Skip to main content

How to be Wise in Relationships

“Any fool can start arguments; the honourable thing is to stay out of them.” Proverbs 20:3 (GNT)

Wise people are peacemakers, not troublemakers. Wise people don’t carry a chip on their shoulders. They’re not always looking for a fight. And they don’t intentionally antagonize other people.

The fact is, if you’re around someone for any length of time, you’ll figure out what irritates them. Then you may file that information in the back of your mind as a tool to use when you get into an argument. When the person says something that hurts, offends, or slights you in any way, you may pull out the information you filed away and use it against them. You push the hot button. And it works every time!

You know what the Bible calls this kind of behaviour? Stupid! It doesn’t get you any closer to resolution or help your relationship. In fact, it hurts the relationship. It’s not wise.

Proverbs 20:3 says, “Any fool can start arguments; the honourable thing is to stay out of them” (GNT).

We all use counterproductive strategies in relationships. They’re hurtful, they’re harmful, and they don’t get you what you want. But when we lack wisdom, we use them anyway.

Here are just a few of these counterproductive strategies:

Comparing—Never compare your wife, your husband, your kids, your boss, or anyone else—because each person is unique. Comparing antagonizes anger.

Condemning—When you start laying on the guilt in a relationship, you get the opposite of what you expect. It doesn’t work, and it’s foolish.

Contradicting—William James, a pioneer in the field of psychology, said, “Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook.” Some things just aren’t worth your attention; you simply need to overlook them.

The Bible says in Proverbs 14:29, “A wise man controls his temper. He knows that anger causes mistakes” (TLB). Have you ever said or done anything out of anger? We all have! When you get angry, your intelligence goes out the window. You say and do foolish things that are self-defeating.

Have you ever thought about the fact that there is only one letter difference between “anger” and “danger”? When you get angry, you are in dangerous territory. You are about to hurt others—and yourself—with your anger.

The good news is that you don’t have to let your anger get the best of you. You can choose to be a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. Follow the wise advice of Proverbs: Control your temper and stay out of arguments. You—and the people who have a relationship with you—will be glad you did.

Talk It Over

  • What counterproductive strategies have you used in relationships? How have they backfired on you?
  • How has your own anger hurt you or the people around you?
  • When have you chosen to stay out of an argument or to control your temper? What was the result?


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SHOW YOURSELF

တချို့တွေနဲ့ ပြိုင်မငြင်းနဲ့ သူတို့အတွက် မဖြစ်နိုင်တာကို သူများလဲ မဖြစ်နိုင်ဘူးထင်ပြီး အိမ်မက်ကြီးကြီးမက်တဲ့သူကို အရူးလို့ထင်တတ်ကြတယ် လေယာဉ်စထွင်တုန်းကလဲ လူတွေတစ်နေ့ပျံနိုင်မယ်ပြောတာကို လှောင်ရယ်ခဲ့တဲ့သူတွေရှိတယ် တကယ်လေယာဉ်ပေါ်လာတော့ ပါးစပ်တွေပိတ်သွားကြတယ် မိုင်များစွာဝေးနေလဲ စကားပြောလို့ရမယ် လို့ပြောတဲ့ အခါ ဝိုင်းရယ်ခဲ့ကြတယ် တကယ်ဖုန်းပေါ်လာတော့ ရယ်တဲ့ပါးစပ်တွေပိတ်သွားကြတယ် ဒီတော့ ဝိုင်းရယ်တဲ့သူတွေကို ဂရုသိပ်စိုက်မနေပါနဲ့ အိပ်မက်ကြီးကြီးမက်ပြီး အိမ်မက်ကို အကောင်အထည်ဖော် result သာရအောင်ယူပြလိုက်ပါ ဘာဖြစ်သွားမလဲ သိတယ်မလား ? Don’t argue with some people. What seems impossible to them, They also believe it’s impossible for others. People who dream big, They often think of them as crazy. When aeroplanes were first invented, There were people who laughed at the idea of flying one day. But when the aeroplane was finally created, Those mouths were shut. When someone talked about communicating over long distances, They laughed at the idea. But when the phone came into existence, Those laughing...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Cost of Anger

“People with understanding control their anger; a hot temper shows great foolishness.” Proverbs 14:29 (NLT) When someone is angry with you, it’s easy to show anger in return. But before you allow yourself to get mad back, calculate what you’re going to lose. Calculate the cost of anger. The Bible is extremely specific about uncontrolled anger. Proverbs 29:22 says, “An angry person causes trouble; a person with a quick temper sins a lot” (NCV). In Proverbs 15:18 , you read, “Hot tempers cause arguments” (GNT). And Proverbs 14:29 says, “A hot temper shows great foolishness” (NLT). When you let anger take control, there is a cost. You’re going to get in trouble. You’re going to sin. You’re going to cause arguments. You’re going to make mistakes. When you lose your temper, you always lose. You may lose someone’s respect, the love of your family, your health, or even your job. Maybe you’re someone who uses anger to motivate people to do the right thing. Don’t do it! You may get the sh...
Post a Comment
Read more