Pastors and counselors should definitely add Keep Your Love On! to their bookshelf. This book by Danny Silk is a goldmine of helps for repairing, restoring and strengthening relationships. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are a few quotes from this book.
“Most people haven’t learned to build their relationships on the premise, ‘I choose you.’ Their premise for relationships is, ‘You choose me.’ … However, if all our relationships are based solely on our natural impulse to return liking for liking, then we are going to have problems. Liking is a conditional state—it changes. Making ‘You choose me’ the foundation of a relationship dooms it to change, and probably collapse, the minute one person’s liking happens to turn south.”
“A healthy, lasting relationship can only be built between two people who choose one another and take full responsibility for that choice. This choice must be based on who they are, what they want, and what they are committed to doing as individuals. … In order to be able to make and keep commitments like this—commitments to enduring, intimate relationships—you need to be a certain kind of person. You need to be a powerful person. Powerful people take responsibility for their lives and choices. Powerful people choose who they want to be with, what they are going to pursue in life, and how they are going to go after it.”
“Often the first thing that reveals a powerless mindset is powerless language. Frequent use of the phrase is ‘I can’t’ and ‘I have to’ is a hallmark of a powerless person. … Powerless people also throw in ‘I’ll try’ to absolve them if they do not come through on a commitment or promise.”
“Powerless people approach relationships as consumers. They are always looking for other people who have resources of love, happiness, joy, and comfort to offer in a relationship to share with them, because they don’t have any.”
“Powerless people often blame the messes they make on other people. The reason their life, marriage, child, finances, job, or whatever is the way it is has nothing to do with their choices. Someone else—their parents, their spouse, their teachers, society—created the life they’re living. They don’t have the power to create their own lives.”
“The classic relational dynamic created by powerless people is called triangulation. When you believe that other people are scary, unsafe, and more powerful than you, and when you believe that you need to get them to meet your needs, then you have three possible roles you get to play in relationships: the victim, the bad guy, or the rescuer. If you’re the victim, you’re looking for a rescuer to make you feel safe and happy. If you’re the bad guy, you are using control and intimidation to protect yourself or get someone to meet your needs. If you’re a rescuer, you’re taking responsibility for someone else’s life in an attempt to feel powerful. Powerless people will switch in and out of these roles in relational interactions.”
“In order to stay in relationship, powerless people make an agreement to exercise mutual control over each other. The unspoken pact between them is, ‘It’s my job to make you happy, and your job to make me happy. And the best way to get you to work on my life is to act miserable. The more miserable I am, the more you will have to try to make me feel better.’ Powerless people use various tactics, such as getting upset, withdrawing, nagging, ridiculing, pouting, crying, or getting angry, to pressure, manipulate, and punish one another into keeping this pact. … A relational bond built on mutual control simply cannot produce anything remotely like safety, love, or trust. It can only produce more fear, pain, distrust, punishment, and misery.”
“Powerful does not mean dominating. In fact, a controlling, dominating person is the very opposite of a powerful person. Powerful people do not try to control other people. They know it doesn’t work, and that it’s not their job. Their job is to control themselves. As a result, they are able to consciously and deliberately create the environment in which they want to live. They don’t try to get people to respect them; they create a respectful environment by showing respect. They deliberately set the standard for how they expect to be treated by the way they treat others. As they consistently act in responsible, respectful, and loving ways, it becomes clear that the only people who can get close to them are those who know how to show respect, be responsible, and love well. Life does not happen to powerful people. Powerful people are happening—they are happening all the time.”
“What is the goal in your close relationships? Are you trying to create a safe connection or a safe distance? Are you building a skill set to move away from or control the distance between you and your husband, wife, friend, child, etc.? Or are you building a skill set to move toward them and keep your love on no matter what?”
Stay tuned: more quotes from Keep Your Love On! coming soon…
I love reading the “old guys.” I mean the ones who have stood the test of time, and their lives have backed up their writing. Recently I just finished going through the Gospels in my personal Bible reading time, and I did so with the help of Horatius Bonar, a very notable old guy.
Craig T. Owens 
9 Quotes From “Light And Truth in the Gospels”
September 23, 2015 — Craig T. Owens“Man’s love of man is according to merit, on expectation of response; God’s love of man has no reference to deserving or to return. Man’s love of man is contracted, exclusive, and grudging; God’s love to man is as boundless as it is free. He forgives without condition; He loves without reserve; He blesses without measure or end.”
“God takes man as he is, simply a sinner, ‘without strength,’ and without goodness. He does not ask man to meet Him halfway between earth and heaven; He comes down all the way to earth in the Person of His Incarnate Son. He does not resort to half-measures, nor is He content with half-payment. He comes down to man in absolute and unconditional love; without terms or bargains; Himself paying the whole price, and thus leaving nothing for the sinner but to except the frank forgiveness which His boundless love has brought.”
“Our giving depends much on the state of our minds at the moment. When depressed, we have no pleasure in giving; we either refuse, or we give merely to get quit of the applicant. Darkness of mind shrivels us up, makes us selfish, neglectful of others. When full of joy, giving seems our element—our joy overflows in this way; we cannot help giving; we delight in applications; we seek opportunities of giving. So with the blessed God. Being altogether happy, His delight is to give; His perfect blessedness flows out in giving. We can never come wrongly to such an infinitely happy Being.”
“From Genesis to Revelation we hear His voice. It is the voice of love. ‘Come unto Me’ is the burden of the Old Testament as well as of the New. It is not merely that each chapter speaks of Jesus; but in each chapter Jesus speaks to us. And each verse, He is lying in wait for us.”
“Poor wanderer, you need not then try to cover your rags, or to hide your filth, or to try to make yourself more like what you were in order to attract your Father. It is just that which you are which excites His compassion. … God comes up to the sinner with the fullness of reconciliation in His heart. He does not stay to be entreated, or pleaded with, or persuaded. He hastens up to us, and embraces us in the fullness of His heart.”
“We poor prodigals must be gloriously clad! Not sack cloth, nor cast-off raiment, nor a servant’s dress; not Adam’s nor an angels’ righteousness; but something better than all—the robe of Jesus! … The prodigal is not to go in search of it. It must be brought out to him. On the spot; just where he is and as he is, bring it out, bring it to him. … It is not, ‘Give it to him, and let him put it on himself’; but, ‘Put it on.’ He has but to stand still and allow himself to be thus clothed and blessed. He does nothing. He does not need to do anything. Love does it all. The Father does it all.”
“What is the meaning of God sending His own Son, if less than salvation was intended; if less than Incarnation will do, less than blood, less than death, less than resurrection? Oh let us understand the greatness of God’s provision for us, and in that greatness, read at once our death and our life, our condemnation and our deliverance.”
“Yes; any time, any place, will do for Jesus. His grace is not circumscribed by temple walls, nor tied to ceremonies, nor limited to hours. Samaria, Jericho, Tyre, Jerusalem are all the same to Him. The temple, the highway, the hill-side, the sea-beach, the synagogue, the house, the boat, the graveyard, are all alike to Him and to His grace.”
“Over all Scripture the quickening, life-giving fragrance of His name is defused. Christ and life; life in Christ; Christ our life—these form the very essence, the sum and burden, of the Scriptures. ‘These are they that testify of Me.’”
Check out my review of Light And Truth by clicking here.
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