as we consider our parents and in-laws life experiences. We ought to listen, with real interest, to their stories. So much can be found out this way. When we start to understand what they have been through, their behavior toward us will make more sense.
2. Find the good. Look for things that are positive, focus on them, talk about them. I’m not saying forget about the negative, but don’t dwell on it until it becomes impossible to handle with grace.
3. Be Forgiving. Carry around an attitude of forgiveness. It will help you deal with the rough times.
4. Set Boundaries. This is a big thing. If you haven’t read the book “Boundaries”, buy it and take it to heart. Saying “no” to a parent or in-law is something you must be able to do. If you don’t, then they control your life!
5. Know Your Part. In a parent/child relationship when the parent is “doing their thing”, you have a part in it somewhere. For example, if the parent tells you how to do something, and you believe it to be wrong, what do you do? Do you go along with the bad decision to keep the peace? If you do, you are a “doormat person” and you have successfully laid down your own ability to choose, and let the parent walk all over it.

I’m going to close here with one last thought. You decide when you go on vacation, not your parents or your in-laws! Do not ever let them try to tell you any different, it is your life and you are in charge of it and responsible for your own choices. (For any reader of these notes, this is an example of a dilemma many of can face, how to honor parents and maintain our own boundaries and family integrity)

The Supervising Spouse

Good morning and welcome to the fourth lesson in our “control freak series”, and this one may be the “gem” in the series. I don’t know how I got the short straw, but I’m here this morning to talk about, “Control Freak Spouses”, and as you can see, my lovely wife is right here next to me. This should be interesting!

I’m going to start our time with the little test laid out on page 89 of our book, it should only take a couple of minutes. (Test time) Did anybody experience an odd or difficult thought, or maybe some hesitation or discomfort over answering these questions? Would somebody like to share his or her favorite question, or maybe his or her favorite answer? I don’t think there is any need to go over the results of this test, in my opinion it is only designed to make us think about this issue.

Is everybody familiar with the expression, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? What does this imply? What does this say about a household where this is the rule? BTW, this can equally apply to Dada!

· Mama controls the home.
· Every other person’s needs are subservient to Mama.
· Mama believes all is well, meaning that everybody is content.
· Every other person in the home is miserable.
· Secret rebellion exists; things are kept from Mama.
· As far as is possible, everybody avoids Mama.

What is always going to be true about a marriage where either Mama or Dada is the controller? (There can be many answers to this, they will always be some form of “it is dysfunctional and it is less than it could be”) Today we are going to explore what causes Mama or Dada to try to control the home.

Let us start with some Scripture. Gen 24:66-67:

Gen 24:66-67 - The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. 67 Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. NASU

You may be thinking, what has this got to do with “controlling spouses”? That is a good question. This is my answer; it is all about the attitude of a spouse after the marriage contract has been established. Let us dissect these verses:

First – This is an arranged marriage. In verse 66 the servant comes back from his “wife scouting trip” with the ideal candidate, Rebekah. He goes and tells Isaac all about it. Did you ever have the understanding that most marriages are arranged? (Ask the class “what does this mean”) Your marriage is either arranged by your family or it is self-arranged. I know that this may be a revelation to some, but it is still the truth. Do any of us know of a God arranged marriage? Remember that God gives us free will to choose; he might tell us that we ought to marry, or not, a certain person, but he still gives us the freedom to choose.

Second – Isaac married Rebekah, and then he loved her. This is the big one! Did you get this? It is marriage first, followed by the decision to love. The Hebrew word “ahab” used here is the same word that is found in Dt 6:5 (You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might) Loving your spouse is an act of your will, not a thought or a feeling! It is a conscious decision to love, which comes as a result of the decision to marry. Looking at marriage this way can change your whole approach to how you conduct yourself inside a marriage. To me the issue is, “What does it mean to love”? That is where we will start to look at the control freak inside a marriage.

I need to get a little off the control freak subject here to lay out the groundwork for how damaging controlling spouses can be. Let us look at Eph 5:25-33:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. NASU

Chapter 4, 5 and 6 of the book of Ephesians deals with living a victorious Christian life, and this part we have just heard is the section that deals with marriage. As you heard, most of it deals with God’s instruction to the man. I have often reflected that God knew how bone-headed us men can be about some things, and being the “man of the house” is one of them. The bottom line is this; God gives us the following simple instructions:

· The man is to “love” his wife.
· The woman is to “respect” her husband.

Have you ever thought about this? Have you ever heard why it is such a simple instruction, and yet so hard to do?

In his book “The Marriage Builder” Dr. Larry Crabb identifies two basic needs (aside from the simple physical needs like air, water and food) that every person is created with. God plants these into our soul; and ultimately they direct us back to Him. However He recognizes that they can also be met inside a marriage to a reasonable extent. (Ask if anybody already knows what these are) They are Security and Significance. Both men and women have these needs but they each have different priorities.

· The man’s greatest need is to feel significant, with a lesser need to be secure.
· The woman’s greatest need is to feel secure, with a lesser need to feel significant.

How does this tie into our Scripture? Like I said earlier, it is simple. To feel totally secure any person would need unending unconditional love. This is why the man is told to “love” his wife, even if she is unlovable! The woman is told to respect, meaning “to hold in high esteem”, her husband, which will allow him to feel important, even if he does not seem to deserve respect!

This is where the “Supervising Spouse” control freak can be born. Let me say right here that there are so many variables that go into a marital relationship that it is extraordinarily difficult to provide a general picture of what happens to bring out the control freak in us. Such things as the social culture we live in, how we were raised, what we learned in school and our personal character influence how we conduct ourselves in a marriage. In the next few minutes I am going to outline what, in my opinion, seems to go wrong.

Let us start with the guys. Think about the things little boys do and say to one another, let me give you some examples:

· Doing – They seem to always want to win at games.
· Doing – They don’t like to be picked last for a team.
· Doing – Fighting is “natural”; they want to be on top.
· Saying – My lizard is bigger than yours.
· Saying – My Dad can beat up your Dad.
· Saying – My bike is better then yours, it has got two bells.

You get the idea; the boy seems to always want to be the winner, number one or the most important. This is where we very obviously see the need for significance asserting itself in the life of this young male. This is then reinforced by the implied understanding that the one who wins is to be looked up to, or the kid with the best bike takes the lead. Then all the kids who were not number one now have a challenge to try to take over that slot. You can see it in the way they try to position themselves to win the next time. They may try harder, they may practice to get better, they may lie cheat and steal, and they may try to persuade, coerce or manipulate to get ahead of the other guy. The controlling habits have begun!

Now let us fast-forward to the day they are grown and married. They have been honing their controlling techniques for years. They have become much better at it; they are maybe master manipulators, or physical persuaders or perhaps cunning coercers. They have matured in their methods, become more sophisticated, but it is still the same need. The need to feel important.

Let us now introduce the unsuspecting wife. She marries this lovely guy, he has great prospects, is charming and very attentive, but he has this huge need! He wants to be fawned over, he wants to feel important, and this woman he married has given him lots of kudos during the dating and early years of marriage. Then life catches up, it could the household chores, some kids, the jobs, almost anything. The kudos levels go down, he unconsciously trips back into behaviors he used to use and that succeeded in the past. He puts himself into positions where his wife is in a position to praise him, and if this doesn’t work, he may ask her outright or start to demand some adulation. Can you see how it happens so easily?

This is a good time to go back to our scripture in Ephesians 5:33, where God instructs women to respect their husbands. The Greek word here is “phobos”, from which we get the term phobia, meaning “a fear of”. The use of this word here is as it is used elsewhere in the NT when talking about fearing God, it is a reverential fear. Just as we are to place God in a high place in our lives, the wife is instructed to place the husband in a high place in the marriage. This is not for the purpose of valuing the man above the woman; it is for making sure that the man’s need for significance is met. I think this is another example of God knowing what we need and trying to help us meet the need in an everyday practical way.

Here is a tough question. What do you think happens when the husband’s need to feel important goes unmet? There are several good answers:

· More controlling behavior.
· Less intimacy between the husband and wife.
· He starts looking elsewhere.
· Possibly even an affair.

The thing we have to remember is this, the husband will find a way to get his need met.

Now we can move to the wife. What do little girls do and say?

· Doing – They play with dolls.
· Doing – They like to curl up on their parents lap.
· Doing – They engage in co-operative play, sharing.
· Saying – They like to talk with each other.
· Saying – I like to read stories with you mommy.
· Saying – I like you to play horsy with me daddy.

Do you get a sense that even at this young age the girl is connecting, relating, and achieving some level of intimacy with everybody around her? She is seeking to meet the love and security need that God wired her with. Then as they grow, these girls still like to talk and connect with everybody around them. They still like for dad to hug them, and for mom to be part of the growing up process, and for their friends to listen to their problems. They might even become part of a clique to get a deeper sense of belonging.

Let us fast-forward to the marriage. They married the great guy, you know, the charming one! They talked all the time when dating, she was in awe of him, a guy who actually listens! They get married, and then life happens. They start to have less connecting time; she feels a little panicked inside, feels a little unloved. So she quietly changes things so he has to talk to her, and give her hugs, slowly but surely drifting into mild manipulation. Then he starts to resent it, and makes his own changes to avoid this forced behavior. She feels even worse and does even more to get the love and security she desires. I’m sure we can all see this spiral down in the level of intimacy between husband and wife.

Alright, let us go back to our verses again. The husband is instructed by God to “love” his wife in verse 33, but we also must remember that in verses 25-32 God expands on it for the man. Us men are to love our wives as Christ loved the church. Which means that we must bear anything for our wives, even death. That is what I call a tough instruction. The Greek word here is “agapoa” which means, “Let love”, it is the same word found in the commandment to “Love the Lord your God”. It is the will-based love that Jesus showed us when he allowed himself to be killed for us. We have to willfully and totally love our wives. That is the standard!

OK, tough question time. What can happen if our wives need for secure love goes unmet in the marriage?

· She won’t want to hold you in high regard.
· Less intimacy, emotional and physical.
· She goes elsewhere for intimacy.
· Possibly has an affair.

Husbands, your wife will find a way to get her security needs met.

I want to take us back to a question I asked earlier. In the context of a marriage, “What does it mean to love?” We had just looked at the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, where Isaac had married her, and then loved her. How would you answer the question now?

For me it is this; we all ought to heed God’s word. The man must do his honest best to “love” his wife. The wife must do her honest best to “revere” her husband. Tough talk, tough to do, tough to keep up, but God says that it is the way He designed things. Who are we to tell Him He is wrong, or say you haven’t met my spouse, he is a jerk or she is a whiner. God made your spouse too, He knows what will work.

I want to conclude today by tying this lesson into what the book talks about. We have seen how not getting our basic needs met can cause us to slip into some form of controlling behavior. Our author talks about this on pages 91 and 92 of the book. He explains it in terms of us developing a level of anxiety about not getting our needs met and so slipping into a controlling mode. This is followed by even more dysfunctional behavior, deeper anxiety and higher levels of controlling activity.

Our book does a terrific job in how it lays out things to do that will help to cope with controlling spouses, which is why I chose not to cover this today.

Next week, it is parents and in-laws!

CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTROL FREAKS

THE TEN MOST COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
OF CONTROL FREAKS

Welcome to the first of our lessons from “The Control Freak Series”. Before we get into the meat of our material today, which will cover the ten most common characteristics of control freaks, let us try to figure out what a “control freak” is. Okay, the floor is open, what is a control freak?

Some suggestions I came up with:

· Micromanager.
· Bossy.
· Wants his or her own way.
· The critical one. Nothing is ever right.
· Nitpicker.
· List maker and list keeper.
· Seeks perfection, never gets there.
· Always wants to win.

As we can all see, there are many kinds of people we think of as CFs, so now let’s look at what our study book says. On page 2, the author defines a control freak for in this way:

Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their own way.

Do you think this describes the God of our Bible? Why or why not, after all don’t we proclaim that God is in control? Let us spend a moment or two on the subject of “who is in control” by referring to Scripture.

1 Chronicles 29:10-14 – After we read it I am going to quote verses 10 and 11 from a particular version, The Living Bible, which a paraphrase, not an exact translation, but I think it get’s the point across very well.

(11) Yours is the mighty power and glory and victory and majesty. Everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. (12) Riches and honor come from you alone, and you are the Ruler of all mankind; your hand controls power and might, and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength. TLB

As we can see from this wonderful prayer of David, which are his last recorded words, that David, after all the stunts he pulled in his life and all the antics of his dysfunctional family, has finally come to the point of view that God is in control of everything. Do you believe that?

Okay, since you do, let us now take a look at this Scripture, 2 Peter 1:5-8. In these verses, Peter is telling us to work at developing certain attributes, one of which is “Self-control”. Since we find this listed as a virtue by Jesus’ right hand man, it would imply that control in our own lives is something we have power over. Doesn’t that contradict what our previous Scripture said? It certainly seems to, but it actually doesn’t, because we are comparing “apples with oranges”.

God is in control – this is a “big picture” statement. Ultimately God will see His purposes completed. However, God limits Himself, because of His love for us, in that He will not violate His own character. He created us with the God given right to make choices for ourselves, and to be responsible for our own actions. Translated, this means that he created us with the power to exercise control over our own lives, not as puppets. We can choose to do it His way, or do it our way; we can choose to allow Him to control us, or to not allow Him to control us. (Open for discussion)

Having said all that, let us go to today’s actual lesson. The ten most common characteristics of control freaks.

1. Obnoxious – Let me say this right away, when I was younger, I was obnoxious. I can still get that way, but I’m not so much that way any more. Tell me, what does the word obnoxious mean to you? It is interesting to me that the root word here is the Latin noun “noxa”, meaning damage. From this we get the word noxious, meaning either damaging to the physical health or harmful to the mind or morals. It is further developed in English to obnoxious, another descriptive adjective, meaning “highly offensive or disagreeable”, or “likely to cause harm, injury or evil”. We see an example of this in 2 Samuel 10:1-7. The sons of Ammon became odious (obnoxious) to David because of their unwarranted treatment of David’s servants. In this biblical example, the result was war! Simple bad behavior is not obnoxious, intentional bad behavior is! Intentional bad actions are the product of a malicious mind and heart, where the control freak is trying to have power over people around them through fear of being damaged.

2. Tenacious – Okay, okay, I can do this too! This is one of those character traits that can be a tremendous strength or a disastrous weakness. In the verses from 2 Peter we looked at earlier it talks about adding “perseverance” to your life as a positive quality. The author here is really discussing the person who is tenacious in the sense of stubborn idiocy. Do you remember the story of Balaam and his donkey from Num 22:22-30? Let’s read it now. We are all told that a donkey is an obstinate or stubborn creature, what is our experience here? I think it shows that humans can be way more stubborn than any donkey! A stubbornly tenacious person is a control freak because it is all about having things their way, even when they are 100% wrong.

3. Invasive – Did you ever feel emotionally invaded? Well you may have met a control freak. When I was studying for my MBA, I took a class in industrial management, and we learned that it was normal to get hold of as much information about any situation we could, subject only to legal, financial and time constraints. The mantra “information is power” was spoken many times. This is exactly what the invasive control freak does, he or she gets as much information as they can, and then they have control over people. More information often leads to more control. They can be subtle, getting information in tangential ways, like talking to your friends, showing concern for you, but all the while picking up that juicy stuff on you. They can also be direct, asking you face to face a question they want to know the answer to. These people invade your lives!

I must also point out that people who are not control freaks might do this too. The difference between the CF and non-CF is that the CF does it constantly and in almost all their relationships, the non-CF does it when experiencing a sense of concern for others.

There is a character out of the Old Testament that exhibits in one of the stories about him some aspects of this “invasive” trait, and you might be surprised whom I picked. His name is Joseph. Let’s take a quick look at Gen 42:6-17. This is the beginning of the story about the move of the family of Jacob (Israel) to Egypt. In it we can clearly see controlling aspects to Joseph’s nature, recognizing some of his family, he starts to ask about the others and about their lives. Sometimes we think about Joseph as a long lost son, but he was also the most powerful man in the known world, he was used to being in charge and in control. Notice how he was not honest with his brothers, at least in the beginning, about what he knew and about his motives.

4. Obsessive – Does anybody relate to this? Have you ever gone through a period of your life where you have single mindedly focused on one thing. Everything you do revolves around it, you wake up thinking about it, you dream about it, you talk to everybody about it, you manipulate your life around it. That is the way it can be for a control freak. I honestly believe that most obsessive people are not in touch with their obsession, and don’t have an immorally controlling motivation about it. However there are a few who do. Can you think of some examples? How about someone who wants a big attaboy at work for getting a significant project finished, or maybe the same person looking for a promotion.

The core problem here is that this CF misses other important issues. Let me give you an example of this. The man of the household is studying something to get an extra degree so that he can advance his career. He comes home each night and hits the books, he is single minded about it. His wife continues to try to let him know how the family is doing, the kid’s grades, their friends, etc., but he really isn’t listening. One day he comes home, and there is nobody there, he thinks they are all out doing something, so he grabs some food, and hits the books. At 10 pm he quits for the evening, heads to the bedroom and remembers he hasn’t seen or heard anybody all evening. He finds a note pinned to his pillow, it says, “The kids and I have left you, how long did it take you to notice?”

Scripture provides us with some obsessive examples. Let’s look at 1 Sam 18:6-9. In this passage we see that Saul, the first king of Israel, is faced with the fact that David, who has just slain Goliath, is now more popular than the king himself. In verse 9 we see the beginning of Saul’s obsession with David. Right after this Saul tries to kill David with a spear, but he failed, this was merely the first of many attempts by Saul to kill David. This obsession lasted for the rest of Saul’s life and ended up consuming him, with the final result being suicide during a losing battle (1 Sam 31). How about that for an obsession?

5. Perfectionistic – Will anybody other than me admit to being somewhat of a perfectionist? I want to begin this section of our lesson by defining “Perfectionism”.

· Perfectionism (from Webster’s): A predilection for setting extremely high standards and being displeased with anything less.

I want to open this up to the class for examples of yourself or others in your life and how they demonstrate being a perfectionist. Let us try to pick out some common behaviors or phrases that they may use.

· Not good enough.
· You can do better.
· Let’s do it this way.
· Keeps every document, and files it.
· Has an immaculately clean house and yard.
· Their car is never dirty.

You get the picture; perfectionism is very demanding on the person encumbered that way and also on their family and friends. There is an example from the Bible that I really like. The story of Martha and Mary found in Lk 10:38-42. Who is the perfectionist here? (Martha) What does Jesus point out to her? (You are worried about so many things: and, by implication, that shall be taken away from you, choose better things like Mary has) I wish that perfectionists all over the world could hear that message.

I do want to say a little about perfectionism as compared to excellence.

· Perfectionism involves the setting of high and mostly unrealistic standards.
· Excellence implies the setting of high and achievable standards.

Scripture tells us in Ph 1:6 that we won’t be perfect until the day of the Lord, which means His second coming. It also tells us to apply ourselves to being excellent in everything, and from 2 Pet 1:8; we learn that it makes us useful and fruitful in Jesus Christ.

The message for all of us here is to do our best, and to not waste our emotional energy or destroy our important relationships through trying to be perfect or worse than that demanding that those around us are perfect.

6. Critical – Right up behind perfectionism we find criticism; the two seems to go hand in hand for some people. Most perfectionists seem to hand out a lot of disapproval, but “critics” are not necessarily perfectionists.

Our author says it well when describing some control freaks. On page 29 he says, “Control freaks can be some of the most painfully critical people you’ll ever meet”. I call such wonderful citizens “The Log People”. Let us look at Mt 7:1-5 to find out why.

I think we have to understand what is going on inside a “log person”. They believe the lie that their criticisms will make a difference in the lives of everyone. Underneath it all lays the great problem of pride and arrogance, and at its root the critic is trying to play God. In Jn 16:5-11, Jesus explains it as the Holy Spirit coming to the world to convict all of us of sin. The Holy Spirit’s conviction is the criticism of God on our lives and it is always for our benefit. When others criticize us it is rarely for our benefit when unsolicited and only sometimes for our betterment when we ask others for feedback.

In Num 12:1-10 we see Aaron and Miriam (Moses brother and sister) criticize him for marrying a non-Jew. God took offense as He had approved the marriage. So he turned Miriam into a leper as a consequence. The good news is that He let her stay that way for the next seven days only, but it made His point. Don’t criticize; there may be unintended consequences. Let us look at God’s specific instruction on this matter in James 4:11-12.

7. Irritable – Does anybody here this morning get cranky or impatient with others? When you don’t get your own way do you make every one around you miserable? I’m sure I’ve done my share of that kind of behavior, but I really don’t like people who do this consistently. They come across to me as extraordinarily self-centered. What do you think?

In Num 21:4-5 we see a result of this. In verse 6 God sends His message in the form of some nasty critters. While I think it is unlikely that we will have to deal with such a problem, I think we must understand His perspective. Who are we to not accept those around us and the state of our lives? God wants us to have a good perspective on where we are in everything. We know that people are fallible, so why do we think they can do everything right. We know that everything we have is allowed by Him, so why are we so ungrateful? We know that some things take time, so why are we impatient? It is because we want our own way in all things!

8. Demanding – What can I say here? A Control Freak can enter into coercive behavior to get things the way they want. Sometimes they hide behind the idea that “we are all trying to do the best we can, so I have to push you”. Excuse me if I say that that is all hogwash. I just love that stick-um I saw one time that said, “An emergency on your part does not constitute any urgency on mine”. There are many things that I think about as motivation for a demanding CF:

· So I, the CF, can impress others.
· So I, the CF, can leave work early.
· So I, the CF, can feel in charge.

Whatever the reason, whenever someone demands something of me, they are usually trying to make their problem mine!

How about these CF’s? Let’s look at Mt 23:1-4. This is the section of scripture where Jesus exposes the “teachers of the law”, the Pharisees, as major league hypocrites. They demand adherence to the law, but of course they didn’t follow their own teachings. They simply wanted to control the Jewish population.

9. Rigid – This describes the CF who is a “do it my way” kind of person. I am like that; sometimes I really believe that I have the best method for dealing with a situation. The problem for me is that this is sometimes true, so I believe that I have it right all the time. And that is wrong! My motivation may be okay; I want to get something done by the most efficient method possible. The reasoning fails to take into account another person’s experience and abilities. Insisting on my way becomes insisting on inevitable failure. How stupid can I be!

We all love the song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. After all, he did it all his way, and that is very American, what’s not to agree with? The trouble is, he ran over everybody in his life to do it. Let us look at another “I’ll do it my way crowd”. In Joshua 7:2-5, the men of the Israelite army decided to attack Ai their own way. The result was demoralizing failure.

The lesson here is that if we want demoralizing failure, then do things your own way, be rigid!

10. Close-minded – Right on the back of “I’ll do it my way” comes “I won’t do it your way”! This CF has a very difficult problem to deal with. They are so arrogant that they cannot see that other people have good ideas. They willfully exclude other people from input so that they can control the outcome of everything they deal with. This is the exact opposite of what scripture says to do in Pr 11:14.

I need to say a little something here. There is at least one thing we need to be close-minded about. That is this:

· God’s way is the best way.

How many of us have experienced our own close-mindedness by trying to do things our own way? With the inevitable result of less than stellar results.

For our biblical character reference here I would like to show us the example of open-mindedness of Nicodemus in Jn 3:1-3. He is the only recorded Pharisee who looked for the truth in Jesus.

That concludes our lesson today, and I know it has probably raised more questions about life than it has settled. In the next few weeks we will apply some of the ideas expressed today to our real life situations.

What we can change.

Now we are finally getting down to the place where “The Rubber Meets The Road”, we are about to look at what we can realistically do with ALL the things we have been learning. It is time to change! Are you ready?

First, let us take a quick look at where we have been.

We have learned that the DNA of Relationships is made up of three strands:

1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.

We have come to understand that how we internalize these three basic truths will determine the quality of all our relationships. The author of our study guidebook has given us some practical tools to use, which can help us improve our relationship situations. These are:

· Take Personal Responsibility.
· Create a Safe Environment.
· Keep Your Battery Charged.
· Listen With the Heart.
· Adopt a No-Losers Policy.

I want to be sure that we notice that these tools are all personal action items. Each of the five statements begins with an “action verb”, and each speaks to something we have personal control over. This is where today’s subject of change begins, with personal control.

I like what the author says about change:

· There is no guarantee of success.

I agree with him that this needs to be said. When we start a process of change in our lives, we can set our expectations. If we set them in high places we are more likely to experience frustration or even pain when our change goal(s) are not met. If we set our eyes on progress and not a target we can more easily deal with how our attempts at change are going.

What is missing from this entire chapter is this:

· No change, guaranteed failure.

Definitions and quotes:

Webster’s – To become different.

John Kennedy - Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

M. Scott Peck - The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Life is a progress, and not a station.

Unknown - Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.

On that lighter note is it finally time to really get down to it. Let us begin by asking a few questions:

· Is change something that God wants from me? Yes!
· If it is, then what does He want me to change?
· What does He want me to change to?

We are going to focus for the next few minutes on the “what does He want me to change” question.

I want to take a look at three scriptures here, Rom 12:2, Ph 2:12-13 and Eph 1:18.

· In Rom 12:2 we see Paul using the word “transformed” where “changed” could have been used. We all know and understand that to transform is to change, so why is this change put this way? The answer to this is found in the original Greek, Paul used the word “metamorphoo” from which we get “metamorphosis”, and that signifies a radical change. A good example would be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
· Ph 12:12-13 talks about “working out our salvation”. This scripture gets to the heart of what Godly change is about; we work, on our own, salvation. The Greek word used here (soteria) can be used in the sense of salvation, as in “being saved”, but also in another meaning, becoming healthy or sometimes, being delivered. It can be used in both a physical or moral sense. The message here is that change involves our own effort, our own being, and our own body and soul in our actions.
· Eph 1:18 discusses our need to have our hearts changed, or enlightened, so that we know the hope of His calling. The word calling refers to His plan for us.
· I also want to point out that all three of these scriptures refer to this “change” as being within God’s will. More on this in a few minutes.

Notice that the three scriptures refer to three different aspects of our inner being. Rom 12:2 covers the mind, Ph 2:12-13 focuses on our will (or purpose) and Eph 1:18 identifies the heart. It is with this knowledge that we make the following statement.

· It is God’s will for me to change.

Since this is true, we can also make another statement:

· It is NOT God’s will for me to NOT change.

Having established that God wants us to change, we can now look at “what” He wants us to alter. The answer to this has already been spoken about today. We identified three aspects of our inner being. The mind, heart and will; and what are these usually called when combined together? The soul!

So now we know that God wants us to change, and what about us He wants to change. The next question we would like to have an answer for is the third one from earlier in the lesson:

· What does He want me to change to?

The answer to this is really very straightforward. Let us take a look at Col 3:10. After we read it I will quote it from the Living Bible, which has an excellent paraphrase of the verse.

You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. TLB

See, I told you it was easy. God wants us to become more like Christ. He wants us to “try constantly” and “continually learn”. This brings me to a more definitive statement about change, which I have written in the first person.

· I know it is God’s will for me to continually try to change my soul to be more and more like Christ.

I want to spend just a moment now on a little theology. When God created us, he said in Genesis 1:27, that He created us in His image. We know that God is spirit, Jesus Himself said this in Jn 4:24. This means that we were created in His image, but in a spiritual sense. Because of our disobedience our spirit, or soul, became damaged, and was no longer the exact image of God. The intimate connection between man and God was broken. But God had a plan! He sent Jesus to us, and He lived, as a man, a perfect and righteous life, demonstrating how we can be, if we choose. Jesus had an intimate connection with God the father. God has therefore, through His son, Jesus, shown us how to get back to being “the image of God”. We are to become like His son, Jesus. If any of us desire a more intimate connection with God, we must work at becoming more like Christ, we must change by moving toward Him. Finally, God knows how hard it is for us to throw off the chains of sin, so not only did he tell us to work on changing, but He gave us a helper, Himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit. What a God we have! If you have any questions about this subject I would be glad to address them now.

At this point I think it is highly, and I mean highly, important to say something. I am now holding up my Bible, and I am going to make a statement for you.

· Nowhere in this book does it say I can change another person!

Why is it that we believe the great lie that we can change somebody else? That is actually a question that we will cover in our next study, starting in two weeks time, called “The Control Freak”.

Now I’m going to look at some of the points the author covers in the change chapter.

Serendipity

This word comes from the Persian fairy tale of the “Three Princes of Serendip”, where these three characters were always making valuable and beneficial discoveries when they weren’t looking for them. Change brings “Serendipitous” events.

By agreeing with God that personal changes in one’s life are necessary, or put another way, realizing that we need to stop the insanity of repeating our failing behaviors or decisions; we are opening our lives up to changes that God wants to make. When we say to the lord, “I’m going to try to do it your way”, we break down the barriers of disobedience and rebellion in our lives, allowing Him to work in us, and just as the Philippians scripture we read earlier says. When we work at change, and He works with and in us, wonderful things can happen. After all God promises He will never do anything to harm us, let’s look at James 1:17 and Ps 119:68.

The book uses an example of a wife who spent years trying to change her husband into something she wanted. When she finally “got it”, which means she realized that she can only change herself, she started to spiritually mature. Then her husband found that he didn’t have to spend a great deal of his time and emotional energy on dealing with her constant whining, so he was able to focus more on his own actions. Then under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he changed, and it was better for both of them!

Guarantees

There are none! When we embark of a journey of change, we may set sail with a particular destination in mind. Sometimes we simply cannot get there. An example could be, we take up running, intending to run a marathon after some training, but you develop bad knees, and have to give up your dream. The change you were making was a healthy choice, but the reality of bad knees stopped you. If you had set yourself a high expectation of running the big race, and couldn’t do it, you are setting your heart up for a bad experience. What if you had said, I’m going to begin running, and see how I do. You have begun the same journey, but you are allowing the road you travel to tell you how much you can do. When your bad knees get to you, you can say, I’ve gone as far as I can on this road, I need to take a new one. That is when you could take up swimming, which is also a healthy road.

The book says this very well on page 177; I’ve modified it slightly:

If you choose to travel down the road of personal transformation, the worst that can happen is that you will end up with a life that is far more enjoyable, satisfying, fulfilling and helpful to others than the one you have now.

It is important to understand that even if you desire to change into someone that is more honoring to God, it doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to happen. As an example, I love praise and worship music, and I desire to be able to play an instrument and more importantly, be able to sing strongly and with perfect pitch. It hasn’t happened yet!


Personal Power

When we decide to change, we must be careful to only work on ourselves and the things we actually have control over. You only have the personal power to deal with your “stuff”. I think the serenity prayer says it so well:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Do you accept the things and people around you, just the way they are? Or are you a perpetual victim, not changing the things you can? Do you have the wisdom to be able to differentiate one from another? These are questions you can ask yourself later.

Motivation

I want to say a few words here about the “why” of change. In is important to be honest with your self about why you desire to change. Let us look at a very instructive verse from the book of Jeremiah, Jer 17:9. We have probably all heard that before, and I think it is smart for us to consider what it is saying before we begin changes. What is our real motivation? Is it to change to other person, is it to manipulate somebody, and is it for selfish gain?

The best example of I could think of in the area of motivation is found in Ps 51, let us read Ps 51:1-12. Do you remember the background to this Psalm? It is found in second Samuel, chapters 11 and 12. It is the story of David and Bathsheba.

In this Psalm, David is heartbroken because of his actions, and in verse 10 asks God to create in him a “new heart”. He asks God to destroy his old motivations and replace them with something pure. He wants to change, and he comes to God confessing his sin and seeking cleansing and purifying from God so that he can be made into somebody new.

Couldn’t that be the motivation and goal of our change? To have a clean and pure heart, made that way by God Himself. Just like David, our desired changes ought to involve only two people, God and ourselves.

That concludes today’s lesson on change. Next week we’ll be tying it all together, with our concluding lesson for this series. The week after we will begin our new study, which is called “The Control Freak”.

Listen With The Heart

LESSON SEVEN – LISTEN WITH THE HEART

Just as we did last time let’s briefly cover what we have learned so far in the first six lessons:

In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!

In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:

1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.

We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).

In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.

In Lesson Four: We began the process of learning to dance a new dance. We identified the first new dance step, taking personal responsibility for our thoughts. We discovered that by exercising the fruit of the Spirit known as self-control, we could transform our minds, leading to better personal control over our feelings and our actions. We confirmed that this is indeed possible in our lives, and that God encouraged us to do that very thing as we looked at the meaning of Rom 12:2. We learned that we could create a better life for ourselves.

In Lesson Five: The concept of “creating a safe environment” was introduced, and we looked at five actions we can personally work on to become safer people. These were; Respect The Wall, Honor Others, Suspend Judgment, Value Differences, and Be Trustworthy. Notes for this lesson are available on the blog.

Last week, in the sixth lesson, we looked at “taking care of yourself”. This lesson focused on the need to be in good spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical condition, and highlighted the need to love oneself. We also noted that the Bible states this need in nine separate places, which emphasized that this is a highly important issue.

Today we are going to focus on the topic of emotional communication, sometimes called “listening with the heart”.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

What does this phrase, “listening with the heart”, suggest to you? The author doesn’t really define it for us. My answer to our question here is “empathy” or “having empathy for”. Webster’s defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another’s feelings, situation and motives. After I did a little digging I discovered that our English word is derived from the Greek word “empatheia”, which is sometimes translated as “to experience with” and often as “to suffer with”, and on occasion as “to have passion with”. I say all this to try to get over to you what this “listening with the heart” expression is really getting at. It says we are to do our best to identify with others feelings. (Gal 6:2) {Mention that Christ’s “Passion” is the greatest act of empathy of all time, as he felt the pain and burden of our sin, and then acted out of love for us by allowing Himself to be killed.}

My first reaction to this was “You have to be kidding, how is that possible in all of our relationships?” Well, apparently it is! Let us start by connecting with a basic truth.

· Communication is more than words.

The author says it differently; “The real message is often the emotion beneath the words”.

Have you ever noticed how when someone has spoken with you, and you believe you have understood, that sometimes you realized that you really didn’t understand? That there is some form of disconnect between the words you heard and the eventual apparent meaning. Let me give you an example:

You are part of a married couple, and your teenage daughter, who usually gets good grades, comes home with a “C”. Your spouse says, “Our daughter brought home a “C” today”. You hear this and respond with “Okay, I’ll talk to her”. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? They are dealing with a potential problem quickly. Then the first spouse says, “It was in Math, she never gets bad grades in Math”. You have the first sign that you really didn’t understand the original message. So you rationally say something like, “Oh, does she have a new teacher or something?” Your spouse finally comes out with “It is the or something!” Now your brain kicks into real listening mode as you say, “What did I miss?” Then the real message hits your ears, “Our daughter has a new boyfriend, and he is in the Math class with her, and we don’t know him, and I think he may be a bad influence, and I don’t know his family or if they go to church!”

Do you see how the first spouse started with something in their mind, a concern about a new relationship the daughter is in, but delivered the message that a bad grade has occurred? Can we see how the simple word message that began this whole exchange didn’t convey the underlying feeling and wasn’t received as a major concern statement? And can we also understand how the ball could have been dropped if the second spouse didn’t go beyond the words and find the feelings?

Now here is another example for us men. What if, in our daughter’s low-grade problem from above, we had responded in typical male fashion to the opening statement? What if we had gone straight from the problem to a solution like, “Okay I’ll ground her until the grades come up!” We would probably be thinking, “I got that fixed!” or even “Bring on the next problem, I’m in full solution mode!” We would have missed the whole thing. Psychologists call this dealing only with “the presenting problem”, and never getting to or discovering the “real problem”.

Okay, it is now the ladies turn. How about if you were the first spouse and you told your husband about the issue as we have outlined. Then he responded in another typical male fashion with “okay, let me think about it”. You know that this situation is actually more serious than the grade suggests, so you say, “Please talk to her now, I’m worried”. Sound reasonable, yes of course it does. But, you don’t know that your husband has something else on his mind, he has had a bad day and just needs time to unwind, and then he will be able to help. In this case, the wife didn’t go behind the message to get at the feelings of her husband.

This non-empathy we have described here can lead to antagonism between the husband and wife. When the man went into full solution mode, he missed the real problem and almost certainly grieved the wife because her concerns were so easily brushed off. In fact she really wasn’t listened to. In the second case the wife persisted in pushing the husband to do something ‘now’, going down the road of nagging. He may feel like the load he has been carrying today just had a whole stack of bricks added on top, and his own wife did it to him, doesn’t she care how he feels?

I hope by using this simple example we can see how not getting to real message can lead to the worsening of relationships. BTW – The new church-going boyfriend had helped the daughter get a “C”, otherwise she would have gotten an “F”, and apparently she was worried about all the arguing Mom and Dad were doing recently!

Now let’s get to the more practical aspects of today’s lesson and ask the question, “What can I do to develop an empathy for others”?

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION THROUGH EMPATHY – WHAT I CAN DO.

First – Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.

I want to open this up now to see what we might understand by this “emotion touching us” thought, how about some ideas?

For me it suggests we can experience at some level the feelings of the other person in a relationship. It can be either positive or negative. Maybe our spouse has had a promotion and we share in the joy and happiness, or our son has lost his starting position on the football team, and it hurts and he is embarrassed.

Just for fun, which famous person used the communication and empathy approach to achieve enormous success? Bill Clinton! His famous line was what? Yes “I feel your pain”. He used this to get to the very top of his chosen profession, politics. He also used it to get other places too! He is what I would call a “master” at this empathy thing.

Why is this so important? Why is “allowing emotions to touch me” so very important? Let us consider the spouse and their promotion. This is the situation, your spouse is up for a new job at work, and they hear that they have got it. They come home, burst through the door, and say with a big grin, “I got the job, the promotion”. And you do this:

· Carry on doing (the meal preparation, reading the sports news, watching TV) whatever you were doing. And you respond with “That’s nice, dear, congratulations”. Can you guess how your spouse might feel? Will they believe you care? Okay, how would it be if you did this:
· Stop what you are doing, joined in the grinning and went over and delivered a hug, or more! And you said, “That is great, I’m so proud of you, what can we do to celebrate”. How might your spouse respond, would they believe you cared?

This was an easy and obvious example to demonstrate that it is way more caring to share in the wonderful feelings than to not let them in. I will say a little more about this in a minute.

How about the other side? What if your spouse comes home and walks in head hanging down and says, “I didn’t get it, they gave the job to someone else”. Do you:

· Look up and say, “I’m sorry dear, that’s tough”, and then go back to your business. What are they to get from that, how might they feel? Do you care? Or would you:
· Stop whatever you are doing, and go over to be there and listen. Not saying anything right away, just look and try to sense where your spouse is emotionally, and “feel their pain”. What is your spouse getting from you? Are you caring, yes you are, are you sharing, yes you are, and you haven’t said a word!

I want to point out something here by using a cute phraseology:

· Shared joy, is joy doubled, shared pain is pain lessened.

When we share joy, or any positive emotion, it takes nothing away from the source individual; in fact the total amount of joy grows. When we share pain or any negative emotion, the burden of the negative emotion is lessened in the person feeling it. This is one of those aspects of how God created life that we sometimes miss. He wants us all to have a full life, where we have great joy and only minimal pain. What does this say to you about how we ought to share our emotions?

When we ‘allow others emotions to touch us” we are demonstrating that we care, and we are accentuating the positive but lessening the negative. That is why this is important!

Second – Listen With Feeling

Very simple to say! Difficult to do well! This is a small thing but a big issue, and follows on from our discussion above. I only have a couple of points to make here.

· The person who is transmitting to you needs to know you care. If you listen with feeling, demonstrating that you feel the pain or joy, they will have a sense of reassurance that they are understood. You might listen by nodding your head or saying things like, “that’s the pits”. This is sometimes called active listening.
· Agreement is not necessary. You don’t have to agree with your partner’s statements, but you do have to understand them. This involves getting behind the words and understanding the emotions behind them, or as we said earlier, being empathetic. Having empathy does not include having to agree!

Third – Discover Through The Dynamic Process

The book uses this definition, “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. What a mouthful! The first thing I spotted when reading this was the word “discover”, and I said in my head, “discover what?” It was a really good example of one of those thoughts I always seem to have in mind, which is “What is the point?” This is a common kind of thinking in men. It gets to the “bottom line” and if the bottom line is interesting then we look for the detail. So, if it is okay with everybody I’m going to start this section by going to the bottom line.

Discover what, that was my question. What exactly does effective communication discover and how does it happen? When I reflected on this for a little time I came to realize that the answer is simple “It doesn’t matter”. This may sound strange, but here is why.

When communication is effective, both parties are working together to achieve a kind of bonding around the understanding of what needs to be communicated. Discovery could mean something factual, like “I had a wreck on the way home”, or it could be “I’m not feeling well, I think I have a bug” or maybe “I’ve had a frustrating day, and I’m a little angry about it”. It could be almost anything. The whole point of discovery is that an emotional connection is made and relationships are enhanced!

Some of you may remember a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. In this book he describes a habit called “Begin with the end in mind”, and this is exactly what discovery is all about. You begin effective communication with the objective of discovering whatever needs to be discovered. There is a truly superb example of this habit, which is actually a biblical habit, found in the life of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 4, right after His temptation, we see Jesus begin His ministry. What does He do first, where does He begin? Let’s look at verses 18-22. We can see that his first action is to pick His disciples. This is because He (Jesus) knew where He was going and that His disciples would be the people carrying out the great commission after His ascension. He taught His followers, He helped them go through discovery over a three-year period until the bond between Him and them was so incredibly strong that they would die for Him. Is that where you are with your serious relationships?

Remember our definition? “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. The words “dynamic” and “process” appear in it. I don’t find these two as mysterious as the “discovery” word so I’m only going to say a few words about them.

Dynamic is exactly what it means, as per Webster’s, “Marked by continuous change, activity or progress”. Serious communication in a relationship is marked by all three factors, change, activity and progress. After all, if all you talk about is one subject day after day, you will tire of the talking and of the relationship quickly. But we all know that our best relationships are indeed marked by changes in subject material, interactive give and take and a general movement to the discovery we talked about earlier.

Process, which Webster’s says is “A series of actions, changes or functions that achieve an end or result”. Effective communications is certainly that. There is always a movement toward the end, which is what? Yes, discovery. There is almost always a whole set of minor discoveries to be made as communication progresses.

One of the great benefits of effective communications is what our definition calls “energy maintenance”. The book says this is where a relationship is kept, “fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy. For some reason, this whole section made me picture a dating relationship. Do you remember dating? Wasn’t it fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy? That was because “effective communication” was going on! One of our author’s co-workers came up with a great idea; what if I listened to (fill in your significant other’s name) like it was the first time? Wouldn’t that action on our part spice up, in a very appropriate way, our relationship? I’ll leave that with you to answer.

Fourth – Work!

I knew this was going to be hard! Our book says it though, “Effective Communication Takes Work”. But all is not lost because this work can be managed through the correct setting of our expectations. The book gives us three major examples:

· Expect problems and misunderstandings.
· Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience.
· Expect a lot of trial and error.

Expect problems and misunderstandings - I think we would all agree that there will always be “P & M” in communication until the end of time. Why is it such a surprise to us sometimes when we have a misunderstanding? Effective communicators expect this to happen. My wife and I have always had misunderstandings, after all we speak different languages, I speak the Queen’s English and she speaks Okie English. We still get surprised from time to time. If we always knew that there was a chance of a miscommunication, wouldn’t we be a little less quick to get frustrated, hurt, disappointed or angry?

Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience – Give it time! Effective communication needs that dose of realism called patience. Sometimes I just don’t get it! That can frustrate my wife, and if she is not patient with me, she might end up by abandoning the attempt to discuss something of importance. We are both losers if this happens. At the beginning of our lesson today we talked about the need to get to the emotion behind the message. I’m not sure that can be done well if we rush our communication. We must expect that the “dynamic process of discovery” we have discussed requires a little time and a dose of patience.

Expect a lot of trial and error – Think of communicating as always learning to ride a bike. You are always going to wobble a bit, sometimes fall off and on occasion get some bumps and bruises. Keep on trying, you’ll get there! If one way of communicating doesn’t seem to be working, try something different.

Fifth – Avoid the Blame Game.

The point of communicating is the enhancement of relationships, to develop understanding of each other, not to point out who is right and who is wrong. Jumping into trying to figure out who did what to who is totally useless. After all you can be 100% right, but your spouse won’t talk to you. This is because proving yourself right says, “I am important, and you are not!” A very destructive behavior.

There you have it, with that message to avoid the blame game, we conclude our lesson. Let me summarize what we have focused on today.

The basic message today was “listen with the heart”, which is sometimes called empathy, and we identified five actions we can take to help us become empathetic.

· Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
· Listen With Feeling.
· Discover Through The Dynamic Process.
· Work!
· Avoid the Blame Game.

Next week we talk about the idea of teamwork, and adopting a no-losers policy.

CREATING A SAFE ENVIRONMENT

THE DNA OF RELATIONSHIPS
LESSON FIVE – CREATE A SAFE ENVIRONMENT


Just as we did last time let’s briefly cover what we have learned so far in the first four lessons:

In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!

In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:

1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.

We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).

In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.

Last week’s lesson, the fourth in this series, began the process of learning to dance a new dance. We identified the first new dance step, taking personal responsibility for our thoughts. We discovered that by exercising the fruit of the Spirit known as self-control, we could transform our minds, leading to better personal control over our feelings and our actions. We confirmed that this is indeed possible in our lives, and that God encouraged us to do that very thing as we looked at the meaning of Rom 12:2. We learned that we could create a better life for ourselves.

Today’s lesson brings us to the second new dance step to be learned, create a safe environment.

Now, I know this won’t surprise you, but the essence of this whole chapter is really not directly about creating a safe environment. Let me explain, we all have heard of OSHA, well they are charged with creating “a safe working environment” by our government. How do they do it? By imposing rules and regulations on the workplace. We have rules about how big a/cs ought to be, how long we can work in certain situations and what pipe material is used in a chemical plant. We have more rules than anybody can possibly remember. Does this make the workplace safe? (Wait for response) Of course not! And why is that? That is right, the rules help, but it is people that make a workplace safer!

This illustration brings me to my point about this lesson. It is not really about creating a safe environment; it is about becoming “safe people”. The author has listed five steps to safety, each of which involves applying our own personal values, beliefs and attitudes to our interpersonal behaviors. Essentially he is also saying that it is only by becoming a safe person that we can create a safe environment.

Before we get into the meat of our lesson I would like to introduce you to one of my favorite “relationship” books. It is called ‘Safe People”, written by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. For those that might be more interested in developing their understanding of personal safety in the context of relationships I would recommend picking up a copy. I am also handing out a couple of charts outlining some personal and interpersonal traits of safe and unsafe people, with some biblical references. Although these are for your review later, we can take a look at a couple of traits if you spot something that interests you.

I think to begin our actual study we ought to ask ourselves the question “What does a safe environment look like, what are it’s characteristics?

· Encouraging, supporting and affirming.
· Listening without judgment.
· Problem solving instead of problem creating.
· Grace and forgiveness are present.
· Respect, Trust and Mutuality.

I’m sure we can come up with more items for this list, but let us now look at the five steps to a safe environment that the book details.

Step 1 – Respect The Wall (Eph 4:1-2)

The most normal reaction we have to an unsafe environment is to put up a wall. Why do you think we do that? It is for one of two simple reasons, protection and/or self-preservation. Some people put up walls in almost any situation, others rarely use them, but either way we all have to face people who put up walls between them and us.

Walls are frustrating! When we have one erected in front of us our tendency is to want to tear it down or to get out an emotional sledgehammer and knock it down. We might even want to get a demolition team involved! The wall separates us and that just doesn’t feel right, especially if we are used to being close to the other person. It is a natural thing to think, “I have to get rid of that wall”. It is that kind of thought that can lead us to make a big relationship mistake; trying to take the wall down.

I want to assume that we are going to look at this issue as someone shut out by a wall. Let’s go through what we ought to do and develop an understanding of why we should do this:

· Who owns the wall? - The other person. They put it up, they are responsible for it, and they will take it down.
· How do I respond? – Acceptance, it is vital that you support the other person by accepting that the wall exists, and that the wall can remain in place as long as necessary.
· How long do I tolerate it? – As long as it takes! It must be clear to both of you that no progress can be made in the relationship unless both parties feel safe.
· What can I do? – Protect the wall. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it. You are shut out and I’m saying you ought to be guarding the wall. This is a simple act of sacrifice; the other person’s needs (safety) are to be put ahead of yours. Then wait.

The bottom line here is “Respect the wall”.

Step 2 – Honor Others (Rom 12:10)

What does “to honor another,” mean to you? To me it means; ‘to esteem or hold in high regard”. This very idea of holding others in high regard brings with it a very fundamental problem; in fact this problem can hold any one of us back in life in a form of bondage. The problem is this:

When I hold another person in high regard, I put them above me.

This of course is another of those “big lies” I talk about from time to time. We can all say this isn’t true, “we don’t think that”. My contention is that we actually do think this way more often than we are in touch with. This attitude comes out more clearly when we reverse things; some people put down or negatively criticize others so they can feel superior, or in some cases emotionally better about themselves. We all know people like that, and this is a serious character defect, because it is all about the self and not about the other, put down, person.

Our author is trying to help us understand that honoring others, placing them in our minds as worthy and valuable individuals, is a principle of healthy relationships. Think about what we just talked about. If you are around people who consistently put you down, even in subtle ways, don’t you honestly not want to spend time with them? This book encourages us to think every person as unique, gifted by God, made in His image. It is not relevant if they are Christian and go to church, or if they are “good people”, or if they lying scumbags! Everybody is made in the image of God, and it is respectful toward Him, God, if we make a choice to think of others in the same way He does.

This decision to honor others, even when it may seem wrong-headed, is not a decision to hang out with the lying scumbags (In fact we shouldn’t hang out with the wrong people, 1 Cor 15:33). It is a decision to respect God Himself by choosing, out of love and obedience for Christ, His way.

Step 3 – Suspend Judgment (Rom 14:13)

This step goes hand in hand with the previous one. If you are that kind of person who puts others down, you are exercising a judgmental attitude. The book is stating very clearly, stop it! I certainly don’t want to be around judgmental people, do you? I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the ways we can exhibit judgmentalism.

Words – Let us take a look at Pr 10:19, 15:26 and 19:27-28. There is such great insight in these verses. How have you been hurt, or maybe you’ve hurt others by words? Have you ever been separated from a dear friend by words of judgment? Can you think of some examples of words you’ve heard which you thought of as judgmental?

Actions – What does Scripture have to say about this, let’s go to Hebrews 10:24. Can anybody here this morning give us some examples of “judgmental” actions? Have you personally seen some, experienced some or even done some?

· A sneering look.
· Rolling the eyes.
· A sigh or a “tut-tut”.
· Patting somebody on certain parts of the body.

How does one feel when they been judged by another person who is supposed to love and care for them? When it happens to me I emotionally distance myself, I feel temporarily that the relationship is unsafe. On p99 the author says it very well, “Judgment results in defensiveness and closes down relationships”.

Also on p99 there is a paragraph that begins with the words “Compassion and understanding”, let’s read it now. Great words!

One final thought on this subject. When we behave judgmentally, either through an action or spoken words, we are betraying ourselves. We are demonstrating what is actually in our minds, our thoughts and feelings; we are allowing our hidden values to come out. In Philippians 4:8 we are given some very sound advice that will help us all to be less judgmental. What does it say?

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. NASU

Step 4 – Value Differences (Rom 15:7)

Easy to say, hard to do! What does everybody think about this and what it means?

I know we have talked about it before, so I hope it is okay if I mention a simple difference between my lovely wife and I. Bed making. She likes to see the bed made every morning, I am unconcerned about this. It used to drive me crazy that it “had to be done” each and every day, but it also used to drive her crazy that I didn’t care what it looked like. We turned a small difference into a big one. It turned out that she has a much higher need for order in her daily life than I did. A difference that caused conflict. I have since learned to appreciate the fact that the bed is made; I even help make it sometimes. I have become an admirer of my wife’s orderliness and I appreciate that difference in us. Does anybody else have a personal story about differences they would like to share?

The book suggests that when we honestly learn to make room for the personality and character differences in a relationship, it becomes a safer place. The other person is not “treading on egg shells” around you, because they are afraid they might upset you with their words or actions.

Step 5 – Be Trustworthy (Mt 5:37)

Trust is defined this way in Webster’s - Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something b: one in which confidence is placed.

The part of the chapter talks about two aspects of trust. To help create safety in a relationship we must be able to be trusted by the other person, and we must be able to trust ourselves. We have to be “old reliable”.

Let us talk about trust a little; I have some questions for you:

· Can one person demand trust from another?
· Is trust earned or given freely?
· Does trust build quickly?
· Can trust be lost?

Can you think of some words that when added together describe trust:

· Confidence, certainty and assurance.
· Reliable, consistent and dependable.
· Truth, honesty and reality.
· Character, integrity and reputation.

Trust is a big deal. Let us look at Mt 5:37 and then James 5:12. I think the essence of every word we listed above is captured in these two verses.

Let us consider relationships where somebody could be considered untrustworthy. What happens in these situations?

· Communication deficits.
· Avoidance
· Hiding of the truth, lying.
· Failure.

We have now come to end of today’s lesson about creating a safe environment, so I’ll just reiterate the 5 steps we focused on today in the second part of learning the new dance.

1. Respect The Wall.
2. Honor Others.
3. Suspend Judgment.
4. Value Differences.
5. Be Trustworthy.

Simply by looking at this list we can sense something that is important to understand, and that is that these five steps are all action items. Not one of them happens automatically, they all require us to work! So, go and be safe!

TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY

THE DNA OF RELATIONSHIPS
LESSON FOUR – PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Welcome to lesson four of this 10 part series on, ‘Discovering How You Are Designed For Satisfying Relationships”. This morning’s lesson covers the issue of taking personal responsibility for one’s thoughts and actions. In this lesson we are going to start to build on the groundwork laid out in the first three classes, it is time to begin to establish right thinking about how to change our relationships, and lives, for the better.

I will start with a simple overview of what we have covered so far.

In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!

In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:

1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.

We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).

In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.

Now we come to the beginning of learning how to dance a different dance. It is time to learn new steps; the first one is “Take Personal Responsibility”.

We have all heard this mantra before, although very few of us actually follow this fundamental recommendation. Before I get into six concrete actions we can take to truly follow this in our lives, what are some of the most common barriers to doing this?

· Our culture – We live in a “victim hood” world, we have all seen it, how one person blames another for what they are actually responsible for.
· Our values and beliefs – Do we really believe we have a big say-so in our own lives? Do we believe what God says about it?
· Our reactions – How often do we respond to situations with a negative or a “woe is me” attitude?
· Our Past – The personal experiences and baggage of our past can often result in our inability to accept personal responsibility.

These and many others we could come up with definitely make “Taking Personal Responsibility” a difficult task. So where do we start?

I think we must start with acknowledging that we have the freedom to choose, this whole subject was covered in Lesson two, so I won’t go over it again. What I do want to say is that not a single person will make substantial progress in their life unless they internalize the following belief:

· I have control over how I respond to every situation. (Gal 6:5)

The author has a good example of how this can be shown to be a truth, if you have your book, let’s go to p65, about two thirds of the way down the page, the name calling story. (Read it through) We can very obviously see that we have control over our response, and as the book states, our response must come from inside our mind not from any external factor. If a person can honestly absorb this belief about self-control it will truly empower them in all facets of their life and most especially in relationships. How does this happen? It is by the recognition that a person controls how they think!

When we choose what we think, it means we can choose how we feel and choose how we react. That may sound like it doesn’t make sense, because so often we seem to just react to situations. This usual “quick reaction” response we have disguises what is really going on inside us. We generate a thought as a result of a situation, we then begin to feel emotions and then exhibit a behavior, all of which can sometimes happen in a millisecond! We are now going to look at six things we can do to start changing the way we respond to life. I am going to name these “The Six Tactics”.

Tactic #1 – Take Control of Your Thoughts, Feelings and Actions

Whenever we focus our attention on other people involved in a situation, or on what they were doing, we give away something called “personal power”. We have made a choice to spend our personal internal energy and power on someone else; we have made a choice to become weak. By focusing on others, we are going down the road of trying to control other people and may even be trying to change them. This is a sure way of achieving failure in a relationship!

It is in our nature, and it began with Adam and Eve, to blame the other person for our own shortcomings and behaviors. Sometimes we try to get them to change how they interact with us, we coerce, we manipulate and we beg. This type of response might even work for a while, but in the end we’ll be right back to wherever we started. That is because real change can never be imposed from the outside, but can only be generated from the inside of those we relate to.

Wouldn’t it be better to try to control what we actually can, which is our response in any situation. Taking “Personal Responsibility” means that we refuse to focus on what the other person has done! This doesn’t mean that we can’t acknowledge a grievance, just that we will not allow it to dominate our reactions. PR, then, means we must take a hard, serious and honest look at our part of things that happen. It means we must take control of our thoughts on any and all situations. We can and must choose to exercise that great fruit of the Spirit, self-control, of our mind.

Let’s look at what Scripture says about this. Earlier I spoke of “empowerment”, and this is clearly what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote Romans 12:2. He said this:

· Don’t be conformed to the world – In our context, that means focusing on others actions, on blaming or finger pointing.
· Be transformed by the renewing of the mind – Take personal responsibility for your thoughts and you will be transformed, the Greek word he uses here is “metamorphoo”, which is a word indicating a change into something of a higher order, like a cocoon into a butterfly.
· So you can prove what God’s will is – By doing this you will demonstrate the goodness of God Himself because of your changed and better life.

Don’t we all want that changed and better life? God says, and so does our book, that it starts in the mind. Now we come to why this is true.

What we think prompts and initiates feelings, and then we act. It is as simple as that. Let us consider an everyday scenario. You are traveling down I-10 at sixty, somebody cuts you off, almost hitting you, and he is going only 55. What do you think, feel and do?

· That *******, he cut me off, that makes me angry, I’m going to blow my horn and give him a piece of my mind. (And maybe the bird!) Or do you think?
· I almost hit him, I was going too fast, that was a little scary, and I had better slow down so if it happens again it won’t be such a near miss.

Do you see the difference? By focusing on your part, your response was entirely more mature; in fact the other driver’s behavior wasn’t even an issue.

This brings us to the phrase to remember:

MY THOUGHTS CONTROL MY FEELINGS AND MY REACTIONS

And this brings us to our next tactic.

Tactic #2 – Take Responsibility for Your Buttons

I imagine we all know the expression, “he/she pushed my buttons”. Did you ever wonder what a “button” is? It is very simply a combination of values, beliefs and attitudes. When this combination is violated we respond in negative ways. Of course we know from the previous tactic that the process of coming to a negative action starts with one or more thoughts, is followed by emotions and then the action. So how can we reduce or even stop ourselves from getting our buttons pushed?

It starts with acknowledging that the buttons are our possessions, we have 100% ownership of them, and we are totally responsible for them. We have control of them! This means that when a button gets pushed, we can choose how we respond, since we have control. Let me demonstrate this. We have all pushed the power button on a TV remote, the TV comes on, we change the channel, turn up the volume and watch it react. Now, suppose that you go home and try doing that, but nothing happens because the kids have unplugged it, who is in control? Yes, the TV, not you the button pusher! You see, if someone pushes our buttons, we can cut off the power of the button pusher and be in control of how we react. Take back your buttons! Our phrase here is:

YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF YOUR BUTTONS

Just for fun, I’ve included a button pushing incident from scripture here, Mt 21:12-13, what happened and whose button got pushed? Was it appropriate?

Tactic #3 – Don’t Give Others The Power to Control Your Feelings

The essence of this is don’t let others tell you what to think. Even God Himself doesn’t do that, although He does make strong suggestions! Let us look at a two of them, Ph 4:8 and 2 Cor 10:5.

In Philippians 4, Paul is exhorting us to excellence, in verse 8 he encourages us to “let our minds dwell” on certain things, and the list doesn’t include “whatever your significant other says”. In 2 Cor 10:5, we are exhorted through his example, to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. In our PR tactic, this means to match our thoughts against what Christ says. By doing this we know that Jesus will lead and guide us in our thinking, and then we will be able to exercise control over our emotions.

Tactic #4 – Don’t Look To Others To Make You Happy

Our culture feeds a great myth into us from an early age, and that is that other people can make us feel happy. This is what I call one of our enemy’s “big lies”. He is delighted when we have this as a belief, because he knows it will always result in relationship conflict. Now, I am not denying that we often feel happy with certain people we hang out with, but that emotional condition is not caused by them. It is a product of you applying your values and your mind’s attitude to the situation. Let me give you an example.

Let us say that a friend says, “How about going to see a movie?” So you both go to a “chick flick”, and because you like such movies you are happy. And then you go to four or five in a row getting happier by the visit, but then one week you head off, and end up watching a horror film. You don’t like that kind of violent thing and are appalled, and unhappy. Same conditions; good friend, relaxing time, plenty of popcorn, but different outcome. No pun intended, but do you get the picture? It was never this person that made you happy. Your happiness came from your internal response to the situation. This brings us to a major truth:

Relying on others for your happiness leads to a relationship trap called co-dependence.

In fact God has basically told us in His word that only He can meet our needs, which includes our “need” for happiness. Let’s look at Ph 4:19. In this verse Paul is telling us that God will supply all our needs. If we combine this information with the understanding that every person is less that perfect (Rom 3:23) and fallen short of the glory of God, we can realize that nobody can meet our wants/needs all the time. It is simply smart to rely on God in all things. Doing this, which is doing it God’s way, puts your happiness, or emotional well being, under your control.

Tactic #5 – Become The CEO Of Your Life

The call to us here is to live life as an adult. In I Cor 13, which is known as the “love chapter” there is a curious verse tucked away, let us look at it now, verse 11. What does this mean to you? For me one of the truths I get out of it is that, in the context of love, as laid out so eloquently here, we must grow up if we are to be able to experience it (love).

The book author has an excellent definition of what an adult is, “An Adult is someone who is fully capable of taking care of themselves, and who fully accepts that responsibility”. Note that second point, an adult fully accepts responsibility. Now contrast that with a grown-up who is capable of taking care of them self, but does not take responsibility for doing that, he or she is acting as a child.

This section of the book contains a couple of good points on correctly setting expectations and turning negative experiences into positive outcomes. If you get a chance read these through, they are worth spending time on.

Tactic #6 – Recruit Assistants

Taking PR has one major drawback; we sometimes get to the point where we think we can handle anybody and anything. This could even be an unthought belief that lurks in our sub-conscious. It is, of course, not a smart thing to believe, because it will eventually lead to some kind of significant failure. In fact Scripture calls it “Pride”, and Pr 16:18 confirms what I just said. But don’t worry; God has a plan to deal with it. Let us take a look at Pr 15:22 and 11:14. What do these two verses say to you?

I can’t say enough about putting a personal consultative team in place to help you take responsibility for your life. Can you think of some of the reasons or benefits of surrounding yourself with people who care about you?

· Help with making tough decisions.
· Pray with you.
· Hold you to account.
· Listen to you.
· Help with life’s tasks.

I am going to conclude our lesson at this point and briefly recap what we have discussed this morning.

1. We reviewed the first three lessons, and reiterated that we are all designed for relationships, we have all been given the freedom to choose and we all are responsible for ourselves. That is the DNA of Relationships.
2. We saw how the “fall of man” introduced fear and shame into the world, resulting in each of us going into what the author calls a “dance of fear”, which then leads to difficulties in our relationships.
3. In this lesson we saw how we can six practical steps to a higher and more effective level of “Personal Responsibility” in our lives.

And that, as they say in show biz, is a wrap!