How To Have A Christ Centered Relationship
Join us in talking to Dr. Calvin Tibbs, Pastor of Kingdom Dominion Church and CEO of Daylight Ministries. We will be talking about how to have a Christ centered relationship and why this conversation is an important one to have. Discover how to keep Jesus at the center of your relationship with your partner, family, and your co-workers.
What is a Christ centered relationship? Dr. Tibbs focuses on bridging generational gaps and helping younger generations build more fulfilling relationships. You will learn three questions to ask yourself as you approach relationship development and how to fulfill your unique purpose in life. We’ll ask ‘Why am I here?’, ‘What am I supposed to do?’, and ‘How can I improve?’. If don’t tackle some of the foundational questions allowing other people into our life in a meaningful way can become challenging.
We want to make sure you understand how to move forward with productive relationship development with tools you can start applying immediately.
Christ Centered Relationship Conversation Transcript:
Brent: Welcome to the Jesus Taught Me That Podcast. Today. We’re talking to Dr. Calvin Tibbs, Pastor of Kingdom Dominion Church and CEO of Daylight Ministries. Besides being a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather, he has written four books, going on five. Received a Doctorate in Ministry, and has a particular passion for helping younger generations build better relationships.
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You can find us at BeFunBeKind.com/JesusTaughtMeThat. Let’s get started.
Dr Tibbs. Welcome. I want to start off with a specific question for you and see where the conversation takes us from there. But I would love to know specifically what is something that Jesus has taught you and been working on with you in the last year.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: That’s a very good and loaded question. One of the things that has happened in the pandemic is the ideas about whether this is something that is unusual or not. And of course you look in the scripture and pandemics occur, pestilence occurred, pestilences occurred and it’s normal. So what’s the Lord after. In that regard.
And for me, what I ultimately came up with was Jesus told people to do four things to go to teach, to make and to baptize right there in Matthew 28. And I think what has occurred is that we’ve preached great sermons and we’ve gotten great responses in terms of applause. And perhaps even some boos, maybe people didn’t like the content, but the Lord never really told us to build a Church.
In fact, he said, I’ll build it, That covers that, what he told us to do was make disciples. And I began to really think about our disciple-making process to see if it was really working. That’s literally how I wrote this book called Running Laps, because the design of it, if you can look at a Jewish star, the one point of that star is designed to bring an awareness of discipleship.
And lapse or Running Laps is designed to get people to become aware of all of this content that comes across so that they can do something with it. And as a result of that, perhaps we can raise the temperature by one degree.
What Does A Christ Centered Relationship Look Like
Brent: I love that. I think one thing that I’m specifically excited about in your book, you talk about really applicable things that Jesus teaches us. And you specifically talk about the relationship with your wife and how your journey has really led you guys having a great relationship.
And I think there’s so much to be said for that. I know you guys have been married 36, 37 years. 37 Years. I was close and I love when people talk about that aspect of relationship and they compare that to what they have specifically learned with Jesus.
Is there something that maybe stands out above all else that you think would be worth sharing as far as relationships?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: Yeah, I think it goes back to my parents were married 50 something years and I have an uncle and an aunt who, when I interviewed them, if you will, were married 60 years at the time and I asked them separately, What’s the key.
What’s the key. And I went to the the mother first and who was my aunt. And she said, you can’t, you can say everything you want to say. So that’s great advice. So I went to my uncle and I asked him and he said, you got to keep your mouth shut, which was basically the same thing as she said. So the key is how we respond.
With the most powerful and dangerous weapon that anybody on the planet has, which James called the power of the tongue. So when the tongue, the scripture says, sets on fire, the course of the world, It’s so dangerous. It’s used for wars. It’s used to create bitter and sweet experiences. So one thing that I can say about the relationship is I oftentimes pray for me.
I pray for my wife, of course, but I pray for me, not that I’m bombastic or anything, but that Lord, you got to help me because as you get into 10 years, 15, 25, 30, 35 years, a lot of life changes. And so what might’ve been important in the newlywed years is not important when your child is in middle school.
It’s not as important when your child, just graduated and now your children are getting married. So this whole journey requires the rudder of the tongue to guide the ship and we need help as we encounter different things. And so the best advice I would give. Any person who is in a relationship, especially, and it doesn’t matter whether it was a married relationship or a business relationship or community, master submitting the heart so that the tongue can be in control under control.
Brent: That is definitely great advice. I know that you talk a lot specifically in your content about helping younger generations, millennials and below. And I think one of the things that maybe plague specifically, a younger person is really understanding the aspect of giving in a relationship. I think a lot of people initially approach relationships from the perspective of what is in this for me.
What do I get out of it? How does this help me accomplish my goals? But what I have heard you talk about is how am I impacting the other person, perhaps, how can I get the other person to their life goals? And that is really a completely different mindset than the other path that I just mentioned.
How do you get there? How do you make the connection?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: You want to ask yourself three questions? I call them qualifying questions. A Q2 evaluation, two questions or qualifying questions, but there are three of them. Why am I here? Now we can’t throw that over our shoulder, like socks at Christmas time and we just, oh, I’m here. Nope, Nope. We got to think about why are we here?
Second thing is we have to think about what are we supposed to do? Why are we here? And what are we supposed to do? Have a relationship. If they don’t, the disconnection causes relationships to be disconnected. Number three, how can I improve? All those questions are design direction and development goals.
If I understand that I am designed to add value, then I’ll do so because it’s my design. That’s why I’m here. If I don’t understand that it moves to the next level, what am I supposed to do? That’s personal development. If I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and I’m not getting developed, then I am under developing any relationship that I’m in because I’m not developed part two.
What am I supposed to do? The third thing. How can I improve what improvement is, what it’s all about, because we can always get better. They do it in athletics. They do it in any area of sports. So even in acting because they want to be the best version of them, themselves, that they can be well. So it is in a relationship I should be investing in ongoing development so that I can improve.
If I’m not improving, I am messing with every relationship that I am in because I’m not bringing the best version of myself to that relationship. So those are the major aspects of how to literally bring to a relationship, the gold and the hidden assets of the person they’re in a relationship.
Serving Like Jesus Did
Brent: I love that. That’s a great example. One of the things that I specifically love diving into is the human relatable aspects of Jesus and how that applies to our life. And when we look at how he served people and the model that he put together for that. It’s such a powerful explanation of not only how to impact other people, but how to scale that if you think of his model, he brought in 12 people, he poured into them significantly and he showed those people how to impact other people and scale that to what we have seen 2000 years later.
And every bit of that is relationship. And I think as we have the opportunity now to look back on that 2000 years ago, I think we can see that pattern applied to our own life, whether it’s our relationship and our marriage or our relationships at work. How have you seen that played out in people’s life?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It’s interesting that Jesus took on himself. The scripture says no reputation, but humbled himself and became a servant. And then we see in another context where the books could not contain How much Jesus did. There were so much, there were so many things that he did. So how is a person without a reputation doing so much?
And then he turns around and says, and greater works than these shall you do? Because I go to the father, it’s like, how do you put that piece? Those puzzle pieces together. And to me, it’s found in the story. Jesus came to fulfill. What was written even before he was on the planet. Now, of course he knew all things, but the physical part of him was not here until he went into the mothers and to Mary’s womb as a Virgin.
And that conception Jesus is now born. Jesus was living. However, the story of Isaiah, the prophetic words, the date, the words that David spoke, the prophet Jeremiah. So he’s literally living a script. So his point as if you will, the purveyor of life was to do what the father told him to do, which was a script.
So when we go off script and write our own story, we normally write in our own reputation, we write in our own versions of how people are to see us. That’s why in social media, it’s truly vaudeville or an acting place because most people only put up the best version they want other people to see.
That’s not the whole story. So the reality of what Jesus did was he lived the story that was written of him. When we live the story that’s written of us, it always includes writing people into the story. Most times people write folks out of the story. If they think there is no value that they bring to them, I got mine.
I got to get my, this, that or the other. But when you’re living the story that God wrote sacrifice as a part of it, believing in other people who don’t even believe in themselves is going to be a part of it. Trusting in folks that other folks have written off is going to be a part of it. And so to just know that we’re living what he wrote about us, which is found in the book of Proverbs chapter 139 verse 16, that we can just recognize that the story of our life is already written.
All we have to do is get in touch with the author and find a way to let his words matter. So that we can live and speak the story of our lives.
Brent: I love how you explained that. Something else that I really love about the story of Jesus is that it is all written from an observer’s perspective.
He actually. Modeled this out with his own life. And this was observed by people that spent almost every hour with him, which is really crazy to think about.
And then they took that message and they modeled it into their own life.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: That’s a great perspective and it makes me think about a wonderful man. Great theologian. His name is Dr. Leonard Sweet. And of course the word Emmanuel to the point you just made means God with us. And so he said, that’s God’s name. His first name is God. His middle name is with and his last name is us.
So when you consider that we’re now God in us with other people, we just have to know our lines and our lines are in scripture. Be patient, walk by faith, all the lines are there. And if we recognize that God whose middle name is with. Is literally in us, it changes the perspective that causes us to now be our brother’s keeper to care about folks who others couldn’t care less about, because God did that when he was with us.
So yeah you bring up a great point when you say that.
How To Apply Christian Discipleship To My Life
Brent: I do also want to talk about the specific content that you have coming out of your book. And the name of the book is called running laps. If you would just give us another overview of what you’re going to be diving into in that book and how it can really apply to people’s life.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: That’s a great segway into it. It’s really true that in America today and around the world, there’s a lot that’s going on and I call it a 21st century disruptive discipleship design and I call it that because it’s a little bit different of an approach to how we create disciples or how disciples are created and what labs does it, it asks four questions and they’re basic questions.
And those questions when they are rehearsed inside of the mind of the person can be applied to anything that they see print, anything that they hear, or even audio or video that they see. When as disciples we can, if you will become spiritually fit, then the tone of our strength will help the community that we live in.
The family that we live in, the era that we live in, but when we’re not spiritually. In a place, the Bible talks about it, that gross darkness would come. If we’re not spiritually fit, then we won’t be able to stand in the opposition. We won’t be able to make good decisions. We won’t be able to contribute to those who are deceived.
So Laps helps to take any content that they receive audio, video, or written, and it helps them to use critical thinking skills to bring about an awareness. Of their responsibility for what they just heard. So we’re really excited about getting Laps in as many places as possible because the light, it doesn’t even take a lot to dispel the darkness, but a lot of people in my estimation have sat on the hillside and they’d rather just sit there and watch the world go by because there’s so discouraged by so much.
But I’m trying to say to them no. Let’s run laps. Let’s run laps, about what you’ve forgotten. Let’s run laps around the experiences you had. Let’s bring in the resources necessary to help you become the person that you’re supposed to be by using the content that you are exposed to. So we’re excited about the
Brent: book.
Yeah, no, that is exciting. I know it’s going to be a great book. Clarify just for a second what think of when you think of discipleship, what does that mean to you specifically?
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It means to me, a person who is a doer of the word as a normal person would be oftentimes I think we compartmentalize Church. And our spiritual walk and we call it private. And that’s true, but Jesus said, whatever you do in private will be seen and shouted upon the rooftops. So at disciple of the Lord involves Jesus in every area of their lives and not in a religious way, in a relational way down to choosing your wife down to choosing.
If you’re a woman choosing your husband down to how you raise your children, how we approach this pandemic. A disciple doesn’t act separate from the relationship that God has given us because we are ambassadors and as an ambassador, every place that we go it’s territory that is off limits to the devil it’s diplomatic immunity.
So a disciple has all of this going for them. Way beyond Sunday morning, way beyond our tragedy or a challenging time, a disciple in my view, as a person who is living out what God told them to do. So let’s just say significantly that they keep changing. If they don’t even recognize themselves in a week and therefore they can let that light out on other people who don’t even think about it.
As being a real relationship, they just think God is the man upstairs. But when you walk down the stairs with God in your heart, a disciple is able to make a difference in the lives of those that he or she is assigned to.
Brent: I think that we can often get lost in different types of terminology and people can view things slightly different ways.
So I think that was a really good way to explain it. And something else that you said that I thought was really neat is that the things that we do in private will be known and shouted from the rooftops. And that was something that was apparent 2000 years ago. But my goodness, how much more apparent is that today with all of the things that we see and all of the things that is in a digital format.
If you think of all the actions we take and really how much of our thoughts to a certain degree are converted to a digital format. And even though we believe that they are private, they are still out there in the ether. And who knows 10 years from now, 20, 30 years from now, what that ether will look like.
And so I think that is relevant today. Like it has never been before.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: Yeah. The reality of us being like the generation beyond the millennials don’t consider themselves digital natives. But the fact of the matter is if we’ve been on a podcast, if we’ve watched one, if we’ve been on Facebook, if we are connecting with it, we are at some level. Highly engaged in that.
And I just believe that if we stop separating out this relationship of wonder that God has given us and start blending that relationship, I think we’ll find that we can be more relevant to a world that is thinking that Christianity and Christians that are just not, they don’t know what’s going on today.
They’re not, open-minded when we are the ones who carry the salt and the light to benefit them. And we’ve got to engage in that digital world. In order for some of that exchange to occur.
Brent: Yes, absolutely. Dr. Tibbs, again, this has been a really great conversation. I just appreciate you coming on and I do want to encourage one more time our audience to check out the book when it comes out, Running Laps.
Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this.
Dr. Calvin Tibbs: It was my pleasure as well. And may the Lord bless your audience in the work that you do because it’s very important. Keep it up.
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