Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't

Being confronted on character issues isn’t pleasant. It hurts our self-image. It humbles us. But it doesn’t harm us. Loving confrontations protect us from our blindness and self-destructiveness. Just as a mother rushes out into a busy street and grabs her child out of traffic, the loving confrontation stops us from walking into disaster.

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself.

Confronters (safe ones, not critical-parent types) risk our leaving them to tell us a needed truth. They jeopardize comfort to give us honest love.

George Whitefield would not attack a person who was not there to defend himself. Look for people who can hold your secrets.

Safe people, for example, admit their weaknesses. They are humble. And they prove their trustworthiness over time.

When we listen to God address his problem relationships, the list is much more like the second than the first. He says that, among other things, his people are “far away” (Isa. 29:13), “unfaithful” (Josh. 22:16), “proud and perfectionistic” (Deut. 8:14; Ps. 36:2), “unloving” (1 John 4:20), and “judgmental” (Rom. 2:1).

those who are good for us we call “safe people,” those individuals who truly make us better people by their presence in our lives.

Safe people are individuals who draw us closer to being the people God intended us to be.

Because the irresponsible has problems in delaying gratification, he or she often becomes alcoholic, addicted to sexual gratification, and in debt.