“For if I make you sorrowful, then who is he who makes me glad but the one who is made sorrowful by me?” (2Corinthians 2:2)
You can’t control the weather or rainy days but you can control the emotional climate that surrounds you. There is a principle in a relationship that tells us communication is a two-way street. Whatever you send down that street comes back up that street and into your relationship with another person.
That is what the Apostle Paul is teaching when he essentially writes “If I say things that get you down who is going to build me up or pull me up?” The reality is that you are probably going to pull me down because misery loves company. This is a negative way of stating a positive truth. That truth is if I say things to you that build you up, I have equipped you to build me up.
In another place Paul wrote: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)
In every relationship you have, with your spouse, your children, your parents, those you work with, those you work for, and those who work for you – make the commitment to say and do things that build them up and minister the grace of God to them. You will be surprised by joy to discover that what you send down that street will come back up that street and into your relationship with that person.
Jesus gave an unstable man named Simon the nickname Peter, which meant stable like a rock. After calling Peter ‘a rock’ for three years Peter was like a rock. Try that in your relationships and see what happens.
Dick Woodward, 29 June 2010
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