I do not intend to sound careless, irreverent or arrogant. I am divorced and remarried. I am not proud of being divorced. It is a painful experience I do not wish for anyone to go through. Life happened, and then life moved on. Today, I live 1000% dependent upon the mercy and grace of God.

I feel impressed to encourage someone reading this. You may have had a terrible experience and you have been going around a mountain of regret and pain. It is time to move on. It is time to pick the pieces of your life and allow God to begin a process of healing for your heart. He has not withdrawn His love or gifts from you. There is a great life ahead of you. Do not miss it!

There was a time my former wife and I had what Reverend Jesse Duplantis describes as one of those “progressive discussions” husbands and wives sometimes have with each other. This particular one, though over the phone, was quite intense and it upset me to the extent that I had to “read the riot act” via a text message the next day after I had calmed down. Fortunately, the SMS turned out to be sobering for both of us.

The incident motivated me to return to some notes I had taken while reading one of Dr John Maxwell’s books (I think The Success Journey), where he wrote on the various ways we communicate in our relationships. He was suggesting that we should aim a building our relationships when we communicate with one another. I will be on that later.

Except in moments of temporary insanity, we usually do not speak to people maliciously or with the deliberate intention of destroying our relationships. Nevertheless, we end up doing damage because, in uncontrolled (not uncontrollable) anger, we become stimulated to inflict the most effective hurt depending on our perception of the degree of how pardonable or unpardonable the person’s sin(s) was. During such moments, we tend to forget that our own sins were forgiven.

I recollect what a friend of mine in Jos said about what his grandmother used to tell him when they were growing up. Whenever he quarrelled with a sibling, particularly a sister who may have inflicted his ego with precise damage (By the way, the person who said guided missiles began with US military hardware should think again), she would respond to his protestations thus: 

“Greg, both of you were quarrelling, and at such moments you do not expect her to say nice things like, ‘Oh, see how lovely your eyes are!’ She did not mean what she said. She was angry just as you were.” Thank God for grandparents!

The danger of uncontrolled passion is that we tend to say and do things we later regret after we have calmed down, and in some cases, the regret could last a lifetime. 

I believe you can be in control of your words and actions even when you are angry. Self-control is what the Biblical injunction to “be angry and sin not” is about (Eph 4:26). However, if you cannot control what you say and do during such fiery spells, wait and then calm down to get your thinking clear before you say or do anything.

Anger, in and of itself, is not a sin, it is an emotion that is fundamental to the protection and even preservation of our moral fibre, both individually and for society as a whole. That is why a righteous man or woman should be angry at evil. 

Evil people are emboldened in their malicious ways and intentions, not because they are convinced that they are right in what they do. The contrary is often the case because they are quite aware that their ways are steeped in error. Their boldness is usually encouraged by the passive silence of the righteous.

Now back to Dr John Maxwell’s book. There he reveals four different styles of communication, which to him are Retaliation, Domination, Isolation and Cooperation. 

The first communication style, Retaliation, results in destroying positive communication. Retaliation pits people against each other, and it has a degrading effect on the recipient. It is an eye for an eye. 

The second style, Domination, destroys open communication and puts the people over each other, which results in the person on the receiving end being intimidated. 

Thirdly, the Isolation style destroys the hope of communication and directs the people away from each other. The effect on the recipient is frustration. 

Finally, the communication style of Cooperation results in developing positive open communication; it directs the people towards each other and has an encouraging effect on the one who receives it. 

Since the goal of our communication should be to strengthen our relationships, we should practice the Cooperation Style of communication in our lives. 

Furthermore, he said, to achieve the aim of building stronger relationships we should: “Express appreciation for one another; Structure our lives so we can spend time with one another; Deal with a crisis we face positively; Engage in continual communication; Share the same values and be committed to building our marriages.”

It is interesting that in the process of this writing, I took note that the first three communication styles result in destroying relationships, but the last one results in developing and building them. What do you want to do?

John 10:10 states that the thief comes to “…destroy.” Since you are not in league with the devil, you want to avoid communication that destroys your relationships and practice the ones that develop them. 

Friends, let us all work at developing the Let’s Talk Again pattern, especially when your communication with someone is heading in the wrong direction and dragging your relationship along with it. 

Thank you. Do not forget to keep Living, Loving and Learning.