Rick Warren - How to Connect with People—Part Two

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the broadcast ministry of

Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue in the series Essentials

for Living. In these lessons, Pastor Rick shares the power

you need to live on, the principles you need to

live by, and the purpose you need to live for

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eight hundred six hundred five thousand and four while you

listen to today's broadcast. Right now, here's Pastor Rick Warren

with part two of a message called how to connect

with People.

The fourth key to connecting is to be candid. To

be candid about the problems in the relationship. In other words,

you have to be open, you have to be honest,

you you have to be frank Proverbs twenty four to

twenty six, says an honest answer is the sign of

a true friendship. Now, notice that being candid and being

connected go together. You don't have one without the other

being candid and connected. Because genuine, healthy, deep, meaningful relationships

are built on honesty, not on flattery.

If you got somebody.

Who's kissing up to you, who's always telling you what

you want to hear, they don't really love you, they're

using you. Flattery is a sign of a manipulator, not

a sign of somebody who's genuinely your friend. So genuine friendships,

genuine relationships, are candid where they'll tell you know when

you've got spinach in your teeth, they'll tell you when

you're blown it, they'll tell you when you're wasting your life,

when you're making a dumb, bad decision, Because healthy relationships

are built on honesty. Now all of us, all of

us have blind spots. Some of us have bald spots too,

but we all have blind spots. The question that really

matters is do you have anybody in your life who

loves you enough to point them out? Do you have

anybody in your life who cares enough to say you

need to work on this. Do you have anybody in

your life, who loves you enough to hold you accountable

and makes you grow, Because if you don't, I pity you,

because you cannot grow unless somebody points out the things

that you can't see in your life that need changing. Honest,

loving candidness is what all of us need to grow.

But you can't grow without it. So let me give

you three rules for being candid in relationships. Write these down.

One Always compliment in public, correct in private. Compliment in public,

correct in private. If you're doing this with your children,

Compliment in public, correct in private if you're doing this

with your husband or wife. Compliment in public, correct in private.

If you're doing with an employee or a student, or

a friend or a neighbor, compliment in public, correct in private.

Number two, correct when they're up, not down. Correct them

when they're up, not down, because nobody can handle correction

when they're tired, when they're fatigued, when they're depressed, when

they're out of energy. You know, my wife has had

to listen to my preaching now for over twenty five years,

and I depend on k to give me good feedback,

and she has been a great blessing in my life.

But the thing that I love.

The most about case correction or case feedback is that

she never ever tells me something needs to change immediately

after service, because, folks, after five services, you're lower than

a skunk. You're out of energy, You're adrenaline is depleted,

your blood sugar is at low. Really, after five services,

all you want to do is go home, get under

the covers, pull them up, and go to sleep for

nine or ten hours.

And so she always.

Waits until I've had a little bit of rest, a

little delay, my stomach's full of food. Sometimes you wait

a full twenty four hours, and then she'll give me

helpful corrections on improving the skills that I'm trying to improve.

You see, when I'm feeling good, I can handle almost

any correction. When I'm feeling tired, I can't handle anything.

Isn't that true with you? You know, when you're tired,

when you're fatigued, the slightest little word of correction is

like a big mountain, and you know it just it's overwhelming.

So you need timingness everything candidness. The third is, never

offer correction until you've proven that you're open to it.

You should never correct anybody else until first you've proven

that you're open to receiving it from them, And so

again you seek to understand before seeking to be understood,

and you open you up your life before you expect

them to open up their lives. Now, all healthy relationships

need and allow the opportunity for expression of frustration and anger.

Anger is a good thing in relationships. Sometimes miscontrolled anger

are out of control. Anger is bad, but anger is

sometimes the only legitimate response in.

A relationship where there's love.

If there's some things that you don't get angry over,

it just means one thing you don't care, you don't love.

Sometimes anger is the response of love. Now, the problem

is today many couples are scared to death of anger,

so they run from it, and as a result, they're

always pushing the issues aside. They're always sweeping them under

the carpet. They're afraid of anger, and so they just

push it aside. Well, let's don't deal with it. And

you spend all your life going round and round and

round skating the issue, and you make little sarcastic remarks

about it, and you may tease and hint and offer

little jokes, and you may make little wise cracks about it,

but you never really candidly deal with the issues. Some

of you have been married ten, fifteen, twenty or more years.

And you are still dealing with issues.

Today that you should have resolved in the first five

years of your marriage. But you're still dealing with them today.

Why because you have refused to be candid and you

just kind of skirt around the issues and you won't

face the music and deal with it.

I don't know how to say it any clearer than this.

There is no genuine intimacy without going through the tunnel

of conflict.

You say, surely, Rick, you gotta be kidding. I am

not kidding.

I've probably counseled more people than you've talked with in

your life, and I have come to the conclusion that

there is no genuine intimacy without going through conflict, because

it is in conflict that the relationship is spelled out,

defined and built.

So you have to do it now. Notice, over here,

on one.

Side, you have what I call superficial intimacy. You may

like a person, you may be acquainted with, you may

be in love, you may be married to a person,

and still never get beyond superficial intimacy because you won't

ever really deal with the gut issues of the relationship

that need to be dealt with your faults and that

person's fault, And so you keep it here at this

superficial intimacy level. I mean, you have ten kids and

a lot of sex and still have superficial intimacy.

On the other hand, over here is what I call.

Genuine, deep intimacy, soul satisfying relationship, heart to heart, being

fully understood by another person and having them fully understand

you in a way that you never thought possible on

this planet. Having a person be so connected with another

person that there is a deep, deep satisfying.

Communion between the two of you.

Now, how do you get from superficial intimacy to genuine

soul satisfying intimacy with another human being? How do you

get there? Well, there's no straight line across. You have

to go through the tunnel of conflict.

It is the only way.

You're listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope rip will be

back in just a moment with the rest of today's lesson.

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Now back to more from God's Word with Pastor Rick Warren.

Now, how do you get from superficial intimacy to genuine,

soul satisfying intimacy with another human being? How do you

get there? Well, there's no straight line across. You have

to go through the tunnel of conflict. It is the

only way. Now, in the tunnel of conflict, I'll be

honest with you, it's not fun. It's messy. In fact,

it is usually quite painful because as you go down

from the pseudo phony intimacy into the tunnel of conflict,

there's no light in there, and you don't know if

you're going to come out on the right side or not.

And in the tunnel of conflict, you have to hear

some things you don't want to hear, and you have

to say some things you probably don't feel like saying,

but they need to be said if the relationship is

going to go beyond simple superficiality and accommodation to genuine

heart to heart commitment and intimacy. And you have to

say those and you have to stay there in the

pain and maybe even in the noise, and maybe in

the hurt, and you have to stay there and work

through it because you're trying to work on it and

you're both committed to making it happen, so you fix

the problem rather than fixing the blame. And when you're

in the tunnel of conflict, every bone in your body says,

this is too hard.

I'm not gonna do this.

It's not worth the pain, and you want to back

out and escape and go back up here to superficial intimacy.

And unfortunately most people settle for that in life and

never know the satisfaction of being connected at the deepest

level with another human being, And so you back out

of it. And you're up over here and you just

kind of settle for less than God's best in your life.

But on the other hand, if you will stay with it,

and you'll say, we're gonna work on this, and I

need to say some tough things that I need to

hear some tough things, and we'll cry and we'll share,

and we'll work, and we'll get anger and frustrated, but

we're gonna work on this. If you'll stick with it,

and you'll do these six principles, you will eventually come

out on the other side. Now, in the tunnel of conflict,

it's it's kind of like childbirth. At times, the pain

may seem unbearable, but if you stick with it, you

will have a new birth of a new relationship at

a level you didn't even know.

It was possible up to that point. But it takes

being candid.

Let's say a husband is repeatedly late for dinner, and

of course none of you've ever done that. He seems

totally indifferent about punctuality, permits any little thing to delay him.

When he arrives late for the fourth or fifth day

in a row, his wife says, in an accusing tone,

you're late again. Look at the supper.

It's cold. I went to a lot of hard work

and you you spoiled it.

Now, what is she doing? She is attacking. Now, what

is the natural response when you were attacked?

Attack back? Exactly, attack back.

So his response is to justify his lateness and to

attack her for not being understanding and for placing far

too much importance on the dinner. And so they just

create this adversarial relationship. Now, these people are supposed to

love each other, but they're actually acting like enemies. Here's

an alternative. At the right time, the wife could say

something like this. You know, honey, when I prepare a

nice supper and it's left to get cold, I feel unappreciated. Now,

I know you must have good reasons for being late.

I just feel like it's on My work is unimportant

to you. Now, notice she didn't make any accusatory statements. No,

you do this, you do this, you do that. They're

all I statements. I feel this way, this is how

I feel. Now, what if the guy brushes her feelings aside,

said well, you just shouldn't feel that way, she has

another opportunity to make her point. He's just proved what

she just said, She might say, you know, honey, I

tried to tell you that being late makes me feel

unappreciated and unimportant. And then when my feelings about it

are just brushed aside is unimportant, that makes me feel

even more unimportant.

Well, now the guy has no excuse. Now, I mean,

she's just proved the very point he made.

I mean, he's a dufust Okay, but she's done it

without attacking him. You have to be candid, now, the

Bible says in Proverbs twenty five, five and six, better

is open rebuke than hidden love and wounds from a

friend can be trusted. In other words, if you really

care about the relationship, sometime there is only one alternative.

Confront force the issue, force the argument. Sometimes that's the

only alternative in a relationship that's going south. You have

to force the issue, and you have to confront in

love and be willing to put up with the pain.

So let's get real personal right now. Some of you

are scared to.

Death of what I'm going to say. Who do you

need to get honest with? What problem in your relationship

are you pretending isn't a problem?

What problem?

I don't see any problem. It's sitting there right in

the living room, Ember, I can see it, but what problem?

I don't see it?

And you keep skirting around the issue and not dealing

with it, not confronting it, and just living in pseudo intimacy.

Which of those issues do you need to be candid about?

You See, there's another word for keeping the peace. It's

called codependency. And that is not a good thing, and

that is not what God created you for. Sometimes you

must care enough to confront Tom's gonna talk about the

next one.

There were three pastors that got together and decided to

work on this honesty thing. They sat down in a

small group and said, let's just be honest. Let's just

be honest with each other about what our greatest struggle,

our greatest sin is. The first guy launched things out,

but I honestly said, you know, I struggle with lust.

I always have, and I honestly have had some very

very evil thoughts lately. The next guy said, well, since

you were honest, I struggle with materialism, and I honestly

i'm in debt up to hear. The third guy looked

at him and said, well, I struggle with gossip, and

I honestly can't wait to get to a telephone if

relationships are gonna work. Number five, we have to be

confidential with information. Why Because par Was eleven thirteen reminds

us that a gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man,

a trustworthy woman keeps a secret, or either kind of

person who can keep people's confidences so that they can

trust you. We tend to think of gossip as one

of those little sins, you know what I'm talking about,

the misdemeanor sins.

They're sort of down here on the list.

But when God talks about gossip, he puts it on

the list up with things like sexual immorality and murder.

Why Because it is so destructive to relationships. Gossip can

tear a friendship apart, a family apart, a church family apart.

More churches have been destroyed by gossip than persecution, More

friendships have been destroyed by gossip than any other kind

of disloyalty. It's incredibly destructive to relationships when you trust

someone and then find out you couldn't trust them.

What's so destructive about it? My favorite story.

About gossip has always been of the man who went

to the rabbi and confess the sin of gossip and

ask them what penance can I do for this sin?

And the Rabbi said, here's what you do. You take

this feather pillow and walk up on this mountain, rip

it open, and just let the feathers fly everywhere. Man

did that and came back and said, is that it No,

said the Rabbi, Now I want you to go pick

up every feather. That's what gossip does. It just goes everywhere.

You don't know the impact that it's having, but it's

tearing relationships apart. It's tearing you apart in ways that

you don't realize. Now, what is gossip? When we talk

about what is gossip, let me give you a definition.

Gossip is talking about a situation with somebody who is

neither a part of the solution or a part of

the problem, neither one. If they're not a part of

the problem, If they're not a part of the solution,

and you're talking with them about it, that is gossip.

And if we're honest with ourselves, what we're doing is

we're making ourselves feel a little bit more important at.

Somebody else's expense.

We're talking about their hurts and their problems to make

us feel like we're a little bit morally superior to them.

That's the danger in the herd of gossip. Gossip is

such a dangerous thing that one of the one of

the values that we have in our small groups at

Saddleback is that we keep confidences that small group, whether

our recovery group or.

Any other kind of group.

It's a place where you can come and talk about

what you're facing in your life, and that stays within

the group because this is such an.

Important part of relationships.

There's a story in the Old Testament about a family

that struggled with gossip. You remember Moses from the Old Testament.

He had a sister named Miriam, who one day got

caught up in gossiping about Moses amidst the rest of

the people. God called him in as a family Moses

and Miriam and stood him in front of him and

had a little talk. And he talked with Miriam and

told her what she'd done wrong, and immediately on the spot,

he gave her leprosy. Now some of you are thinking

that sounds terrible, but I'd like that to happen to

the person who gossiped against me. Not leprosy, but really

bad stomach flew something where they really knew how much

this hurt. You know what God did next? God invited

Moses to pray for Miriam's healing the one who gossiped

against him. Some of you, you've been deeply hurt by gossip,

things that have been said around the office, or things

that have been said in a breaking of a confidence,

even with a Christian friend or in your family. And

what God would say is pray for that person's healing

that gossiped against you, so that you can be released

from the hurt that's coming into your life. Others of you,

you've been the one gossiping. You've been the one who

has been sharing things about other people. And this story

is in the Old Testament to remind us how serious

it is and how hurtful it can be to people.

So whatever side of this you are on, the truth

is when you keep confidences, it makes relationships much more healthy,

enables us to keep connecting to one another in healthy

and genuine ways.

Final key to connecting is to be committed.

You must be committed to the relationship because good relationships

take time.

They don't happen by accident.

They take cultivation, they take work, and it takes a

lot of time to build a deep connection with somebody,

and that requires commitment.

This is pastor Rick's Daily Hope. We're so happy you've

chosen to study along with us today. Rick will be

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