The latest sermons at living wells assemblies of god
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God!
Pastor’s Notes
IMMPORTANT NOTES FOR UNITY – EXCERPTS FROM ” THE DNA OF RELATIONSHIPS
Maintaining an excellent Relationship is very important in all spheres of life. Human beings are relational beings; we are created for relationship: relationship with God (our creator) and relationship with people (ourselves.) Maintaining a positive relationship with God starts by accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal savior and receiving His Holy Spirit for a spirit-empowered life that will make you His witness in words and deeds.
The second part of human relationship is with us: Building a healthy relationship with our siblings, spouses, children, follow church members, friends, coworkers etc. The process includes valuing each other, exercising self-care (an important part being taking personal responsibility), creating a safe environment, recognizing the importance of communication, and seeing ourselves as a team.
To build a healthy relationship with our families and with church members, we first must value people. We must see each other as a person created in the image of God and treat people and their opinions as we would like ourselves and our opinions to be treated. Bible says, “love your neighbor as yourself”. [Read More]
Self -care is very important in building a healthy relationship with people because your neighbor would not like to be loved like you if you do not take care of yourself. Take care of yourself spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. If you do not take care of yourself, you have no overflow. Without overflow, you find it very hard if not impossible to take care of others. An important part of self-care is the need to exercise the power of one by taking responsibility of our own actions, preceded by a passionate desire to take control of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
We must recognize the importance of effective communication by listening and speaking with our hearts and understanding the feelings that underlie spoken words.
Effective communication begins with a simple and firm commitment to the goal of safety”. We need to create a safe environment for ourselves and our neighbors by respecting people’s walls, honoring others, suspending judgment, valuing differences, and becoming trustworthy ourselves. Understand why people erect walls and make a firm commitment that you are not going to require them to be open with you or break down their walls until they feel safe. Honor the other person as valuable – honoring is a way of accurately seeing the immense value of someone made in God’s image. The Bible says judge not, do not become a fault finder. Suspend judgment because “it writes people off, bands the gavel, and sentence them to years of hard labor”, the book notes. Suspend judgment and open the door of discovery into the person’s situation. Let us learn how to deal with our differences by valuing our differences. As you honor the other person’s uniqueness, as you value his or her differences – even the traits that irritate you, you create a safe place for the relationship to grow”. Be trustworthy with others and with yourself. When you are trustworthy with others, “you dedicate yourself to treating them as the valuable and vulnerable people that they are”. When others see us as trustworthy, they feel safe with us, and have no need to build walls of protection. Staying trustworthy with yourself is acting in ways that express your value and vulnerability.
Finally, we should see ourselves as a team, a teamwork spirit with no-loser policy. If you are in a team and your team loses, you also lose. We need to work together as a team finding solutions that benefit everyone. To do that, we have to establish a no-loser policy, listen to how the other feels, ask God for His opinion,, brainstorm about a win-win solution, select a win-win solution, implement your solution, and evaluate and rework your solution if necessary.
Thanks for reading!
