I told you my wife sold a desk for $100. The guy offered $115. She said no I’ll take less. Get it? The seller talked the buyer down.

She did it because she had a good feeling about him because he was meek and didn’t negotiate or push.

I saw the same thing on American Pickers recently. The seller took Mike and Frank’s first offer almost every time. Once in a while he negotiated a bit. Mike and Frank were pumped at the great stuff they got.

At the end of the show before they left, they gave the seller $400. “You gave us some awesome deals. Take this; we’re still going to make some good money.” They had to argue with the seller to get him to take the cash.

Generosity is built into you and your family

Generosity causes people to want to reciprocate.

Of course the mess of life interferes with the reciprocation. The mess of suspicion, fear, anger, busyness, bitterness, fatigue. It’s not an automatic response. You don’t always see reciprocation, and when you do it’s not always right away.

But be confident that when you are generous you are cooperating and trusting a great law of creation that is built into humans. God has wired us to be sensitive to generosity so that we might be sensitive to his generosity to us in Christ.

Generosity is part of God’s image and he has stamped us with his image. The image is corrupted by the fall and we’re all now naturally selfish, but the seed and echo of generosity remains. You can water the seed with a little generosity to get it to grow.

To fight the voice in you that says ‘good idea, do it later,’ start small

Find the teeniest least noticeable way to be generous to your family, and try to do it so they will never consciously be aware. Bite your tongue. Smile when you don’t feel like it. Subtly step aside. Take the smaller piece. Be gentle for a second when you’re normally hard.

You know your family – try to make the generousness small but meaningful to that person. Keeping it small and unnoticeable helps you get started.

My brother mentioned yesterday how he tries to control trees and shrubs on his property. He said no matter how hard he works, plants will always do what they are wired to do, even growing through concrete over time. He tries to not fight the plant but to cooperate with what it wants to do anyway.

When you do small consistent acts of generosity for your family, you are cooperating with something big that is already at work in them. Over time they can begin to reciprocate. Then, when you begin to get a little momentum going, some good things can happen.

Whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully – 2 Corinthians 9.6

What’s the smallest, most invisible act of generosity you could do for a family member today?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 28.

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If you’ve ever disappointed your parents or spouse or kids so much that you were grieved and so were they, then you understand a bit about the influence of the heart.

The influence of the hand cares mostly about results. Just git er done.

The influence of the head cares mostly about persuasion and convincing. Results matter but the head wants you to want to.

The influence of the heart cares mostly about your relationship

Results might not be worth it if getting there comes between you and the other person.

The other person can be your whole family or part of your family. Or maybe it is just one person.

What would it take to have the kind of relationship with someone that made them not want to do anything that hindered that relationship? Where lack of results is not as painful as something coming between you?

If you have anything close to that kind of relationship with even one person, you know the kinds of things it takes.

Things like:

Grace.

Patience.

Generosity.

Encouragement.

Losing.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Humor.

And when you make the relationship the most important thing, guess what? As a by-product you get the results you wanted to get by pushing.

Or maybe it seems that way. Maybe the relationship changes the results you want; now you want results that are from – and that enhance – your relationship.

It’s like a romance – slowly over time the heart connection grows until there’s something special between you that becomes more important than anything else. 

In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give – C.S. Lewis

That’s how it’s worked for Brenda and me

I may have a preference for which house we buy, but that preference weighs far less than my desire for her to be happy. And my desire for her happiness doesn’t come from some painful sacrifice. We’ve been together so long, and I love her so much, that my happiness has merged with hers.

Sometimes helping her be happy feels so good it feels selfish! Not always of course, but our relationship is characterized by this kind of thing.

And she’s the same way. You might think this is a result of forty years of work, but for the first twenty years we were clueless and went in the hole of selfish negativity and trying to influence each other with the hand.

Ten years later we were out of the hole and on our way to a decent level of unselfishness with the head and more of the heart.

It takes time but not forever. If you’re in the hole you can get out. Ten years from now your family could be fighting over insisting the other person gets their way. If you start now.

Who in your family do you have such a heart for, that if being right came between you, you’d rather be wrong?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 25.

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Influencing your family with the hand feels pushy and heavy to others. The hand doesn’t much care what anyone thinks.

The head definitely cares what you think

That’s how the head influences.

When you want your family to go to Golden Corral instead of Ruth’s Chris, and you talk about how you can spend the savings at the Putt-Putt, and how the bourbon chicken and shrimp salad rocks at GC, and Think of all the choices! There’s something for everybody! then you’re influencing with the head.

The head cares what people think and influences by convincing and persuading you towards what it believes is best. It respects you.

The head wants you happy

The head wants you sold on it. When you say, “That makes sense. I’m convinced. OK,” then the head wins. Everybody’s happy.

The hand would just push or intimidate or manipulate you into it, and then be the only one happy.

Persuading and convincing with respect is challenging. It takes sensitivity and patience. It takes time and might not turn out the way you want. You can panic inside and easily turn the head into the hand without realizing it.

But, when you persuade with respect and finally get to where you’re going it feels good to you and to everybody else.

It’s difficult but worth it.

Who in your family influences with persuasion and respect? How is your relationship with them different than with a pusher?

There’s another way of influencing. Even more difficult, but awesomely wonderful for you and your family. That’s tomorrow.

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 24.

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You have hopes and dreams for your family. You want your family to be all it can be. You want closeness, more love, less drama. You want reconciliation and healing.

You also want your family to feel good to you.

So how do you go there? How do you move in that direction? How do you influence your family?

One way you can influence your family: the hand

But the hand is pushy

It might overtly push. It might subtly manipulate. The hand just wants its way. That doesn’t mean the hand wants a bad thing. It can be a very good thing. We’re talking about how you go about getting it, how you influence your family towards it.

The hand influences by fear of punishment, or fear of harm or negative consequences. Punishment does not have to mean the hand will actually strike you; it just means it’s not worth it to resist.

You can get people to do what you want, especially if you develop the skill persistently over the years. It doesn’t matter if anyone actually wants to or is convinced. Results now are what matters.

The hand is the easiest way to try to influence

It’s the default of men, since we’re wired for strength and protection and stuff. Everybody likes to go with their default because it’s easy.

But anyone can master the hand. The hand is not just the domain of dad and sometimes mom. Kids learn pretty quick how to get their way. Siblings gravitate to it, and so do some of those cousins and relatives heading your way this Thanksgiving.

The hand is not artistic or relational. Art and relationships involve mystery and patience. The hand already knows what’s best and thinks you should too.

The hand can work, but that doesn’t mean it wins

It doesn’t win if relationships are harmed. You can win the battle and lose the war. The war is won in relationships.

You can fool yourself when you push and get your way with family members. It feels like you won, and winning feels good. But it’s empty if family members just decide it’s in their short-term best interest to obey the hand, that it’s not worth it to resist. They don’t like it and they don’t like you.

Majoring on the hand will affect your relationships and your influence in all other areas.

I don’t like talking about the hand because it feels negative and icky, but that’s the nature of the hand: it doesn’t care much what people think or how they feel. That’s why you save it for last, for when the damage is already bad and something has to change. Then meet the hand.

When have you been pushed towards a good thing, but in a way you resisted? How did it affect your relationship with the pusher?

Tomorrow: a better way that wins more often.

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 23.

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My wife says we’re closer than we were years (decades) ago. Why?

“You laugh at my funny stuff now. You used to never laugh.”

I could argue and say, “Well you weren’t funny then; now you are,” but that’s just defensiveness.

Humor connects people

Everybody says they want a connected family more than anything, but then anytime we have a choice of taking offense or defusing it with humor, we always take offense.

I think we all must have a secret love of being offended; we grab every opportunity to be ‘hurt.’

I can’t believe you said that.

You never care what I think.

What am I, chopped liver?!

I’m tired of . . . putting up with this / being ignored / always being the one to  . . .

It takes guts and courage to go the other way and reject offenses.

Next time you smell an offense, try this:

+ Don’t fight or bristle. Go along with the comment or thing that irks you.

+ Be lighthearted.

+ Pretend this is a game where you’re confident and unhurtable.

+ Exaggerate it and turn it positive, without making any negative response towards the other person.

+ And picture this: It’s not an offense, it’s a puffy, colorful beach ball! And you want it to bounce off you and playfully head back to them.

Them (giving you the choice to be offended): “That was so ridiculous I don’t even know what you just said.”
You: “Well you should replay the tape because it was genius.” And smile.

Them: “Wow – the candles on your birthday cake could heat the whole house!”
You: “I know! If you’re lucky, you’ll have that many one day and still look this good.” And smile.

One time at breakfast my boss mentioned something that bothered him about a coworker and two of us cautiously pointed out he did the same thing. “I do? (scary pause) Well I guess I just need to keep quiet and eat my biscuit . . .” Defused. No offense. Nothing personal.

My wife and I are much better at this today. In the old days everything was so stinking serious. Today, when one of us says something the other doesn’t like that could be taken offensively, the other will say quietly and mockingly serious, “Will you please SHUT. UP.” It’s our secret code for I’m giving you grace and I will NOT let this turn into anything.

You don’t have to be super successful at this. Just succeed enough to keep offenses from dominating.

A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing  – William James

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road – Henry Ward Beecher

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses . . . Whoever covers an offense seeks love – Proverbs

Who in your family is best at using humor to ignore offenses?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 22.

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Don’t remember where I heard this, but it’s stuck with me:

Home is the place where family members go when they’re tired of being nice to other people.

Because, really, how long can you keep up that being nice thing?

If ‘nice’ is an external thing that you carry, it eventually gets heavy and at some point you have to set it down.

You set it down at home.

Here, I’ve thought of another one:

Home is the place where family members go when they need appreciation, love, acceptance, and encouragement.

Should be, anyway, right? But no matter what, the appreciation and love and acceptance is never enough, is it?

Seems like there’s two main ways a family goes:

Family members somehow gain security and get filled-up and then from that deep well foster acceptance and love with each other, and then from that ‘nice’ place the family goes out and is nice.

Or

Empty people go out and act nice but it’s all external, you get tired, and you go back with your family and act like how you really feel. Empty. And you get mad because they don’t fill your cup. But they can’t. And you can’t fill theirs.

Because there’s a break in the cup that holds love inside us all. (a little song that explains everything)

But there’s a patch for the break:

My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus – Philippians 4.19

In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him – Colossians 2.9-10

The love and acceptance of Jesus + the love and acceptance of family = a family able to love each other and others.

How do you help each other find love and acceptance?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 21.

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Whose name (and legacy) is carved on your heart?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 20.

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My view recently while walking the dog.

Does it ever hit you that there’s this big ball of fire out there dominating everything on earth?

Take that one thing away and everything changes.

Most of what I think about and get concerned about during an average day is stupid compared to that one big thing. I need to be reminded of that.

When you see in the news that one family member hurt another family member because of a disagreement over a cold meal or what show to watch on TV, you know it wasn’t really about the meal or TV.

The meal and TV are the stupid little things. The big things are love, rejection, forgiveness, grace, selfishness, patience, harshness, insensitivity, generosity, encouragement, appreciation; stuff like that.

The little things are just the barometers, the evidence of the condition of the big things.

What would you say are the big important things in your family right now?

Major on that.

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 18.

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. . . just to start a little momentum, or keep it going.

1.

Give one word of true, genuine, non-agenda encouragement or praise to each person in your family today. Even the far-away (in miles or emotions) ones. Yes, you can text. If you think this is hard then it’s even more important to do it. Too hard? Then one encouraging word to one person.

2.

Pray for one minute for Thanksgiving or Christmas or the next time your family is going to be together. Don’t know what to pray for? Then pray about that for one minute.

3.

Plan an informal, old-fashioned, family touch football game for Thanksgiving. This will get you started, then make up your own rules. Even better – involve other family members in the planning.

Any other ideas?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 17.

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Need guidance?

Oh for an expert! Someone experienced, and who knows you and each member of your family and your goals and frustrations. Someone to explain and tell you what to do in the middle of all this. Mom? Mom would work but she’s tangled up in everything too. Or gone. Or the problem.

You do your best but it’s way short. Or you make it worse. You’ve got the experience, the effort, the ability. Some say you’re way above average in all those. But it’s sure not showing and you give up and don’t know what to do next.

And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”

And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

– Luke 5.3-7

He’s not a mom or dad, never toilet trained a kid or waited up for a daughter. He never lost his temper and blew it and had to live with regret over his behavior. He never fixed a flat tire or planned a budget. He was no expert fisherman. But he told the experts where to catch fish and they did. More than they could on their own.

Sometimes when I’m doing a project at home and lose a screw or can’t make something fit together, I ask Jesus to help me. Isn’t that trite? Something good always happens. I do that less often when I’m lost on the road because, you know, I’m a guy. I do it even less often it seems with the big stuff.

He’s not an expert or master because of experience. It’s Deity. He’s the only one of those.

Need results?

You’re putting in the work. You’ve followed the guidance. And you see nothing. Is this a waste? Do you quit? What do you do when it’s all so fruitless? Hope is hard when there’s nothing to see.

The son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his father doing

– John 5.19

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

– John 15

Jesus didn’t try what I try. He had the deity and didn’t trust it for himself – I DON’T have deity but trust myself as if I do!

This isn’t advice, but it makes sense to me: When I feel fruitless, I’ve told God, out loud, “You say if I abide in you, that if I stay in you and find my source of living in you, that I WILL bear fruit. So Lord, either I’m bearing fruit and you just don’t want me to see it, or I’m NOT remaining in you.” I have to keep it simple.

To remain in him I continue to keep it simple. Just trust him and his love and purpose. Follow the best I can. Truuuuuust. I don’t try to earn results by performing or doing some ritual like keeping my quiet time; I keep my quiet time to help me remain in him. Remaining is trusting.

Trust for the next step and take it. And trust no matter what is seen or not seen. I try not to trust for results, but only for my personal relationship with him. That relationship is the biggest result.

What’s God saying to you about YOUR family?

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A Family Like Yours is 31 Days of encouragement to help you appreciate, influence, and love the family you have (no matter what).

This is day 16.

You can subscribe below or at the top on the right.