“I know what makes him tick, and I know what ticks him off!” These were the words of a speaker I heard when talking about her relationship with her husband—with whom, by the way, she had a very good relationship.

Clever lady. Smart wife!

For couples, and friends for that matter, to relate well to each other—and to build each other up—each needs to know how the other ticks; that is, understand each other. First though, we need to know and understand ourselves . . . and know what ticks us off and why we get ticked off (get angry)!

There are some things we ought to get angry about, such as at anything that is harmful to others. But oftentimes we get angry—and overreact—not because of what the other person has done, but because of who we are. In other words, when I have a lot of unresolved hurt and anger from the past, it can get triggered by the slightest incident and I overreact!

What the other person does may or may not be a problem, but my hurt and my anger are always my responsibility. And to the degree that I overreact, that is always my problem!

So we need to know not only what ticks us and each other off, but also why we get ticked off . . . and what we need to do about it if we are to have fulfilling and meaningful relationships.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to know, understand and accept myself, so I will be much more understanding and accepting of others. And help me to face and resolve my character issues and be a peacemaker and not a troublemaker. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Romans 14:19 (RSV) (NIV).

To help become personally honest, authentic and real, and thereby greatly enhance our relationships, the following steps will help:

First, realize that a normal human being has a whole spectrum of emotions ranging from love, joy, peace, wonder, through to fear, hurt, anger and so on. These are all God-given emotions. Without them, life would be characteristically dull and boring. To be emotionally whole means to be in touch with every God-given human emotion.

Second, we need to see our need and strongly desire to be honest.

Third, we need to admit and accept responsibility for any problems we have, and consider the possibility that our impaired relationships, dull marriage, unsatisfactory sex life in our marriage, anxiety, depression, destructive habits and any physical symptoms we have might be caused by unresolved super-charged repressed negative emotions.

Fourth, and most important of all, we need to learn to pray the right prayer. If necessary, tell God that you don’t know how, or are too afraid, to be honest with yourself and need his help. Ask him to give you the courage to see yourself as you are and to face the truth about yourself. His answer will probably come in an unexpected way—perhaps through a book, a personal setback, a friend, a difficult or broken relationship, or some other painful situation. Unfortunately, most of us only look at our inner-self if we are hurting sufficiently.

Fifth, learn through practice to express your feelings openly and honestly, especially to the people who are important to you. If you’re feeling hurt, afraid, confused, or angry, admit it and say, “I feel confused or angry.” Never say, “You make me angry,” or “You hurt me.” This blames the other person for our response, which is always our problem and responsibility. Identify why you are feeling the way you are. For example, say, “I know my feelings are my problem, and I may be overreacting, but when you speak sharply to me as you just did, I feel hurt and/or angry.” Or simply, “When you say (or do) things like that, I feel very hurt and/or angry.”

If the person won’t accept your feelings, write them out in a letter. If you feel you should give it to the person, sleep on it and re-write it before doing so. If they still won’t accept them, try what Gary Smalley and John Trent suggest in their book, The Language of Love. Share how you are feeling by using word pictures; that is, make up a story or parable that will clearly show how you are feeling.

Finally, if I love you, I will always be open and honest with you and as the Bible suggests, I will always strive to “speak the truth in love.” Therefore, I will never blame you for my feelings, but will take full responsibility for them and for handling them in a loving, non-judgmental manner.

Denying our faults and feelings, acting them out blindly, or lashing out and hurting others with them, is weak and immature. Acknowledging and talking them out in a responsible manner is a hallmark of the mature adult. It may not be easy, but it is true strength, and is the only way to develop growth-producing and intimate relationships.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be honest with myself, and open and honest in all my relationships and with you—and thereby be a clear channel for your love to flow through to every life I touch. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Peter 2:1-2 (NLT).

In speaking about personal honesty in regard to interpersonal relationships, best-selling author, Dr. John Powell, believes that “most of us feel that others will not tolerate emotional honesty in communication. We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others, and, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships. Consequently, we ourselves do not grow, nor do we help anyone else to grow. Meanwhile, we have to live with repressed emotions—a dangerous and self-destructive path to follow. Any relationship which is to have the nature of true personal encounter must be based on honest, open, gut-level communication. The alternative is to remain in my prison, to endure inch-by-inch death as a person.”²

Denial of emotions (and motives) also causes the exaggeration of opposite characteristics. Saccharine-sweet people often seethe inwardly with hostility. People who withdraw take their anger out on others in underhanded passive-aggressive ways. Withdrawal is a “dirty way to fight.” The dogmatic are riddled with self-doubts. The overconfident are insecure. The extremely prudish are overcompensating for sexual inadequacies. Others silence painful feelings in over-busyness or go-go-go activity, substance dependency, destructive behavior, overeating, constant talking, unbalanced religious fervor, theological rigidity, a controlling attitude, and so on.

Others project their faults onto others, seeing in them the very faults that lie hidden within themselves. They simply cannot accept in others what they refuse to accept in themselves. Or they might displace their bad feelings by taking them out on somebody else. For example, Fred may be angry at his boss, but fearing he may lose his job if he says anything, takes his feelings out on his wife and children.

We can also become experts at rationalization. For example, when we deny our fears, we can unconsciously sabotage our relationships, or set ourselves up to fail in certain situations. We then brush off our failures by making excuses, blaming others, or even by saying what happened must have been God’s will!

The challenge is, how do we learn to be honest with ourselves? It isn’t easy. For many, it’s like learning a new language. And as long as we are not honest with ourselves, there is no way we can be honest with God or anyone else. And without personal honesty, it is impossible to have closeness and true intimacy with anybody. However, there are some positive steps we can take. We will discuss these in tomorrow’s Daily Encounter.

To be continued …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to get in touch with all my emotions and my motives, and be honest in my heart about these so that I will know wisdom in my innermost being. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 51:6 (NLT).

2. John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?, p. 61. Argus Communications, San Mateo, Illinois. Copyright 1969. Used by permission.

There was a time in my life when I thought that to be liked, I had to be strong—strong like the Rock of Gibraltar. Let the storms rage, the lightning strike, the winds blast, and the seas beat violently against it, and there it stands, solid as a rock and secure.

To me, fear was weak and anger bad, so you never showed these emotions, and as a man you certainly never showed your hurt feelings or cried. Through years of practice, I learned to hide many of my emotions, put on a brave front, and pretend to be something outwardly that I wasn’t feeling inwardly.

The trouble with being a rock, however, is that rocks don’t feel. They aren’t real either, and they can’t relate intimately to anyone. Neither could I. Like the first man, Adam, who feared rejection, “I, too, was afraid, so I hid myself.”

One of the serious side effects of denying and hiding our emotions is that we deposit them in our unconscious memory bank where they build up unhealthy interest. The payoff is that we either withdraw or become defensive, touchy, hostile, non-feeling, cold and distant, and/or depressed.

Or we act out these buried emotions through destructive behavior or physical illnesses. Medical science reminds us that unresolved emotions such as fear, sorrow, envy, resentment and hatred are responsible for many of our sicknesses. Estimates vary from 60 percent to nearly 100 percent.²

The point is, whenever we fail to admit our faults and talk or write out our negative feelings in creative ways, we inevitably act them out in self-destructive ways.

Dr. Cecil Osborne, author and counselor wrote, “Many persons bury feelings which they find unacceptable. For instance, one learned as a child that hate, greed, jealousy, fear and lust were ‘bad.’ ‘You shouldn’t feel that way,’ is the message which the child received, verbally or otherwise. Furthermore, by a clever bit of unconscious dishonesty, one may have said to himself, ‘A Christian never hates. I am a Christian, therefore I never feel hatred.’ And the aggression which is part of the normal equipment of an average human being is then buried in the unconscious, only to come out in some unacceptable form, often as a physical symptom.”³

Denial of emotions also acts as poison to relationships. It erects “brick walls” around the heart and suffocates love, intimacy and closeness.

To be continued …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please deliver me from the sin of dishonesty (denial) and help me to be honest and real with myself, others, and with you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Genesis 3:10 (NKJV).

2. S. I. McMillan, None of These Diseases, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1966, p. 7.

3. Leader’s Handbook, p. 32. Yokefellows Inc., Millbrae, California.

One of the major causes of emotional and relational conflicts among teens, adults, and even children is that of fatherless homes, absentee fathers, emotionally uninvolved fathers, and/or abusive fathers. In God’s economy and plan fathers have an extremely important and significant role to play, not only providing for their children’s physical needs, but also for their emotional and spiritual needs. Equally important is the God-given role of mothers, but today we are focusing on fathers.

Regardless of what women’s libbers and/or gay couples try to tell us, one of the greatest needs for healthy homes and families—healthy children, teens, and healthy, mature adults—is to have (or to have had) a father who is/was not only present emotionally, but also affirming, loving, accepting, and loving and giving full support to his wife—the mother of his children—and modeling what it means to be a kind, loving and supportive father, man, and adult. Every child needs this, his/her father’s blessing. The importance of this for the healthy nurturing of his children simply cannot be over-emphasized.

For a few simple tips on being a supportive father, listen to what Gary Smalley, popular author and psychologist, had to say after he asked 100 people, “What is one specific way you knew that you had received your father’s blessing?”

Here are some of those answers:

1. “My father would put his arm around me at church and let me lay my head on his shoulder.”

2. “When my father was facing being transferred at work, he purposely took another job so that I could finish my senior year in high school at the same school.”

3. “When I wrecked my parent’s car, my father’s first reaction was to hug me and let me cry instead of yelling at me.”

4. “When I was thirteen, my dad trusted me to use his favorite hunting rifle when I was invited to go hunting with a friend and his father.”

5. “My father went with me when I had to take back an ugly dress a saleswoman had talked me into buying.”

6. “My father would let me practice pitching to him for a long time when he got home from work.”

7. “Even though I had never seen him cry before, my father cried during my wedding because he was going to miss my no longer being at home.”²

Perhaps the greatest need of fathers is to be emotionally as well as physically present for his wife and children. At the same time, it’s the multiplication of the everyday little loving, caring things over the years that help a child to feel affirmed and blessed by his/her father.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me to be the kind of father (or mother) you want me to be. And please help me to be a channel of your love, and because of your love flowing through me, grant that my children will know without a shadow of a doubt that they have indeed been blessed by their father. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Genesis 48:8-9 (NIV).

2. Gary Smalley, adapted for www.eSermons.com, Sept 2003.

That night he got up the nerve to interrupt his dad’s work to ask, “How much do lawyers make?”

Annoyed, his father gruffly answered, “My clients pay me $300 an hour.”

Tim gulped. “Wow, that’s a lot. Would you lend me $100?”

“Of course not,” his father said. “Please, just let me work.”

Moments later, he heard his son sobbing in the other room, and he called him back. “Son, I’m sorry. If you need some money, of course I’ll lend it to you. But can I ask why you need it?”

Tim said, “Well, I’ve saved $200, and if you lend me a hundred, I’ll have enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To buy an hour of your time so you can come to our banquet on Friday and see me get the most valuable player award. Will you come?”

His father felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. For the first time, he realized the cost of his priorities. None of his clients needed him as much as his son, and nothing he could do as a lawyer was more important than what he could do as a father. How had he missed that insight?

It’s always difficult to balance job demands and family needs, but the test of whether you work too much is simple: Are you able to be the kind of parent your child deserves?

Few people look back on their lives and wish they’d spent more time at the office. Far more wish they’d spent more time with their kids.

This story is derived and adapted from one circulated on the Internet without attribution. The original source is unknown. As seen on Character Counts by Michael Josephson, www.charactercounts.org

Dr. Alfred Adler, international psychiatrist, based the following conclusions on a careful analysis of thousands of patients: “The most important task imposed by religion has always been, ‘Love your neighbor….’ It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.”

True, Jesus did say that we were to love our neighbor as we love our own self, but as somebody else said, “Heaven help your neighbor if you hate yourself.” If I happen to hate myself, I will tend to project my feelings of self-hatred onto my neighbor, and while I may not hate him, I will find it difficult, if not impossible, to love him. This is because I can only love and accept others to the degree that I have learned to love and accept myself—in a healthy way that is.

So, if we are to follow Jesus’ example and admonition to love our neighbor (all people), we need to resolve our damaged and negative emotions that block or hinder our loving ourselves so we can be free to love others.

While we are working towards that goal, we can choose to do the loving thing to others even if we don’t fully feel that love yet. And what an impact we Christians would make in our homes, places of business, schools, cities, and nation if every one of us would make the commitment every day to love our neighbor, mean it, and practice it. It’s still important to do right whether we feel like doing it or not.

Let’s pray that we will!

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to love and accept myself as you love and accept me, and please help me to love my neighbor (every life I touch) and be as Christ to him/her today. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Mark 12:31.

Ron Farmer of the University of New South Wales (Australia) Psychology Department said, “Any man seeking too strenuously for recognition in his early adult life was likely to find that neglect of his family unit during that time would lead to an alienation from his wife and children at the time he most needed their affection and understanding.”

As fathers we know we are to provide for our family’s physical needs. But provision goes far beyond this. We are to model Christian fatherhood and provide for our family’s spiritual needs as well. Equally important is to meet emotional needs, the absence of which is a major cause of many emotional ills and marriage breakdowns.

As fathers we need to be emotionally present and connected to our wives and children. However, if we’re not connected to our own emotions and inner self, we cannot be emotionally connected to or intimate with our family. Of all the people I’ve worked with in recovery groups over the years who are struggling emotionally and/or are divorced, a large percentage of them say that their father was never there for them emotionally when they were growing up. They felt he was distant and lived in his own private world. They never really knew him for who he really was. In God’s design it’s not only mothers who are needed. Fathers play a vital role in the emotional, spiritual and sexual development of their children. When fathers don’t meet their children’s needs, their children are programmed for problems as adults—especially in the areas of emotional wellbeing, sexual identity, and interpersonal relationships.

Furthermore, as adults, many of these “emotionally undernourished children” project their feelings towards their earthly father onto God, the Heavenly Father, and feel that he, too, is distant, cold and not there for them. When we are not emotionally present and involved with our children we can, without realizing it, drive wedges between our precious children and God.

Being present for and emotionally involved with our spouse and our children physically, emotionally, and spiritually is critical for, and a vital part of, providing for our children’s needs and the future of their children.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me as a father (parent) to be available today and every day to my spouse and to my children, and to give them my presence and undivided attention, so they will know without a shadow of a doubt that I love them. In so doing may they feel my love and affirmation at the very core of their being. And may they also know and feel your love and affirmation at the core of their being. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Timothy 5:8 (NIV).

Earl Nightingale told how on one National Secretaries Day he gave his secretary flowers and she remarked how beautiful they were. She also said that she couldn’t understand why they didn’t have any scent.

He informed her that the flowers came from a hothouse and explained that because flowers raised in this type of environment have everything done for them, they don’t have to attract insects to pollinate them. As a result, they lose their scent. In the same way fruit raised in a hothouse, because it doesn’t need to attract insects to scatter its seeds, doesn’t taste as good as fruit grown in its natural environment.

It’s similar to the child who wanted to help a butterfly out of its cocoon by putting a slit in it and, in so doing caused it to die. He didn’t realize that the struggle to get out of the cocoon is needed to strengthen the butterfly’s wings, which enables it to fly.

When people do too much for us or overprotect us, especially in our early developmental years, they can do serious harm to us. And even in adulthood it’s the problems and difficulties we have that strengthen us, build out character, and teach us wisdom, understanding, and compassion—if we let them—and enable us to “fly.” This is why God disciplines those whom he loves by allowing us to go through difficult times. The same principle applies to us if and when we want the government to do for us that which we are capable of doing for ourselves.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to yield to your discipline and to see in all the struggles of life that you are wanting me to ‘grow in faith and love and every grace, more of your salvation know and seek more earnestly your face.’ Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Note: for further help read, “Lessons from Suffering” at: http://tinyurl.com/exuyw.

1. Hebrews 12:6, 10, 11 (NIV).