Skip to content What Destroys Relationships and What Builds Them — pt 2 (Friendships, Support, Small Groups, Problems, Healthy, Hangups, Resentment, Conflict, Healing)
Awesome Relationships
21:01 Listen to What Destroys Relationships and What Builds Them — pt 2 (Friendships, Support, Small Groups, Problems, Healthy, Hangups, Resentment, Conflict, Healing) What Destroys Relationships and What Builds Them — pt 2 (Friendships, Support, Small Groups, Problems, Healthy, Hangups, Resentment, Conflict, Healing) Feb 17 · 21 min ...more
What Destroys Relationships and What Builds Them — pt 2 (Friendships, Support, Small Groups, Problems, Healthy, Hangups, Resentment, Conflict, Healing)
February 17, 2026 · 21 min
Join Pastor Rick as he teaches about the key to developing friendships: focusing on others and learning to support them. Discover how small groups are a perfect place to learn relational skills.
Series Awesome Relationships February 17, 2026 · 21 min · Awesome Relationships
Join Pastor Rick as he teaches about the key to developing friendships: focusing on others and learning to support them. Discover how small groups are a perfect place to learn relational skills. ...more Show the full description Show less Join Pastor Rick as he teaches about the key to developing friendships: focusing on others and learning to support them. Discover how small groups are a perfect place to learn relational skills.
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Pastor Rick Warren shares the hope and encouragement you need to hear everyday. Listen in as he shares biblical truths to help you live the purpose driven life
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In this video 0:00 The Power of Unselfishness in Relationships3:39 Overcoming Pride with Humility11:28 Conquering Insecurity and Fear of Rejection18:19 Supporting the Mission of Daily Hope
The Power of Unselfishness in Relationships 0:02 Hello everyone, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. The Bible teaching ministry that's here to encourage and inspire you every day. And today, we're continuing our0:14 series called awesome relationships. In it, Rick Warren shares practical ways to help you take your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and even God0:25 from ordinary to extraordinary. And this is a series you don't wanna miss. Now let's hear what Rick has to say in part 2 of a message called, what destroys relationships0:37 and what builds them.0:40 God has wired the universe that the more unselfish you are, the more he blesses you. Why? Because he wants you to become like him. God wants you to become like0:52 him, which is unselfish. Everything you have in life is a gift from God, because God was unselfish with you. And so God says, in order to help you become like me, I'm gonna give a little reward1:03 to this. First, you get real life on earth and you get eternal life in heaven. He says, you know what, you get a me and the way God has wired it, as we give ourselves away, we are most fulfilled.1:15 Jesus said, only those who learn to give their lives away will ever know what it means to really live. You see, if you don't get anything else I say, or Tom says today, get this, the greatest lesson in life1:28 is learning to be unselfish. That's it. That's the number 1 lesson in life, learning to be unselfish. It's also called love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Once you know1:40 and love God, God says now I want you to learn to love other people, and that means being unselfish. And unfortunately, a lot of people go through life and never learn the greatest lesson, and they waste their life.
1:52 They waste the whole reason they're here on earth, to learn how to be unselfish. Now notice God also says in this verse, it's a growth process. He says, letting God's Spirit do the growth
2:04 work in him, you'll harvest a crop of real life and eternal life. Life. You see, it's not overnight. You don't learn to be unselfish by being zapped. In fact, you're not gonna learn it in 40 days. It's gonna take the
2:16 rest of your life, but it is a growth process, and there's only 1 way you can do it, and that is with God's Spirit in you. God's Spirit in you. Look at the next verse. Live freely,
2:28 animated and motivated by God's Spirit, then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. Did you know that all of us are compulsive? Every 1 of us. We are compulsively
2:40 selfish. We think about ourselves first. And if you don't think that, you're really not in touch with reality, because you do. You think about you more than anybody else. And he says the only way you can break that cycle
2:52 is God's Spirit inside you. Now, anybody can be unselfish every once in a while. Anybody can do that. Okay. Just by sheer willpower, man, look what I did. And how do you know when
3:04 it's motivated by you rather than God's spirit? Pride creeps in. It's that, I felt noble. It's that look at me, what a great person I am. I did something good for somebody.
3:17 See, when God's spirit's in you, then you don't do that. Anybody can be unselfish every once in a while, but God says, I want it to be a life style. I want it to be a life style, and
3:29 there's only 1 way, God's spirit in your life doing the growth work inside of you, motivated. Now, here's the second thing that destroys relationships, pride. This is the
Overcoming Pride with Humility
3:41 second big thing that kills relationships. Pride destroys relationships. In Proverbs 13 10, it says this, pride leads to arguments. Little history here, that
3:52 was the first verse that Kay and I memorized on our honeymoon, and we needed it on the honeymoon. Pride leads to arguments. Now pride shows up in a lot of different
4:04 ways. It shows up first in criticism. If you are critical of other people, if you tend to be judgmental of other people, you tend to look down at other people, you tend to be a picky
4:16 picky perfectionist, you have a pride problem. That's the reason you are critical, is you have a pride problem. If you tend to be competitive and you're always comparing, oh, look
4:28 at her dress compared to my dress, or look at his car compared to my car, or you're always comparing salaries, or you're comparing husbands, or you're comparing children, or you're
4:40 comparing, titles, or jobs, or any you know what? You have a pride problem. That comparing spirit of always looking at everybody else, comparing and
4:51 judging, that is a pride problem. If you have a stubbornness, if you have it find it difficult to say, I'm sorry. If you find it difficult, you choke on your
5:03 apologies. You cannot ever admit it when you're wrong. You have a pride problem. Now you don't say, well, now if I may have offended you, that's not an apology.
5:16 That's what politicians say. If I may have offended you, puts it back on you, say, well, really it's your fault for being offended. That's not an apology. An apology is, I was wrong. I'm sorry. Please
5:28 forgive me. That's an apology, not, if I may have offended you. It is I was wrong, I'm sorry, please forgive me. If you can't do that,
5:39 you have a pride problem. You have a pride problem. If you have shallow relationships, and you keep everything superficial in your life, and you never let anybody get close to you, and you keep
5:51 them at an arms distance, and you may use humor to keep it all shallow, not let it get too deep, and you keep faking it a lot, and you wear a mask, you have a pride problem. You see when
6:03 you're too shallow to care about others, that is pride. Now what does pride look like in a small group, since we're all in small groups? Well, 1 of the ways it looks is, when you always have to tell a story that tops the
6:15 last story. Well you do that, yeah, but listen to this 1. Okay? When you are always offering advice, and you never ask for it in your group. When you never admit, when
6:27 you've had a tough week, everybody else is saying, yeah, I've had a tough week, and you never admit any problem in your life. The problem with pride is it's self deceiving. Everybody else can see it, but we
6:39 can't. When I'm full of pride, I can't see it. I can't see it in my, everybody else can see it, but I can't.
6:46 When you have a problem with pride, you don't see
6:48 it in your own life. It's self deceiving. Everybody else can see you're being prideful, but you can't see it yourself. And so the Bible says this in Proverbs 16 18, pride will destroy a person,
7:01 a proud attitude leads to ruin. And I love this verse in the message paraphrase. First pride then the crash, the bigger the ego the harder the fall. You had a
7:13 hard fall? Well, that just shows how big your ego was. Now pride keeps us from apologizing and that destroys relationships. Tom's gonna talk about the
7:24 next 1.
7:25 Pride destroys relationships. Humility,
7:29 that's
7:29 the antidote to pride, humility. Humility builds relationships. Listen to these 5 things that build relationships over in first Peter chapter 3 verse 8. The Bible says there, live in harmony,
7:41 be sympathetic, love each other, have compassion, and be humble. Those 5 really are built on the fifth 1, the ability to be humble. This is really a pretty good model for small groups. If you take a
7:53 look at these 5 things, it's what we all wanna be doing in our families and our groups and our relationships. We wanna live in harmony and be sympathetic, love each other. We want to have compassion and be humble. I want
8:03 you to notice that first 1 particularly, live in harmony. That's what God wants in relationships. He doesn't want this unison where we're all the same. He wants the harmony of us all being different. Why be in a
8:14 relationship if you weren't different from the other people? That's what we draw from, but in this is important. Harmony and humility go together. You have to have them together. In in a symphony, the beauty is in
8:26 all the different instruments, but if you have 1 flute player who wants to stand on their chair, play louder than everybody else, it ruins the whole thing. If you have 1 person who's saying notice me and I can't let
8:35 other people be noticed, it ruins all the joy of the harmony of life. The deepness, the richness that God wants to give into our lives because of that. Now, let me encourage you to do something in your group this week.
8:46 You to do something that'll promote humility and harmony in your group. This week, pair up with a spiritual partner. Someone that you can learn from, they can learn from you. You can be encouraged by, they can be
8:57 encouraged by you. You can be friend, they can be friends with you. You can support vice versa as it works together. Guys, pair up with another guy. Women with another women. If you're just starting to learn the bible,
9:08 you don't know much about Jesus pair up with somebody who doesn't know much who knows more about the bible, knows more about Jesus that can encourage you. Now, the point about a spiritual partner is this, everybody needs
9:18 a spiritual partner except me. That's how we tend to think. Oh, this is a good idea. This is a great idea but about a month ago, 1 of the guys in my small group called me up and said, hey can we get together regularly
9:30 and maybe read through a book together talk about the impact that it's making on our lives. It took me a month to get back to him and you know why? I didn't really want to meet because I feel like I'm too busy. Can you
9:40 relate to that? This week, don't be too busy to connect with somebody else and say can we be a spiritual partner? Your life will be the richer for for it. And do not be too busy if somebody connects with
9:52 you and says, hey could we pair up? Don't be too busy to say, well I'll get back to you on that and then never get back to them on that. If you and I will make this decision, it can change our lives. How are you and I
10:04 gonna grow in humility? Because that's a tall order. How does that happen in our lives? It happens by letting Jesus Christ begin to control our thoughts and hearts and attitudes and reactions. He's got to be a part of
10:15 this. The Bible says over in Ephesians 4 23 and 24 this verse on your screen. Let the spirit change your way of thinking and make you into a new person.
10:27 How do I become a new person? How do I start to think in a different way? Basic law of relationships is this, I tend to become like the people I spend time with. Spend time with grumpy people, you
10:39 get more grumpy. Spend time with happy people, you get more grump more happy. You want to have more humility? Spend time with Jesus Christ because he is humble. He wants a relationship with you. He wants you and I to
10:51 spend time with him in prayer and reading his word and talking to him. He is humble. Look at this next verse in the outline, Philippians 2 3 and then 5 and 6. Be humble and give more honor to others than to
11:03 yourselves. Your attitude should be the same as that the Christ Jesus had. Though He was God, He did not demand and cling to His rights as God. No one's ever done anything more humble than Jesus
11:14 coming from heaven to earth to become a man, to live for us, give His life for us, be resurrected for us. And I spend time around him that enables me to to begin to become more humble and that builds relationships.
11:26 Now, on the back of your outline, there's a third struggle we all face and that is the struggle of insecurity. Insecurity destroys relationships. The Bible talks
Conquering Insecurity and Fear of Rejection
11:38 about this over in Proverbs 29 25 when it says, the fear of human opinion disables. When I'm so insecure that all I've got to think about is your opinion, what you think of me, that
11:50 disables my life. What's what's the problem with that fear? What does that problem cause us to disable in relationships? Well, when I'm afraid, it tends to cause us to try to control
12:02 each other and that destroys relationships.
12:05 I hate you. When people say that in a relationship it is often a sign that somebody's trying to control somebody else and what's beneath that control? What Tom talked about, fear.
12:17 Insecurity causes us to try to control others, and insecurity causes us to resist the control of others, and that destroys relationships. You know, it's
12:29 amazing dilemma that as human beings we have, we long to be close, but we also fear being close. We want it, but we don't want it. We long to
12:41 have intimacy with others, but we are also scared to death of having intimacy with others. Would you write this down? Insecurity prevents intimacy. Insecurity
12:53 prevents intimacy. You can't get close to somebody if there's fear in the relationship, which is why living together doesn't work in the long run, because you never know when somebody's gonna walk out. There's no
13:04 lifetime commitment, so I'm gonna hold back, because what if it doesn't work? It's only a situation where I'm saying, I'm committed regardless of whether, you know, we get along or not, we're gonna make this thing work.
13:15 Then the fear vanishes, and then the intimacy, real intimacy rises. Now what do we fear in relationships? Well, we fear a couple things. First, we fear exposure.
13:28 We fear that somebody's gonna find out what we're really like, and we fear that. So we hide ourselves, and we don't want people to know what we're really like, and this is man's oldest fear. All the way back with Adam,
13:40 the first man, in Genesis 3 verse 10, he says, I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked so I
13:52 hid. When we're afraid, we hide ourselves, we cover up, We wear masks. We pretend to be people that we're not. Now it's interesting today. We don't have this problem anymore with a lot of people. Many
14:03 people are not afraid at all of their physical nakedness. They walk around half naked. Okay? They walk around showing off party parts I don't wanna see. And so they're not ashamed of their physical
14:15 nakedness, but they're scared to death of their emotional nakedness. That's what really scared them. I know a lot of people who flaunt their bodies who are extremely insecure,
14:27 extremely insecure, and they're afraid of emotional nakedness. What if somebody understands, finds out my fears, finds out my faults, finds out my dark side, find out the
14:39 parts that I don't want anybody to know. And you see fear makes us dishonest, and it causes us to build up walls, and a result nobody ever gets to know you, and you don't understand 1 of the things that God puts
14:51 you on earth to do, and that is to be fully known. Everybody deserves to be fully known and to fully know somebody else. Whether you ever get married or not, this is has to do with
15:03 soul to soul intimacy. And God designed the fam the family, the church to do this, where we get to know each other on a gut level basis, and we fear exposure, but there's
15:15 a fear even deeper than that, and it is the fear of rejection. And this may be the greatest fear in human beings, the fear of being rejected. We've all been rejected at some point,
15:27 and we know how much that hurts. And so we feared, and we closed ourselves off and say, I'll never let anybody hurt me again, and we build up walls. Now maybe you have been hurt by
15:38 rejection by somebody, a boyfriend, an ex, or somebody, a parent who said you're never gonna mount anything, or you're not good enough, and you felt the sting of rejection by a teacher,
15:50 a coach, or somebody. Maybe you even felt it by so called quote Christian, somebody who claimed to be a believer, Or maybe you felt it in a church or maybe you felt it in a small group and if so
16:02 I would say to you, I am sorry. I mean, I am really sorry. And God grieved at your rejection. In fact, if anybody understands rejection, it's Jesus Christ.
16:14 Remember, they nailed him to a cross. That is the ultimate rejection. So he understands how you felt. But as your pastor, I would beg you,
16:26 please, please don't let that harden your heart. Don't build up a wall, a crust, put yourself in an eggshell. You're that's a self imposed prison you don't wanna be
16:38 in, and when you won't let anybody get close to you because I'll never let anybody hurt me again, you're making a terrible mistake. You're not living. You're just existing, and
16:50 it is my job as your pastor to help you and to encourage you and to say, take the risk. Have the courage to risk love again. Have the courage,
17:02 because if you will do and you will open up your life and you will lower the barriers and you will let somebody have the potential to hurt you, you will come alive again in a way
17:14 you have never ever experienced. Ask God for the courage to take that risk again, to be open, to be vulnerable. Now let me talk to the guys for a minute, because
17:26 men, we're the worst about this. As guys, we we wear our our we hold our cards close to us, and we don't let our feelings be known. We don't let people know what
17:38 we're really thinking or feeling, and I want to dare you to do a very courageous thing, to be openly honest about what you're feeling. Now you don't have to do with everybody, but you need to
17:50 do it with 1 person. You get in a group and share it with a group, or if that's too hard, get 1 person. As Tom talked about, I firmly believe in having a spiritual partner in life. 1 person
18:02 that you can level with, you can encourage, you can grow, you can support, you can share, and somebody that you tell what you're really like to, and they tell back, and that's a spiritual partner.
Supporting the Mission of Daily Hope
18:19 What a great message from pastor Rick today. There's something I always take away from his message. Here's Rick to tell you how you can help support this ministry.
18:29 Jesus told his disciples that they should live their lives according to 5 specific purposes. He said, you've gotta love God with all your heart, that's worship, and love your neighbor as yourself, that's
18:41 ministry, That's called the great commandment. And then Jesus said, go make disciples, that's evangelism, baptize them into the family of God, that's fellowship, a sign of fellowship, and then he said, teach them, obey
18:52 everything I've taught you. That's discipleship, and we call that the great commission. We believe at Daily Hope that a great commitment to the great commandment and the Great Commission
19:04 will produce a great Christian, a great church, a great company, a great community. You know, I started Daily Hope so I could spread the good news about Jesus, not just across America,
19:16 but all around the world. And we want people to know that God's word is filled with hope and truth. And the power that we need to follow him every day is available to every single 1.
19:28 You know as well as I do that the word of God changes lives. It's alive, it's active, and it breathes new life and new love into all of our lives. So wherever you listen to this, whether you listen on the
19:40 website, whether you listen on a radio station, or whether you listen through a podcast, you're a part of the Daily Hope family, and I need your help. We could not do this without your support. We're
19:52 100 percent listener funded. Would you continue to pray for this broadcast, and would you continue to support us? And write to me, let me hear from you. I absolutely love reading the
20:03 stories that are sent to me. So write me, pray for me, and support this ministry. And God will bless it, and God will bless you, and we'll get to heaven, and we'll thank God for all the people who are gonna be in
20:15 heaven because you cared.
20:17 Hey. If you'd like to support pastor Rick's daily hope, just go to pastor rick dot com. That's pastor rick dot com, or you can text the word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. That's the
20:29 word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. And really, from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with people everywhere.
20:41 Hey, be sure to join us next time when we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's daily hope and your generous financial support.
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