5 Insights on Relationships from the Past Two Years

Happy is a man who finds wisdom and who acquires understanding. (Proverbs 3:13, CSB)

It’s all over Proverbs: wisdom makes life better and also makes you better at life! At Newbreak, we believe wisdom comes in part from curating great content. One thing we have invested a considerable amount of time to these last two years (specifically) is in the realm of relationships. If you are like us, we are always trying to acquire more understanding and wisdom when it comes to relationships in our lives. Now, while there is much more to learn and to share, we figured this is as good a time as ever to recall some of the great content we have put out regarding this subject.

Here are 5 key insights on relationships taken from some of our content of the past two years.

1) Values guide our lives and our families, so proactively choose your family values!

The famous saying echoes this truth: “Direction, not intention, determines destination.” Meaning, our lives are headed in a direction. And despite how good and pure our intentions are, where we are going is shaped by values. Many families would benefit greatly by choosing 3-8 values that are meaningful to them and their intent to live gospel-centered lives. We talk more about this and give practical steps of how to create personalized values in this blog post HERE.

2) Embracing unity does not mean enforcing uniformity.

This is crucial. Often times the reason unity feels unattainable is because of the mischaracterization that unity is equal to uniformity. However, unity can and does involve diversity. The universe itself is unified yet diverse (hence the etymology of the word). So, let’s think about the diversity within those who call themselves “Christians.” There are differences in region, socio-economic status, denomination, education, and the list could go on. Yet, there are a couple of core beliefs that unite all believers, and that is worth celebrating and emphasizing despite the differences in views regarding other subjects. We wrote an inspiring piece on this (which went viral) you can read it HERE.

3) Improving communication involves taking interest in the interest of others.

Whether trying to reinvigorate communication with a child, colleague, or friend, taking the time to learn more about someone’s interests is a guaranteed way of boosting communication. When you inquire and listen to someone’s passion points, you will build rapport in the relationship. It’s one of the best relational hacks because it is really one of the simplest ways to generate more meaningful dialogue. This was one of the key points in this blog post HERE, where we discussed ways to improve communication at home.

4) There is a right way of resolving conflict, and Jesus took the time to tell us what it is.

When conflict strikes, it is easy to forget everything we know and do whatever seems best in the moment. However, it is worthwhile to stop and take time to remember some key principles laid out in Scripture of how to resolve conflict in Jesus’ way. We laid out these four steps in this post HERE, which we highly recommend bookmarking for reference!

5) A spouse cannot fulfill you, only the Lord can.

It’s a painful lesson for many who have an overly romantic view of marriage; it isn’t about sex. While marriage is an incredible union, it was never meant to be the end-all, be-all. Only God can fulfill us in the deepest and most meaningful way possible. In fact, the whole story of the Bible reveals this end-goal of God to be our Divine Spouse. You can read more about this biblical theme by clicking HERE.

We are a church that believes that one way to empower is to resource. So we are always on the mission to create quality, thoughtful, and applicable resources. For example, we hosted our first Relationships Conference, which you can watch again by clicking HERE. Stay tuned for many more resources as we all strive to acquire more of God’s wisdom and understanding to make life better and us better at life!

 

1 Comment

  1. Ntanda Ahamada on September 26, 2022 at 11:15 am

    Beautiful

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