God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
I appreciate your patience with me. Three blog posts ago I wrote an article titled: The Friends We Choose: A Person Who Will Challenge Us. And at the end of that blog post I wrote: “In our next post, we’ll look at the most effective way to hold others accountable.” Then in the next two blog posts I wrote about suffering, and love vs. opinions, instead of how to hold others accountable. What can I say? The creative process is messy sometimes—oftentimes—okay, most of the time. When I’m on my game, what I do before I start writing is I pray and ask the Lord to give me words that will please Him and bless Him. Sometimes what comes out isn’t what I expected. I hope that’s because the words were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Anyway, here are some thoughts about challenging our friends effectively.
An Enormous Amount of Data
There’s a husband and wife team, John and Julie Gottman, who have been researching married couples for more than half a century. And they’ve accumulated an enormous data set on human-to-human, face-to-face communication. Harvard professor Arthur Brooks says of John and Julie Gottman: “They’re actually heroes. . . . They’ve saved thousands of marriages. Thousands: it’s unbelievable.” If you’re interested in learning more about their research you can read about it here: https://www.gottman.com/about/research/ and in Arthur Brooks interview video.
You might say, “Well that’s for married couples, and we’re talking about how to share constructive feedback with a fellow Jesus follower. So why use this research?” That’s a great question. And the reason is this: of the many things the Gottmans’ research uncovered, one of the most insightful bits of information—especially for our purposes—is how to effectively share constructive feedback. And it turns out it’s not only effective within a marriage, but in any relationship.
5 Essential Elements of Sharing Constructive Feedback
1. The magic ratio, 5 to 1: One of the fascinating findings from the Gottmans’ research is what they call the “magic ratio.” What it means is that, for every negative interaction (in our context, constructive interaction) during a conversation, to communicate effectively the conversation requires five or more positive interactions. This fits perfectly with the group of Jesus followers we’ve been talking about. The deep abiding khesed love of Jesus is what characterizes the relationships in our group. So there should be an enormous amount of love deposited in their relationship accounts. Without this ocean of love, any constructive feedback we offer is doomed to sink. And in the moment, during our conversation offering constructive feedback, we need to offer at least five positives. So love for the person you’re in conversation with is key. If you find you’re unable to share from a place of love, wait until you’re in a place where you can share with love. If you can’t get there, then don’t share at all. Without love we’re a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. Without love we are nothing, and without love we have nothing worth offering (1 Corinthians 13).
2. Start gently: Another fascinating finding from the Gottmans’ research is that 96% of the time, the way a conversation begins predicts the outcome of the conversation. So if a conversation starts with a harsh tone, 96% of the time the conversation won’t end well. Conversely, if the first three minutes of a conversation starts softly with gentleness, 96% of the time the conversation will end well. So share with humility and be gentle. “Wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere,” God informs us in James 3:17. Gentleness should be an attribute of every Jesus follower. (See 2 Timothy 2:24-26, Galatians 5:22-23, Galatians 6:1, Ephesians 4:2, 1 Corinthians 13:4-5, 2 Corinthians 10:1, Colossians 3:12, 1 Timothy 6:11, etc.)
Be gentle. (See One of the Most Disrespected Dismissed Discounted Attributes of Christian Character.)
3. Lead with love: Start your conversation by sharing how much you love and appreciate the person. Share how much you respect the way they walk with Christ. Start with their strengths. Start with positives. In a previous post, we saw how Jesus began his conversation with Nathanael by affirming him. (See The Friends We Choose: A Person Who Will Challenge Us.)
4. “I feel . . .”: Share how you feel. It might seem really basic on the surface, but it’s imperative to learn how to differentiate and clearly use I statements over you statements. You statements almost always land poorly. People generally feel threatened by you statements, and that threatened feeling can quickly turn to defensiveness, and then you’ve got a fight on your hands. If you want to give truly constructive feedback, and do so in the best way possible for it to be received, I statements are much more effective.
It’s become increasingly common for people to say “I feel” when they really mean “I think.” So when you do this, it’s important to honestly share your feelings, because an I can easily become a you if you’re not careful. “I feel like you aren’t listening” looks like an I statement, but really it’s a you statement in disguise; it’s a veiled accusation as opposed to a true expression of your feelings. “I feel concerned” or “I feel unsettled” are the kind of statements you want to aim for to make sure the conversation stays positive and constructive. That can sometimes be followed up by a kind of you statement to give context to your feelings (for example, “I feel sad when I think you’re not listening to me”), but you never want to lead with the you. By accurately sharing your feelings with humility, you become more vulnerable in a way that can open the heart of your listener.
And that sets you both up to go into the next element effectively, which is…
5. “I know we . . .”: Finally, share your constructive feedback in a we statement. “I know we all want to live consistent with the character of Jesus. I know we all want that. I want that for me and I know you want that too.” The person you’re communicating with needs to feel like you’re on their team. You’re communicating one teammate to another. If you’re in a somewhat confrontational discussion, it changes it from one confronting the other to the both of you confronting the problem itself as something external to you both.
More Concerned with Our Own Behavior
Something I’ve noticed about people who love Jesus well and love others well is that they’re more concerned with their own behavior than they are with the behavior of others. And these people seem obviously more interested in receiving feedback than offering feedback to others. Directly offering constructive feedback to another person tends to be rare for these people. If they do offer constructive feedback, they tend not to name names and do it in a general way that’s focused on a behavior, not on an individual. (When they offer praise, it’s just the opposite. When they offer praise, they do name names—and often enthusiastically so.)
When these people who love well do choose to offer feedback, because they do it rarely, there’s greater weight to what they say and their communication is more effective.
Jesus is Gentle with You and with Me
As I look back on my life, I’m so grateful for how gentle Jesus has been with me. I feel His love for me every day. Even during the most trying and difficult times in my life, I feel the gentle way He walks through the darkness with me. When I fail, He provides correction in a way that helps me to recognize He loves me, and I can feel He corrects me because He wants what’s best for me.
Because Jesus is gentle with me, I must be gentle with others.
“Father, You tell us the fruit of Your Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Please, bless us with Your Holy Spirit, and all the fruits of Your Holy Spirit…
“Including gentleness.
“Amen.”
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1).
Notes:
John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy, Penguin Life, September, 2022
John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection, Harmony, January, 2024
The Love Like Jesus Book
Available on Google Play Books and on Amazon!
Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus)
Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others. Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including:
- Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God’s love to others.
- How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman’s love languages (and how you can too).
- The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ’s extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions.
- How to respond to critics the way Jesus did.
- How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did.
- How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat).
- How Jesus didn’t love everyone the same (and why you shouldn’t either).
- How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself–he even napped–and why you should do the same.
- How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end.
With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God’s definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too.
A life of loving like Jesus. (Kindle, hardcover, and paperback now available on Amazon and Google Play Books.)
We also recently released the audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Jonathan St. John. It’s available on the following platforms:
It’s also available on Amazon, Hoopla, Audiobooksnow, Chirp, Libro, Overdrive, and virtually everywhere audiobooks are offered.
