The Power of Godly Friendships

4. Understand the secrets to effective communication.

Follow this process:

A. In order to have a powerful relationship, you must have clear and effective communication.

B. In order to have great communication, you must have understanding. One of the biggest problems in our relationships is feeling misunderstood. You want someone to understand you, understand where you are coming from and not judge your motives or intentions, right?

C. Well, in order to be understood, the other party needs to listen. If they aren’t listening, they’ll never understand you. If they’re already thinking about what they’re going to say while you are talking, they will not understand you.

I want to encourage you: If you need a harvest of someone listening to you, sow the seed by becoming a listener. The most successful parents, teachers and salesmen are those who learned to listen. This is our seed—listening. Our harvest will be that others listen to us; they will understand us; we will build a great relationship.

D. Now, you will not listen to someone you don’t respect, so the next key here is respect. How do you gain or give respect? Very simple. You must trust. This is very hard when you have been lied to or lied about. But if you are to have the building block of respect, it must be built on trust. Broken trust produces broken relationships, and broken trust in the result of broken promises.

E. Therefore, the final ingredient, which, in essence, is the first ingredient, is integrity. To have a great relationship, there must be truth in that relationship. Broken relationships, broken marriages and broken people are the result of broken promises.

So let’s put it together:

When a person has integrity (keeps their word), you can trust them.
When you trust them, you can respect them.
When you respect them, you will listen to them.
When you listen, you will understand them.
When you understand them, you will have great communication.
And when you have great communication, you can come into agreement with them.

When you come into agreement with them, you can ask for anything, and it will be done for you (Matt. 18:19).

Gregory Dickow is the founder and pastor of Life Changers International Church, one of the largest churches in the Chicagoland area. He also is the host of The Power to Change Today—an international television ministry that reaches a potential audience of more than 900 million households weekly.