When IS Communication the Pathway to Understanding?

The primary cause for most fractured or broken relationships is failure of communication. This implies the significance of understanding and accepting the other person's need to share something important. Lack of understanding is often attributed to the failure to listen.

Failure to communicate is observed where every misdeed from the past is hurled at each other. In these attempts to communicate, issues become obscured by unresolved problems. Refusing to talk is to deny problems exist and eventually cause relationship failure.

If you want to be understood, communication is a necessary tool that makes it happen. Failure to communicate is the pathway to isolation, grief, and loneliness; however, God has given you a voice. Yet how you speak or if you speak is a choice God allows you to make. Sincere love and truthful communication are the means for restoring and healing a fractured or broken relationship.

    

_________ 

If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

~1 Corinthians 13:3 Phillips – New Testament In Modern English

_________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week.

Are Mutual Understanding and Forgiveness Absolute Needs?

How well do you communicate? Of all the issues that fracture and cause relationship failure, lack of healthy communication is the number one issue. Failure in communication is responsible for not understanding another person’s feelings, thoughts, and needs.

A relationship fractures when two people are not equally yoked in their ability to communicate. Each person experiences frustration, then becomes unapproachable emotionally and withdraws physically. The body language of silence is powerful in its effectiveness.

Failure to communicate causes relationship failure, yet it is possible to speak so problems are solved and intimacy restored. Isaiah 1:18 offers hope: “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are red as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are as crimson, they shall be as wool.’” The challenge is for mutual understanding and forgiveness to provide restoration and healing.

_________ 

If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

~1 Corinthians 13:2 Revised Standard Version

_________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week. 

How Can I Keep from Rushing to Judge Others?

When a relationship fails, the questions everyone asks are, “Who was at fault? Who is to blame?” Friends and relatives choose sides because it’s difficult to remain neutral. By being impartial, it becomes possible to understand how each person participated in the relationship’s demise.

A relationship can fracture very early due to the baggage one or both people bring to the relationship. So what defines baggage? It refers to emotional wounds inflicted by past experiences that now make it difficult to trust and be vulnerable as God intended.

If that sounds hopeless, remember, with God all things are possible.Do not rush to judgment just to place blame, for “all have sinned and come short of God’s glory.” 

Ask yourself: “What does God want me to learn about how I function or communicate in relationships that contribute to failure to bond and attach?" Be still and listen to God as you wait. Pray for his help.             

_______ 

What if I could speak all the languages of humans and angels? If I did not love others, I would be nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

~1 Corinthians 13:1 Contemporary English Version 

_________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week.

What Sacrifices Are You Willing to Make for Peace?

Restoring a relationship that has been fractured can be difficult when hurt feelings and anger have evolved into resentment. A fractured relationship can evolve over what seems to one person a simple mistake, but to someone else it was designed to cause pain and suffering.

Deuteronomy 17:2 speaks of breaking your covenant with God by choosing to sin. While God is patient and will wait for you to turn back to him, there are consequences to be faced. Grief and sadness stem from fractured and broken relationships.

Admitting and confessing fault includes acknowledging attitudes and behavior patterns that must change if restoration is be renewed. God’s word reminds us that a broken and contrite heart is a sacrifice God will not reject. So sincerely recognizing and owning up to failure, then confessing and asking to be forgiven are sacrifices God and most other human beings find acceptable.           

________ 

He, [God,] heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

~Psalm 147:3 New International Version

________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week. 

Does a Fractured Relationship Exist in Your Life?

Fractured or broken relationships cannot be completely avoided because differences in personality and temperament spark rivalries and conflicts. Diverging political and religious beliefs cause tempers to flare and argument to blaze out of control.

Friendships and families can be torn apart over issues that have no lasting value. Yet in a moment of intense anger and hurt feelings, nothing seems more important than saying what you think and feel, even if it means leaving a relationship in shambles and permanently fractured.

Repairing fractured relationships is possible, provided each person is receptive to realizing important sacrifices have to be made, including being open to admitting personal faults. 

Differences need not rupture family ties or a friendship if respect and trust are valued above all else. Remember, God gave up Jesus as a sacrifice so a fractured relationship between himself and you could be repaired.                            

_________ 

Don’t do anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap desire to boast, but be humble toward one another, always considering others better than yourself. And look out for another’s interests, not just for your own.

~Philippians 2:3-4 Good News Bible

_________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week. 

What Weakens Emotional Ties Within Families?

It’s impossible to engage in relationships and escape experiencing conflict. In the worst case, conflict and strife fracture the ties that bind people together. The Bible in Genesis tells the story of Cain, who permitted strife and jealousy to escalate to the point where he murdered his brother, Abel.

God never intended for strife to become so out of bounds that it overshadows the bonds of loyalty. Escalation of arguments are an ill-faded attempt to close the emotional distance that is so threatening. What breaks the bond that binds a relationship together is loss of trust.

Essential to mending or repairing a relationship is the mutual desire to understand what is possible in terms of realistic expectations. Taking responsibility for being the cause or perpetuating conflict is essential to restoration. 

Search your heart and be open to the truth God longs to instill in you. It is possible for confession to bring forgiveness and peace.  

________ 

Don’t turn away from God’s Spirit…Put everything to the test. Accept what is good and don’t have anything to do with evil.

~1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 Contemporary English Version

________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week.

What Attibutes Motivate Healing for Families?

Facing a crisis with a child is an issue parents hope will never occur, yet children endure accidents and health problems that are unavoidable. Some experience emotional problems because of strife in the home that indicates a fractured relationship between the parents or a child.

A crisis may stem from current issues or be connected to the past but kept secret and now expressed in behavioral problems. Physical or sexual abuse, either currently taking place or from the past, may create undeniable grief for a child or the entire family.

A crisis can be motivation for healing the wounds from the past by initiating efforts to repair broken relationships. How can this be possible when so much damage has been inflicted? It’s amazing the extent loyalty and attachment play in the healing process. Loyalty and attachment are attributes God built into human nature and can be the main components for repairing relationships. Press on toward what is possible. 

_________ 

I pray that God, who gives peace, will make you completely holy. And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept healthy and faultless until our Lord Jesus Christ returns.

~1Thessalonians 5:23 Contemporary English Version

_________

Subscribe to the Attitudes Answers podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear this and other 2-minute features 3 days every week.