Investment Tips For Growing Family Relationships

INVESTMENT TIPS FOR GROWING YOUR FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

Selected Bible Texts

5/14/00 AM - Mother’s Day

Warren Buffet is one of the richest men in America. In 1997, among the 70 or so people in this country who were worth 1 billion dollars or more, Buffet was the only one of only a few who acquired his wealth through investing. Many investors look to him for investment advice. His firm Berkshire Hathaway has one of the most widely read annual reports issued. And a book has been written about his investment strategies; it’s called The Warren Buffet Way.

If you could sit down with Warren Buffet for a while and get some investment tips would you?

Imagine for a moment that your family is your greatest capital. If you could get some investment tips on how to grow it in quality would you be interested?

We hold in our hands a treasure of investment strategies for growing our family relationships. The Bible, God’s Word in written form, contains countless pro-family principles and precepts. If we learn and practice them they will make our family’s relationally wealthy.

Today we will look at just a few of the tips.(1)

Tip #1: Understand each other

How many of you own a VCR? How many of you know how to program it? There is a big difference between owning something and understanding how it works. People who have a nodding acquaintance with a second language know the gap between hearing words and understanding the meaning of those words.

1 Peter 3:7 states You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (NASB)

Husbands we are directly instructed to understand our wives. Now I know some husbands who would say that it would be easier to understand quantum physics than to understand their wives. And guys, I know some wives who would say the same thing about us!

Now while the text is directly addressed to husbands it is not bad biblical interpretation to suggest that the principle of understanding one another can be applied to other relationships as well.

What does it mean to understand another person? It means to “make what is important to the other person as important to you as the other person is to you.” (2)

For instance, one father who was not much of a sports fan, had a son who developed an interest in hockey. So one year he took his son to as many hockey games as he could. It cost him some money and time, but proved to be a strong bonding experience for them. One of his friends asked him in the midst of the hockey season, “Do you like hockey that much?” He said, “No, but I like my son that much!” (2)

[At 11:00 service modify this story by using “husband” instead of dad and “wife” instead of son. And rather than hockey use “antiquing.”]

How do we develop an understanding spirit? By making the time to really get to know each other. And by making it a point to really listen to each other. I believe it was Yoggi Berra who said, “You can hear an awful lot by just listening.”

James 1:19 states that we should be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” (NLT) Parents I don’t know of any child that would be repulsed by a parent who was quick to really listen to them.

Tip #2: Keep commitments

It has been said we should be “generous with praise, but cautious with promises.” Parents we need to do everything we can to keep promises we make to our children. Spouses we need to do everything we can to keep our promises to our one another. Children you need to do everything you can to keep your promises to your parents.

Why is keeping our commitments and honoring our promises so important? Because we all tend to construct our hopes around promises.

When a man promises to love a woman until death they do part, that gives the woman security to become all she was meant to be in the marriage relationship.

Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 says 4 So when you make a promise to God, don’t delay in following through, for God takes no pleasure in fools. Keep all the promises you make to him. 5 It is better to say nothing than to promise something that you don’t follow through on. (NLT)

We can infer from this text that same holds true in our commitments to others. In other words, we are to be loyal. Proverbs 3:3-4 says 3 Never let loyalty and kindness get away from you! Wear them like a necklace; write them down within your heart. 4 Then you will find favor with both God and people, and you will gain a good reputation. (NLT)