What about if you are in leadership and your job is to correct people? You need to expose all the bad things in them as I mentioned earlier.

Well there is a time to correct and to judge. After Jesus had called His 12 disciples into that closer place, He was always there for them, encouraging them and trusting them.

He showed them that He believed in them. But He also corrected them because they needed it. It was part of raising them up into becoming the great leaders that they eventually were.

If God raises you up to leadership, especially in the Body of Christ, you will have a slightly different relationship with people. If people come to us for training, I say to them,

"By the time we are finished, you will hate me at least once.

Because I am going to need to point things out to you that you may not like. I am sometimes going to take a chisel to that flaw, and it will hurt."

You see that is a different kind of relationship. And in such a relationship the person will have invited you into it. But I am talking about building relationships with ordinary people out there.

Tap into the Anointing

We can do this if we would learn the grace of God. Where do we get that from? Where do we get the Spirit and the anointing? From the Spirit that is living within, because Christ is in you by His Spirit.

Don't step out there and try and do it in the flesh. Don't say,

"I am going to show you that I can do this."

People will do you so bad. They will respond to you so bad, you will say,

"That was a stupid idea!"

Get ready for it. You will be tested. The better way is to get into the Spirit first and say,

"Okay Lord, we will go and do this one together. Lord you know that this person hates me. We have such a conflict, but I am going to build a relationship with her now Lord."

Well if you failed before it is not going to change now. You will need more than what you had before. You will need the power of God to do that, because you are incapable of loving the way He loves. So, you need to let Him do it through you.

Say to Him, "Okay Lord, here we go. I will stand back, and you love them through me. You believe in them through me and have hope in them through me."

You would be amazed how suddenly a new power arises in you.

Conclusion

In conclusion, building relationships with others seldom comes naturally. The reason for this is because we are all selfish by nature. There is always a price to pay for relationships. There is always something you need to give up and something you need to give away.

You need to be able to show grace and do what is not natural. You will need His grace to enable you. And the only way that you can do that is to walk in the Spirit.

How do you walk in the Spirit? You stop walking in the flesh. Walking in the Spirit is a very simple thing. It means coming to the place where you hear His voice and obey it as you follow His leading.

You just come with simple submission and say,

"Lord, I can't do this. I can't love this person or accept them. So, I submit to you Lord, and ask you to lead me and show me what to do."

It becomes so easy that you will wonder why you didn't do that before.

Make a Start

So, from now on, you have no more excuses as to why you don't have relationships. You might say,

"Who do I develop relationships with?"

Do it with the next person you meet. Perhaps you go to the shops and there is the sour, miserable teller again who never smiles. See if you can get her to smile.

I take it as a challenge to try and get her to smile. I will say something that will make her smile. You will be amazed at how you can bring about a change in the person.

You might think, "She only showed a couple of teeth, but it was a change."

You see if you keep doing that, the next time you walk in you will see the smile coming out as soon as you arrive. Suddenly you will have a new relationship.

It won't be a close friendship yet. There are levels of friendship which I have dealt with elsewhere when I taught on building relationships. But you can start accumulating things, to where when you walk into a place people should notice you.

When we had been living in Pretoria for a while, we walked into a shop one day and one of the security guards at the door said,

"Hey, I would like to work for you guys."

We said, "Well we aren't offering a job and we don't need anybody."

He said, "You guys come here often, and I really would like to work for you."

Why? Did he think we were wealthy because we spent time shopping all day instead of working? I don't know. But we found that after a while of going to the same place, the people there began to know us.

We got the smiles when we met them, and we got positive responses. You know why? Because we always went with an openness and a consideration, never with a judgmental attitude.

You can do this at work. You can do it wherever you get involved in any social or public activity. Any time you are involved with people, take the time to sometimes just listen or to ask them a question about themselves.

Listen to them. Then ask them another question about themselves and listen once more. They might finally say to you,

"And tell me about you."

Don't think, "Well this is my chance. Let's unload on them."

No, say to them, "No, you don't want to know about me. I'm not important. I want to find out about you."

They won't argue with you. Trust me they will carry on talking about themselves. In the end they did all the talking but they will say,

"Man, you are a wonderful conversationalist."

You didn't say anything. You just asked questions and you showed an interest. You also smiled a bit. Smiling does help. I know it might crack your face if you are not used to doing it, but you need to make the effort.

You can build relationships wherever you go. You might come to the place where you are in a foreign city in the middle of the night waiting to catch a plane. Someone may come running up and say,

"Hey, how's it?"

"Do I know you?"

I want to get to that place, don't you? I want to be in a place where people want to know me and where they are telling their friends about me.

If we could build that kind of rapport and relationship in the Body of Christ, do you know how the church will grow? People will come in. And we will have what it said happened in the Scriptures.

The Lord was adding to the church daily those who were being saved.

Let's go out and do it.

My Prayer

"Thank you Father for your Word. Thank you for the challenge and for the inspiration. Thank you for the principles that we can apply. And above all, thank you for the power and ability that you give us to do these things.

We submit ourselves to you and say, Lord lead us in this. Show us how to do it and who to do it with. And may we have an ever-increasing circle of friends and influence as we spread your Kingdom into this earth. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen."