By: Andy Baker

The popular children’s song depicts the familiar illustration by Jesus in Matthew 7:24-27 of the Sermon on the Mount. Two men were building houses – a wise man and a foolish man. The difference between them: One heard the teachings of Jesus and did them, while the other heard them, and did not do them (Matt. 7:24, 26). Consider for a moment the things that a truly wise man does in building his spiritual house:

The wise man uses a solid foundation. Many things such as money, fame, strength, and teachings of other wise men give the appearance to be solid foundations (Jer. 9:23). However, to this wise man, he knows that there is but one foundation that will withstand the storms of life and the storms of Judgment (Matt. 7:25). He knows that there is “no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 3:11). As the authority of Christ is the foundation for this astute individual (Col. 3:17), he also knows that slab repair will never be necessary.

By: Kevin Cauley

Our senses receive so much more information than our conscious minds can process. Some of that information is lost; some of it gets buried in our subconscious. Learning, the act of perceiving information to consciously retain it, requires frequent exposure to and repetition of that information. How we learn is just as important as what we learn. Lack of focus builds a fuzzy picture of that which we are studying, but life is granular and detailed. People are also granular and detailed. Building the wrong image of another person or building an incomplete image does not produce the kind of interactions that God wants us to have with others. We must get beyond ourselves to authentically engage in a real relationship.

The only way for someone to reveal their true self to us, though, is to talk to them. God reveals Himself to us by talking to us. Paul wrote, “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:11-12).

We cannot know the mind of another unless that mind is revealed to us through communication. Sometimes, people do not want to do this. We must ask questions. We must listen to what it is that they are concerned about. We must consider that their experiences are not ours. We must refrain from identifying with them and seek to understand them. If there is something that we do not understand, we must ask clarifying questions. Go where the conversation leads, not where you want to take it. This is what it means to truly listen (James 1:19).

By: Kevin Cauley

It is impossible to know everything about another person. Each faces life from their own set of personal experiences, making everyone unique. Adults have enough experiences in common to facilitate basic communication. This is a start, but to have the kind of interactions that God wants us to have, we must get outside of our own limited experiences and look at things from the perspective of another. This is not easy because one is no longer just facing what one knows about himself, but what one does not know about another. The temptation is always there to retreat into one’s own experiences, but this does not develop the relationship. It only serves to self-justify by creating our image of other people (2 Corinthians 10:12). The single greatest obstacle that we face in our relationships is the image that we construct of other people.

Most of the time, we interact with that image instead of with the actual person. Why do we do this? It is easier. That image is a product of our creation. It is what we see of ourselves in someone else. We know it very well. After all, we made it. But this is a selfish move because we are just interacting with an image of our creation, not the other person. This is a failure to engage authentically. It creates shallow and impersonal relationships that have no real substance.

God calls us, however, to interact with the actual person (Matthew 7:12, 22:39). This is real work because we must suppress our desires to relate only to what we know. We must reach out and learn about the other person by seeing them as unique and different. Then we can see them as they are, not as we want them to be.

By: Kevin Cauley

Two defining characteristics of Christ living within us are loving God and loving our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40). This is fundamental to good human interaction. Paul tells us that without love, all our efforts amount to nothing, even if we could perform the greatest of feats. “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Interacting with others must have love as its underlying motivation.

Love, when properly applied, governs our behavior for, “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” One’s interactions would wholly benefit from a generous application. The trick is, of course, to take the list and apply it to every thought, word, and deed. Why do we not do this?

Selfish desires get in the way of truly loving other people as God wants us to love them. One of the problems is that we do not see our selfish desires as unloving. We see them as “necessary,” or “important,” or “first.” Does God really want us putting others ahead of ourselves? Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” When it comes to selfish ambition or conceit, we must remove those desires in favor of others if we want to have good interactions with other people.