Do yourself a favor and listen to this podcast to get the most out of the relationships God places in your path. You’ll be inspired to see the joy in them in new and refreshing ways.

When I started this podcast in late 2018 there were about 500,000 podcasts. Today there are over 2 million. It raises the question, with all of these podcasts available to listeners like you, why listen to THIS one? Back in 2018 I answered this question in the very first episode, number 001“Six Reasons to Listen to You Were Made for This.”

But now, 138 episodes and six seasons later, it’s time to revisit this question. What’s in it for you, the listener, to listen to THIS podcast, when you have so many other choices of how to spend your time?

Our basic premise

The basic premise of this podcast hasn’t changed, but during the past three years, I’ve seen more than ever the importance of relationships in our daily lives. They can bring us great joy. Or they can bring us great heartache – and everything in-between.

Relationships are like molecules of oxygen, because relationships are everywhere, even when we’re not thinking about them. We can’t escape them if we’re living human beings. We have relationships with people, obviously. But we also have a relationship, with organizations, with our circumstances, with time and places, with God, and even a relationship with our self.

Listen to this podcast to help make these relationships the best they can be.

The very first relationship ever

Relationships started with God, and the three persons of the trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This was the very first relationship. Since we are made in the image of God, good relationships reflect His character. To experience the life-giving relationships God intends for us, this podcast draws from what God says in the Bible about all manner of relationships.

This podcast targets people of faith because what God says about relationships is foundational to living the most fulfilling life possible. If you’re not a person of faith, that’s fine. Our goal is not to turn you into one. Godly principles of relationships work for both the believer and non-believer.

When you listen to this podcast you’ll learn how to apply biblical principles to your relationships. For example, Episode 51, “More Than the Music” is about the relationship principles the Apostle Paul explains in Romans 12. It’s about how we are to relate to God, to others, and to ourselves. He explains how our relationships are a form of worship. I’ll have a link to this episode, and others I mention today, at the bottom of the show notes for you to check out later. It and the others will give you a taste of what You Were Made for This is all about.

We help you to make your relationships the best they can be

You may have come across this idea several times before, “we were made for relationships.” Yet how many of us were taught how to actually do what we were made for? For many of us when it comes to relationships, we don’t know what we don’t know about them. But if you listen to this podcast you’ll learn.

For most relationship skills are learned. So we talk a bunch about developing relationship skills. Most of us already have some relational skills, we just need to get better at it. And as with any skill; it takes practice. When you listen to this podcast, we show you what to practice and how to practice.

For example, episodes 011 – 014 are about the four levels of relationship skills, with examples of how you can move from level 1 up to level 4.

And there’s one of our favorite topics and recurring themes. Listening. It comes up in many episodes because it’s such an important factor in nurturing life-giving relationships. Episode 112, “Three Ways to Listen Well in 2021,” is just one example devoted to all this important relational topic

Our podcast format

The format we follow in this podcast is all about what is best for you. We respect your time, and except for the occasional interview, most episodes are 10-15 minutes long. When you listen to this podcast you won’t find any time fillers, nervous giggling, or inside jokes you find in some podcasts.

We stress the practical in each episode. Number 095 is an example, “What to Do When People Irritate Us.”

Another thing to note about our podcast is that we love relationship stories. We use lots of them to show how to have good relationships. We do very little telling. Lots of showing what good relationships look like. Lots of stories that illustrate the relational intelligence we’re working to develop in each of us. Many of these stories come from the Bible. And many of them come from my own experience.

Like the time I unknowingly frightened a 20-something tattooed, pink-haired woman in tattered blue jeans, with a ring in her nose and another in her navel. I shared in an episode an important relationship lesson I learned from that encounter.

Easily searchable content

Our website, johncertalic.com makes it easy to find relationship topics that interest you. Each episode is found in one of six searchable categories:

  • Relationship Principles
  • Relational Skills
  • Finding Joy in Relationships
  • God in Our Relationships
  • Family Relationships
  • Becoming a Better Listener

You can also search by tags or keywords. For example, searching on the word “humility” brings up 4 podcast episodes, 1 blog post, and 1 reference to my book, THEM – The Richer Life Found in Caring for Others.

“Bakery” brings up nothing. Nothing about bakery; sorry.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, each episode has show notes you can read, though I highly recommend listening because I sometimes will spontaneously add things not in the notes.

Another thing about our format is that we offer practical relationship tools you most likely will not have heard about elsewhere. For example, I have an episode about the myth of “it never hurts to ask.” Then there’s how to prevent relational conflicts before they happen. One of my favorite topics is about the only two questions you ever need to remember to get into a satisfying conversation with someone.

Each episode is about one specific relational concept or skill. Each one is a lot about one thing, not a lot about many things. Every one suggests an actionable response you can take to improve your relationships. It’s not about theory. It’s about practical tools and actions you can take. Today. Now.

Conclusion

Finally, a major reason to listen to this podcast is to discover the joy found in relationships. Besides the topic of listening, discovering the joy of relationships is a thread found throughout many episodes.

We come back to this topic again and again. Episode 041, “Thankful for the Cheerleaders in My Life” is one example.

The main point of today’s episode

When you listen to this podcast it will enrich your life by showing you how to experience the joy God intends for you in your relationships. You’ll experience the joy of relationships as you grow in blessing others, which in turn, will bless you.

Closing

I hope your thinking was stimulated by today’s show, to both reflect and to act, by making it a point to listen to this podcast on a regular basis so you can move the needle forward in making your relationships the best they can be. You can do this, you really can, because You Were Made for This.

In the days ahead, we have a lot coming up that will make this wonderful quote from Walt Whitman a warm reality for you:

We were together, I forgot the rest.

Let that sink in for a moment. We were together, I forgot the rest.

Well, that’s all for today. I look forward to connecting with you again next week. Goodbye for now.

Episodes mentioned above

051 More Than the Music
011 Relationship Skills – Level 1
112 Three Ways to Listen Well in 2021
095 What to Do When People Irritate Us
041 Thankful for the Cheerleaders in My Life

Our Sponsor

You Were Made for This is sponsored by Caring for Others, a missionary care ministry. We depend upon the generosity of people like you to pay our bills.  If you'd like to support what we do with a secure tax-deductible donation, please click here. We'd be so grateful if you did.