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Kindle Notes & Highlights
God sends certain people into our lives in certain seasons for certain reasons. However, while God sends them, we must see them. God releases them, and we must recognize them. God assigns them, and we must align them.
Everyone in our lives has a place, and we must put them there.
Relational intelligence is the ability to discern if someone should be a part of our lives and what place they should occupy, and then align them accordingly.
This may be difficult to hear, but although everyone should be loved appropriately and valued equally, they should be treated differently.
Yes, we should treat everyone right, but treating everyone right doesn’t mean we treat everyone the same. Jesus didn’t. Relating to people properly should not be confused with treating them equally.
it’s not just important to have the right people in your life, but it’s also important to have them in the right place. Having people in the wrong place can cause things that should be held in confidence to get exposed, bad advice and counsel to be adhered to, and destiny to be impacted.
Emotional intelligence, as defined by the researchers who coined the term, Peter Salovey and John Mayer, is “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”
I think it’s important to understand that our relationships don’t have to be perfect to be powerful.
As the apostle Paul said, “we owe no man anything but to love him” (see Romans 13:8). We only owe people love. We don’t owe people access to our life.
Friends are individuals who are relational assets and not liabilities. Friends are those whom God escorts into our environments because there is something they need to be for us in order to help us be what we need to be for him. Friends offer more than company; they help us carry out our calling.
We aren’t our best selves just simply by our connections with God. We were also created to have healthy connections with others.
if the loyalty isn’t biblical, it won’t be beneficial.
An unhealthy loyalty is one that is always committed to a person’s wishes—what they want. But biblical loyalty is committing to a person’s well-being—what they need.
It either helps or hurts, builds up or tears down, brings you higher or lower.
Whoever walks with us in the present is deciding what’s going to happen in the future.
Biblical love is not affection; it’s activity. It is unconquerable benevolence. A commitment to seek my highest good. You have to handle the best of me and worst of me without changing how you deal with me.
The reliability of a person is often something we soon get clues about if we are paying attention.
Transformation comes from relationships, but more specifically, it comes from exposure to the example you’re shown in a relationship.
there are some people we can never become until some people come into our lives.
Reciprocation helps us minimize the likelihood of exploitation in relationships. It prevents us from using people and being used.
We don’t have to live life imprisoned by the decisions of our first family.
Friendships should also be nurtured and managed (stewarded) with humility. When there is the absence of humility in any relationship dynamic, there is likely the presence of entitlement.
When the seed of time is sown, the harvest of intimacy is reaped, and a life is changed.
authentic friendship affirms.
It’s a relationship where a person doesn’t prefer to, for whatever reason, engage any deeper than the surface. Maybe there is a lack of chemistry or few mutual interests. Maybe there are character inconsistencies that make you feel unsafe around them.
Relational frustration can often be a result of failed expectations.
I’m in your face. It’s because you’re on my heart.”
A friend is generally reliable and dependable, or if they aren’t, we know it clearly and the reasons for it.
agape, a Greek word—actually has nothing to do with feelings at all. It’s a love of the will. It’s an unconquerable benevolence. It’s commitment to do what’s in the best interest of someone else, regardless of what they do for you.
the phileo (brotherly/sisterly) love that is specific to a relationship.
we don’t know if a person is loyal until they have the opportunity not to be. Loyalty is revealed in the presence of other opportunities, in the face of inconvenience. Some people are loyal when it’s easy to be. Their true loyalty is revealed by their actions in our absence.
Joab, to me, is an example of how associates can show up wearing friend’s clothes. They look like friends on the outside, and maybe they do things here and there to demonstrate their friendship, but on the inside, they don’t have your best interests at heart.
anyone who would harm or disregard you for an opportunity is not someone who should be in the friend category. They are associates at best. Associates can be opportunistic (see Judas, the disciple of Jesus). Your awareness of that fact will save you many headaches and heartbreaks.
certain imperfections can’t be trusted in certain places in our lives.
So one of the key ways a person moves from associate to friend, to being someone who wants to go to the garden, so to speak, is to learn to keep a person’s confidences. Be a cup, not a faucet. Receive their heart, but don’t spread it. If a person trusts you enough to share some of the things you would only share with a friend, then even as an associate—as a good person, period—keep their story confidential. This could potentially be the beginning of a shift relationally, or it could just be a way to be kind as a person of faith. Either way, there are no losers.
Assignments are individuals who may appear to have a genuinely deep admiration for you, but in actuality their love and admiration is for your gift and not for you as a person. In other words, an assignment may have sought you out because of something you have accomplished, and it’s the gift, talent, or skill that they’re actually enamored by.
There was a different kind of attachment—less emotional, less intimate, and more focused on helping him grow and succeed.
The “shaking the dust off” is a symbol of not taking the residue of rejection from one season or relationship into another.
Every person isn’t your responsibility. Every person with a need isn’t your assignment.
Second, we can’t help people who know they need it and don’t want it. In John 5, Jesus approaches a man who has had an undisclosed issue for thirty-eight years and asks him this question: “Do you want to get well?” (5:6). See, everything that is bad doesn’t feel that way. Some people simply don’t want our advisement. They’re saying, “I know I should listen. I know this person is pouring their time and resources into helping me reach my full potential. But I just can’t. This [insert any distraction] is probably going to kill me, but it’s all right. I know I shouldn’t be jumping from this to
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Finally, we can’t help people who aren’t willing to do what it takes to get what they need.
Jesus assigned them to himself. He added value to them for the purpose of them adding value to others.
Making an assignment our best friend because our friendships are problematic is a recipe for epic failure and disappointment.
This will ultimately lead to frustration, which can impact what we are supposed to be accomplishing with the assignment.
“Be authentic with everyone, but transparent with only a few.”
it is much easier to start broad and go narrow than it is to start narrow and go broad.”
begin with the end in mind.
If some painful experiences can be avoided by receiving advice from someone who’s already walked through it, then that’s an act of love.
We will stay in frustration when we continually expect someone who belongs in a certain relational category to behave like they belong in another.
I’ve personally adopted the following axiom for my life: What I feel is real, even if it isn’t right.
