Throw Down Your Weapons!
Truth alone can be damaging to your relationships. Like a sharp sword, telling someone the truth can wound, cause pain, and even kill your relationship with them.
If your motive for speaking truth to someone is anything but love, or if the way you express it is anything but loving, the truth can hurt them. And that is not at all God's purpose for truth in our relationships, especially when it comes to relationships within the Body of Christ.
God intends for the truth to build us up, not tear us down. Yet too often we take up truth as a weapon, intending to cause harm. So even if you're simply speaking God's Word to someone about a situation, you should speak it in love. Check your motive before you go to someone to tell him a bit of truth. Make sure it's love, because love tempers the truth so that it is not harsh or abrasive.
When you speak the truth in a loving way, it does not sound rude or arrogant. Rather, it becomes easier for people to receive the truth - even when it may seem hard-hitting - because you are presenting it in a non-threatening way. Speaking the truth and speaking it in love are two steps to good communication.
Be a Body Builder
As we step into this attitude and habit of speaking the truth to each other in love, we grow up together and become strong in Christ. We get more in touch and more involved with the people around us.
And as needs arise within this network of relationships, God uses us to supply or give what we have - time, money, encouragement, love - to meet the needs that are within our reach. Eventually this process affects the whole Body. By supplying to each other, we supply to the Body.
But here is what I really want you to see. Paul closes Ephesians 4:16 by saying, "maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." The result of right, godly relationships is increase.
When we enter into these right relationships that we have built by good communication, we increase. We increase in God's love, we increase in His peace, we increase in His joy. In fact, we increase in everything that makes us more closely conformed to the image of Christ. That's true for you individually and for us corporately as the Church.
Why? Because when the Body of Christ is all rightly related, there are more channels of provision coming in and more channels of ministry going out. God's blessings can flow freely.
But notice that the benefits don't stop there. The final result of all this increase is that we are edified, or built-up in love - individually and corporately - which is one of the primary fruits of right relationships. So if you've been wondering where God's help was when you needed it, it's okay to have a glorious vision of God personally ministering to you from heaven. But take a look around you.
How are your relationships? The help you've been waiting for may be only an arm's reach away. Get in touch with the people around you and start working on those relationships by focusing your attention on God's Word, determining that you're going to speak the truth to everyone, and in every situation, and speaking every word with the purpose of love and in a way of love.
When you do these things, you'll begin to communicate more effectively and develop stronger relationships - relationships that will edify the Body of Christ and allow God's ministry and blessing to flow in the earth today - into you, throughout the Church and around the world.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Mac Hammond is the senior pastor of Living Word, a large and growing church in Brooklyn Park (a suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota. He is the host of the Winner’s Minute, which is seen locally in the Minneapolis area on KMSP Channel 9 at 6:44 a.m. and 11:11 a.m. He is also the host of the Winner's Way broadcast and author of several internationally distributed books. Mac is broadly acclaimed for his ability to apply the principles of the Bible to practical situations and the challenges of daily living.
