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. 

Fear to Listen = Failure to Communicate

Listening is easy when there is an appreciative reason for doing so, but it’s difficult when positive reinforcement is not present. It is possible to permit differences of intelligence, education, or even social standing to become barriers to listening. We often refuse to listen to information that challenges our beliefs and lifestyle.

There seems to be an underlying fear that listening compels us to modify our opinions and behaviors. Jesus encountered resistance from the religious leaders who felt threatened by any challenge to their authority. They refused to listen because they feared Jesus would change the current  balance of power and their way of life.

The fact is that someone else could have a better idea than ours, but if fear of losing our prestige or power is an issue, permitting that person to express their ideas and solutions is not permissible for us. Wise is the person who listens deliberately and empathically to others and also listens to the council of the Holy Spirit. So be quick to listen.  

_________________ 

[Jesus said,] “Listen, then, if you have ears!” He also said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear! The same rules you use to judge others will be used by God to judge you – but with even greater severity.”

~Mark 4:23-24 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.