Making Peace with Prickly People: Transforming Relationships by Loving God, Self, and Others

By Deb Potts

I’m mad at you! We try over and over to improve a relationship and yet nothing ever changes. Are you ready to try something new? The secret to making peace in relationships is given in the two greatest commandments, found in the Bible: love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength; and love your neighbor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah Potts
• Release date: Oct 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997505627

Deb Potts

God called Deb to follow Him just at the brink of a family tragedy. She loves to share her amazing journey of healing with anyone who will listen. Her greatest joy is passing on the wisdom God taught her about forgiveness, healing, and destiny. Deb is a Christian Women's Ministry speaker, Bible study teacher, and blogger. She loves to connect with women in coffee shops and in auditoriums, in speaking and in writing, with humor and candor. Deb and husband Bruce lead the Campus Marriage Team at Kensington Community Church in Lake Orion, Michigan. They mentor couples and individuals and are certified Facilitators for the Prepare & Enrich assessment tool. Deb was certified in 2009 as a Personality Trainer by Florence Littauer of CLASSeminars. She is a Success Principles Certified Life Coach.

Book preview

MAKING PEACE

WITH

PRICKLY PEOPLE

Transforming Relationships by

Loving God, Self, and Others

Deb Potts

Making Peace with Prickly People by Deb Potts

ISBN: 978-0-9975056-0-3

ISBN: 978-0-9975056-2-7 (e book)

Copyright © 2016 by Deb Potts

Requests for information should be directed to

Deb Potts, PO Box 80183, Rochester, MI 48308, www.pricklypeople.com

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan.

All rights reserved worldwide.

www.zondervan.com.

The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scriptures marked NAS are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD (NAS): Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, copyright© 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scriptures marked TM are taken from the THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH (TM): Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, copyright©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced except for brief quotation in a review without the express written permission of the author.

Cover Clip Art: Irina Iarovaia / www.123rf.com

Cover Design: Michelle Cline / www.clinecoversanddesign.com

Book Format: Surendra Gupta / [e-mail]

First printing August 2016 / Printed in the United States of America

For my two moms –Helen and Shirley.

Thanks for putting up with your prickly person.

Acknowledgements

There are so many to thank for the birth of this book; first of all, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is my tutor and the one who perfects my faith – without Him there would be no book and I would still be a prickly person.

Second, my patient husband Bruce. Don’t ever believe him that I’ve been studying prickly people ever since I married one! He has faithfully provided a peaceful haven for me for 40 years. My talented daughter Robin and my skilled son Jason, for their help and encouragement.

Third, to all those who helped make this project come to life. Emily Gehman and Arlene Knickerbocher, extraordinary editors. Harolyn Reed, a willing friend who dug through my manuscript and provided helpful insight. The intrepid women from Kensington Community Church who piloted the study guide. Mary Antenucci and the Griggs Street Book Club who braved reading through my first rendition.

Finally to my sixth grade teacher, Miss Nagy. She saw the author in me way back then. I wish I could find her and tell her I finally did it!

Note to the Reader

Visit www.pricklypeople.com for complementary content. You will find the link to a personality assessment, a study guide and leader notes, a prickly person prayer calendar, and more.

Table of Contents

Introduction

LOVE GOD

1. Who is this God?

2. Making Peace with God

LOVE MYSELF

3. Who am I?

4. What is a Prickly Person?

5. Making Peace with Me

LOVE THEM

6. Making Peace with Them

Appendix A – The Personality of God

Appendix B – No Greater Love

Appendix C – Jesus Meets our Emotional Needs

Notes

About the Author

Introduction

Scorching waves of torrid air distorted the images of some men standing in the dusty corner of the courtyard. Passersby noticed the august assembly of teachers, lawyers, scribes, and Pharisees. Even from a distance it was obvious they were in a stew about something. Their voices stabbed the air, rising and falling like raucous birds of prey. In their midst stood Jesus. As the sun beat down on His head, Jesus sorely missed His Father and the peace of heaven. It was another long day for Him, working to prove to rebellious people He really was the Son of God.

First, it was the request for His credentials. Who gives you the right to speak to us like this?

Then it was the response to His story about prickly people. How insulting – he’s talking about us! He’s outta’ here.

There was the trick question about paying taxes to Caesar, followed by the off -base tale of the woman with seven husbands.

Jesus knew exactly how to answer each of the challenges presented to Him, but the day was wearing on Him.

Finally, a teacher who had been listening in approached Jesus with the last question. Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. There is no commandment greater than these’ (Mark 12:28b-31).

Jesus’ words that day stumped all the so-called experts. They weren’t about to lose face in such a public setting ever again. The questioning abruptly stopped as they slunk away.

These two commandments are more important than any other in the Bible. Besides the famous Ten Commandments, the Bible contains a whole host of rules for men to live by. Some have to do with how we are to work, some with practical life issues like diet, some with how we are to worship God, and others have to do with our interactions with other people. But God sums all of them up in two simple rules about loving relationships.

God, it turns out, invented love. Chapter four of 1 John contains a long passage about God’s love. God is love. God is lovable. Any shred of love in the hearts of humankind is there because it first came from God. God first loved us.

How surprising—or perhaps not—the inventor of love would want rebellious people to love Him back. He watches us from heaven, His heart on his sleeve. How utterly exposed and out on a limb of God! The most powerful force in the universe is a sucker for the very love He invented.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.¹

We are the recipients of this vulnerable love of God, though we are mostly ungrateful for it. But once we have been transformed by that love we are stunned to realize the price God paid for it. God’s love fills us like a fountain; it bubbles over and splashes sparkles like fairy dust in our wake. The Bible tells us the plumb-line of love extends not only to sister and brother but to an enemy as well. We find the second commandment confirms the first. And the first enables the second. There is no First Commandment without the Second. And there can be no Second Commandment without the First.

The most important commandments are all about love. So who is lovable? Is God? Are we? What about those prickly people? Yes, yes, and yes. Making peace with prickly people is, first of all, about making peace with God. He sent His lovable Son, Jesus, to make peace with us, the prickly people. How do we respond to Him? What if God is our prickly person? Do we need to make peace with Him?

Secondly, making peace with prickly people is about making peace with ourselves. In some cases, we have become our own worst enemies and we may struggle to find anything lovable about ourselves. Once we have worked our way through these relationships—with God and ourselves—then we are ready to tackle those other prickly people. And we find the last step to be a piece of cake if we have successfully navigated the first two.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love…This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:7-8, 10-11).

Join me on a journey as we ponder love through the lens of personality. If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we need to understand what that looks like. A four-fold personality model fills in the picture for us. We’ll dive deep into the personality of Jesus, our role model, who loves us with all His Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength. Then we’ll examine how to have a healthy love for ourselves and, finally, to love our neighbor.

LOVE GOD

1: Who Is This God?

Last week a friend heard his pastor say, ‘You can’t know Jesus like you know your friends. He is altogether different from us.’ Blasphemy. You can know Jesus just as intimately as his first disciples did. Maybe more so. Jesus came to be known, for heaven’s sake, came to make God known to us.²

In 1946, a breath-taking discovery was made in a remote cave in Israel, by the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered accidentally, and they were almost perfectly preserved. These ancient scrolls turned many skeptics into believers of the Bible as the fragile, cracking parchments were studied.

I was fortunate enough to visit the Chicago Field Museum in 2007 to glimpse a bit of those precious parchments. When we entered the room, the lights were very dim. As we walked past the glass display cases, a light would come on only once every few minutes and then quickly be extinguished for fear of destroying the fragile scrolls. The chilled air was reverent and viewers were silent as they looked for a few tantalizing moments at the Hebrew writings.

We saw the book of Isaiah, originally written approximately seven hundred years before Christ was born. We were gazing at a message that was more than twenty-six hundred years old. I don’t read Hebrew, but I was intrigued by the beautiful calligraphy.

Isaiah 9:6 is one of the most well-known verses in the book of Isaiah. It is a prophecy, a prediction about a future event.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).

The scribes were the ones who had the task of copying Scripture so others could read it. They followed a strict code as they worked. They had to count every letter and every word. Before writing the name of God, they had to get up, take a bath, change their clothes, and sit back down to write. Were they so intent on the mechanics of copying that they failed to consider the overall impact of this passage? Did they wonder who this Son was going to be? What would it be like to know Him?

This verse gives us valuable information about Jesus. He will be a son of those Isaiah is writing to – the people of Israel, and ultimately all people. He will be a relative of humanity, a person like us, related to us like family.

The passage goes on to pronounce four names by which we will know him. Biblical names always have meanings; they name the destiny of their holders, describing a life purpose. It’s not surprising that Jesus, the perfect Man, would need not just one name, but four names. Each of these four names represents a role he will play in leading mankind. He will be the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.

Let’s take a look at this God. Who is he? What are his attributes? Is he worthy of our complete devotion? Is he really as lovable as all that?

Other passages of Scripture define who Jesus is. Hebrews 1:3 informs us that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. Colossians 1:15 defines Jesus as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. And Colossians 2:9 adds, In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. So we can assume Isaiah reveals something about the Son as well as the Father. To speak about the nature of God is to speak about the nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The Three are one in nature, even if they are three distinct persons. Jesus is God made flesh, and we can study Jesus to learn about the nature or personality of God.

…Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace… Four names, four roles, four sides of the same person. We could think of these names as representing the four personality types. Since the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates, most personality specialists have taught a four-fold personality model. This model can be applied to Jesus, the First, the Perfect, Man.

The evidence of Jesus’ four-fold personality is revealed throughout Scripture, beginning way back in the book of Genesis and extending to the very end of the Bible in the book of Revelation. So let’s take a quick journey through the Bible, stopping in several places along the way where we can see evidence of this four-fold personality. For those who would prefer to dig a little deeper into this information, please see Appendix A for a more thorough theological study.

A Quick Journey through History

Our first stop is in the book of Genesis, where the Garden of Eden, the home of Adam and Eve, is described. A river ran through the garden and at the garden’s border, the river separated into four rivers which went out into the whole world. A Biblical scholar, A. W. Pink believed these four rivers were symbolic of the four Gospels, each presenting Jesus a little differently as He went out into the world, teaching, or watering all people.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites worshiped God in a temporary structure like a tent, called the Tabernacle. This is our next stop on the journey. Many commentators have studied the Tabernacle and concluded that it foreshadowed significant facts about Christ. The Tabernacle, with its many symbols and types, was a shadow pointing to the Savior who, in the fullness of God’s time, tabernacled in this world and opened the way for God to bring redemption to mankind.³

When the Israelites would camp in the desert, they would assemble the entire Tabernacle and camp around it. They were divided into four groups – camping to the north, south, east, and west of the building. Each group rallied around a large banner, meant to help them find their group. It is interesting to note the images featured on the banners: a man, an ox, an eagle, and a lion. More about them later.

The next stop on our quick trip through Scripture involves the magnificent angelic creatures called cherubim. These creatures are described in the Old Testament as well as in the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. Many believe the four creatures reveal something about God’s nature or character or personality, and many connect these four faces to the four Gospels.

They were pretty fantastic beings. One of their many unusual features was their four faces. Each cherub is described as having the face of a man, an ox, an eagle, and a lion. One body with four faces symbolizes one man, Jesus Christ, who has four sides or personalities.

And finally, one more stop on this whirlwind tour. The New Testament contains four accounts of the life of Jesus; the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Traditionally, each Gospel has been associated with the image of a creature. Have you guessed what those images are? Luke is the man, Mark is the ox, John is the eagle, and Matthew is the lion.

Those images connect the four Gospels with the four personality styles of Jesus. The man symbolizes Jesus as the Everlasting Father or the Heart of God, revealed in the Gospel of Luke. The ox symbolizes Jesus as the Prince of Peace or the Soul of God, revealed in the Gospel of Mark. The eagle symbolizes Jesus as the Wonderful Counselor or the Mind of God, revealed in the Gospel of John. And the lion symbolizes Jesus as the Mighty God or the Strength of God, revealed in the Gospel of Matthew.

Figure 1: The Four-Fold Personality of Jesus

Figure 1 is a chart of the personality of Jesus. The chart is presented as four interlocking puzzle pieces. Each piece represents one of the four-fold personality types. As we go, we will build on this and examine each of the four-fold styles in more detail. Jesus has the most complete, perfect personality of any man, and breaking His personality down this way is like using a magnifying glass to examine each aspect individually.

This is similar to the story of the blind men who each examines an elephant. One man touches the trunk and declares the elephant is a tree branch. One man examines the foot and declares the elephant is a huge tree trunk. One man examines the tail