Relationship Rules - How to Win at Love, Leadership, and Leveraging Your Purpose

CHAPTER 1

Oftentimes the word “relationship” is a scary term and thought because it is attached to brokenness, pain, hurt, trauma, or the reminder that our heart was torn into pieces.

Maybe for us it’s scary because we never had a strategy. We have often traversed through life like a ship without a sail, being tossed back and forth by people who had no direction. As a result, we find ourselves treating relationships like a game of basketball where all we do is rebound, but we don’t assist ourselves in the process of healing. We not only hurt the next person, but we hurt ourselves in the process because we concealed what needed to be healed.

How can you expect someone to be all that you desire for them to be, if you remain all that you have been? Consequently, you never attract what you want. Rather, you attract who you are because you’re still the same person in the same predicament. It ultimately yields the same kind of people masked behind a different face, keeping you in the same place. When you take the necessary steps to do inventory internally, you won’t settle for relation-slips and situationships because you are getting your house in order. You’re living with intentionality, following God’s blueprint and putting boundaries in place to protect your soul and spirit.

II Kings 4:1-7 renders an account of the prophet Elisha, giving direction to a woman who was mourning the death of her husband. As a single mother in debt, the creditor desired to take her two sons as slaves.

Elisha inquired about what he can do for her and asked “What do you have in your house?” Elisha never requested to know what was in her bank account, purse, or storage unit. He wanted to know what she had in her house.

Could it be that what you’re looking for, is looking for you? The book can be written in your house. The vision can be launched in your house. The business can be birthed in your house. Can you take the time to mute the noise around you, so you can hear the voice within you? Will you take the time to roll up your sleeves and quarantine with your dream?

When you can’t go outside, you have to go inside. The deeper meaning of “house” is discovering what’s inside of your mind, soul, and spirit to unearth your treasure within. While you’re at home, it’s time to get your house in order. Will you be creative in a crisis and be proactive in this pandemic?

You have to do more than organize your closet. You have to declutter your mind, soul, and spirit. This is about more than shuffling through shoes, shirts, and skirts. You must shift through the shelves of your soul. It’s about being courageous enough to clean up your character and credit. How can you expect a spouse without having order in your house? It’s time to do personal inventory and identify the areas that you need to strengthen. You’re spending hours trying to get the latest tea and seek therapy on Clubhouse meanwhile there’s disorder and dysfunction in your house.

It’s time to get our priorities in order. The whole world is on Zoom but our vision is still blurry when it comes to relationships and interpersonal development. Are you enhancing your character, credit, and yes even your cleanliness. I saw a post on social media that read, “You want to be a wife but you can’t clean your tub. You’re worried about the wrong ring baby.” It’s funny and truthful at the same time! It’s time to do a deep cleaning on our internal and external house.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. I can remember breaking my favorite pair of glasses in my house and throwing a temper tantrum all by myself. I accidentally broke them and couldn’t blame any-body else but myself. I couldn’t believe that my favorite pair of glasses had snapped. The lenses were fine but the frame was fractured.

In the midst of my meltdown, God spoke to me and said “Everything you were looking through, is no longer working for you.” The frame that held the lenses to my glasses was broken. What do you do, when everything that held your vision together is broken?

Look at our world. Can you see that the system is broken? The framework of fickle friendships, relationships, and marriages is a mirage. The financial frame of life is broken. The frame of careers and communities is broken.

Despite it all, I recognize there’s a blessing in the breaking. What you were looking through is no longer working for you, because it’s not big enough for you. God wants to expand your vision, to walk in greater and see life clearer. He is stretching your faith with a new frame of reference. He has a new frame of focus and a new prescription for your vision.

Have you ever looked for your glasses and they were on your face? You were moving so fast that you were looking for your phone and it was on your ear. Looking for your watch while it was on your wrist. Frantically searching for your keys but they were in your pocket. So many times we are looking for what we already have within.

II Kings chapter 4 affirms that the woman went in her house and shut the door. When you shut the door on what isn’t necessary, God will reveal new opportunities. The woman shut the door and began to pour. Shut the door on your past. It’s time to pour into your purpose and future. Shut the door on toxic relationships and begin to let God heal your spirit.

If you begin to pour, you won’t remain poor. You won’t continually pass over opportunities repeatedly. If you begin to pour, you won’t make poor decisions. Stir up your God-given gifts. Pour into your ideas, vision, and business.

The woman was a single mother in debt, barely making it. God can still take the little that you have and do much with it, right in your house. Little by little, continue to pour God’s oil of joy, gladness, and healing into your heart. Stretch your faith to see through what you’re going through. God is strengthening you to do more with less because you’re blessed.

As a kid, I vividly remember walking into my mother’s house, on freezing winter days in Detroit and hearing her say, “Edward, shut the door all the way and don’t let the heat out.” Some of the simplest words you hear as a kid, takes on a new meaning as an adult. The simple statement of “shut the door” can be applied to not only the temperature, but also the climate of our circumstances. Certain things in our lives have frozen us out of the bright future that we seek to attain. Before you open the door to a new opportunity, you have to shut the door on toxic relationships, bad habits, and negative thoughts that keep you going in circles. It’s time to make forward progress and pour into your purpose.

There is a door of opportunity that God wants you to step into, but it comes at the expense and even the pain of shutting the door on your past. Closing the door on your past, gives you the keys to open the door to your limitless future.

Shut the door on relationships that have kept you discombobulated, depressed, and defeated. It’s simple to say, but it takes intentional focus to do it. Shut the door and let go of negative thinking and low self-esteem. You have a gift inside of you that can turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

Your past is not a crutch that you have to use to limp into your future. You can’t walk or run into your future, if you’re crippled by your past. When you free your mind, your future becomes a byproduct of your thought process. Remember what’s ahead of you, is far greater than what’s behind you.

The frigidity of the world has infiltrated our mind and spirit, to the point that our dreams are frozen by fear and unbelief. Some of our hearts are frozen, due to past hurt from relationships. Many of our lives are at a standstill, making no forward progression. Some people have left you out in the cold through broken promises, forsaking you in a time of need, or walking out of your life. Let them go. When what isn’t for you steps away, it creates room for the right love and opportunities to come your way.

You can’t afford to be bitter, because better is coming. Refuse to allow the pain of your past, to put an icebox where your heart used to be. God’s love and self-love is strong enough to overcome apathy, bitterness, and hatred.

Rejection is direction, positioning you on the path of purpose. Every “NO” that you’ve been told, only means “New Opportunity.” You have to look at the negative, positively and adjust your thinking towards victory and opportunity. Stop exposing yourself to the elements of negativity, apathy, and calamity. Shut the door of depression and step into a new place of peace. Shut the door of low self-esteem and step into a new place of self-love and serenity.

If people won’t add to your value, then subtract them from your life. Don’t forget, the past is a prison, but your future is freedom. Today make a decision to...