The Joy Of Right Relationships

* The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov spent a summer in the 1940s in Alta, Utah. Nabokov collected butterflies. Other than writing, butterflies were his passion. He was absolutely driven in his quest to add to his collection of different species. Nabokov was passionate about assembling the finest collection of butterflies that the world had ever known. So great was his passion, he would be out in the fields at dawn and not return until evening. One night at dinner, he commented that he had spent the day at Bear Gulch. He had made some tremendous finds. But throughout the day he kept hearing a horrible groaning coming out of the gulch. His friend asked him, “Did you go and check out what it was?” “No,” replied Nabokov, “I have never seen such butterflies. I couldn’t be distracted from my task.” The next day, the body of an old prospector was found in the canyon, just yards from where Nabokov had been throughout the day. —Steve Farrar, Spiritual Survival During the Y2K Crisis

*It is said that Mary Kay, of Mary Kay Cosmetics, goes into each room, conference, and sees a sign over each persons head that reads, “Make me feel important.”

*John Maxwell has a personal goal to see every person he meets as a “10.” He says if you treat someone like a “2” they are going to act like a “2.”

III. You will experience the joy of right relationships when you take time to talk to people rather than about them. 22:10-32

* I am more deadly than the screaming shell of the cannon. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts, wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me, no purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive. My name is Gossip. —Morgan Blake, sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal.

*Ugly rumors were started at a youth retreat that threatened to tear the group up. The youth minister prayed to God about what he should do with his group to bring them back as one. God led him to the story of the woman caught in adultery where everyone wanted to stone the lady for her sin. The minister shared the story and then passed around a bucket of stones and insisted that each youth take one and carry it in their pocket throughout the remainder of camp. He asked them any time they felt criticizing someone else, or talking behind another’s back or passing on an ugly rumor, they were to reach into their pocket, touch the stone and ask themselves if they were without sin.

The 9.5 tribes on the west side of Canaan caught rumor that the 2.5 east side tribes of Canaan had gotten involved in building an altar. Warren Wiersbe explians, “God had instructed the Jews to destroy the altars of the heathen nations in Canaan and not to build altars of their own. There was to be one altar of sacrifice at the one sanctuary that God had appointed. The accused tribes made it clear that they weren’t setting up a rival religion because the altar they built wasn’t for sacrifices. Rather, they were putting up a witness that would remind the tribes of the Jordan that Reuben, God, and Manasseh were a part of the Jewish nation.”