A thought by Henry Cloud, from his book, Never Go Back: 10 Things You’ll Never Do Again (p. 51). Howard Books. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
And we really need to see and understand that in our relationships.
Henry says, “Once we understand this, we never go back to thinking we can. We get in touch with the way God has designed the universe. People are not robots; they are free to choose what they want and what they will do and what they won’t do.
“When we realize that, we stop trying to do what will never work, which is trying to change people into something they do not want to be or convince them to do something they do not want to do. It never works. While we can influence them, ultimately we cannot change them.”
He goes on, “Consider relationships that you may have with these types of people:
· A critical person who withholds approval
· An addicted person who refuses to get sober
· An irresponsible person who does not do what should be done
· An employee who is not performing up to standards
· A person who is not investing in a relationship
· A parent whom you wish would be different
· An adult child you wish would grow up and make better choices
· A business partner or coworker who is not matching your effort
“There is nothing in God’s Word that says we should not try to influence others to change. In fact, it is the opposite: He tells us to try everything possible to get people to choose to change. Nowhere does God say that we should not confront people about destructive or pain-causing patterns. Never does he say we should be okay with people being hurtful or irresponsible. In fact, he says the opposite in many places. He says that if someone is living in a destructive way, we should try to help.”
Later Henry says, “If we love each other, we will try our best to influence each other for good. . . Influencing each other for good is not the issue.
“The issue is that we must respect the freedom of others to make their own choices. If we do not respect that freedom, we will do two things. First, we will nag or otherwise try to control them, and they will begin to resent us. Second, we will continually frustrate ourselves as we demand that someone be or do what we wish for them when they do not want to. When they resist, we will end up being angry, shaming, guilt-inducing, or resentful—or all of the above. This path destroys love.”
He then says, “The hard thing is to be honest and clear and to take responsibility for our own wishes, realizing that other people are free to do what they want. We can make our best case, we can even invoke consequences for their choices. . . Sometimes clear consequences are the only thing that will cause someone to make a choice—whether it’s the choice we want or not. But we can’t control whether they make a choice or what choice they make. We can only be the best we can, offer them the best we have, and then allow them to choose.”
Such good advice but also very difficult to do, isn’t it?
Comments
Post a Comment