Relationships: An Investment Mentality
YOU MUST LIVE IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH AN INVESTMENT MENTALITY:
We’re all treasure hunters. We all live to gain, maintain, keep, and enjoy things that are valuable to us. Our behavior in any given situation of life is our attempt to get what is valuable to us out of that situation. There are things in your life to which you have assigned importance, and once you have, you are no longer willing to live without them (these principles are laid out in Matthew 6:19–33).
Everyone does it. We live to possess and experience the things on which we’ve set our hearts. We’re always living for some kind of treasure. And every treasure you set your heart on and actively seek will give you some kind of return.
An argumentative moment is an investment in the treasure of being right, and from it you will get some kind of relational return. If you aggressively argue the other person into a corner, it’s not likely that the return on that investment will be his or her appreciation of you, nor will it be the desire to have similar conversations again!
If you invest in the treasure of willing service, you‘ll experience the return of appreciation, respect, and a deeper friendship. If it’s more valuable to have control than it is for your friend or spouse to feel heard, loved and understood, then you’ll live with the return of that in the quality of your relationship.
Investment is inescapable; you do it everyday, and it’s hard to get away from the return on the investments you’ve made.
How will you invest in your relationships today?
God bless
Paul David Tripp
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
- What things – not just physical possessions – are valuable to you right now?
- Why are those things valuable or desirable for you?
- Do your values align with what God value?
- How is the return on those investments shaping your relationships?
Dr. Paul David Tripp is a pastor, speaker, marriage counselor, and award-winning author. With more than 20 books on Christian living, including the best-selling “What Did You Expect?” His driving passion is to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Paul and his wife Luella live in Philadelphia; they have been married for 48 years and have four grown children.
This post originally appeared as Relationships: An Investment Mentality posted January 15, 2014
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