God designed us to be in relationship with one another, but the truth is…it isn’t easy! Below, find the top 7 Our Daily Bread University courses for building healthy relationships and mending broken ones, covering topics ranging from forgiveness to marriage to relating to others in groups.
- DISCover Yourself and Others – This course will open a world of opportunity, by revealing how you can build stronger, healthier relationships. Using a highly-effective personality discovery tool, Martin Deacon will help you learn about your own unique strengths and weaknesses that you bring to every relationship and task. You will gain practical skills to build stronger, healthier relationships by understanding how you are wired and how each unique personality fits into God’s Plan.
- 70×7: Finding Peace by Forgiving Others . . . And Yourself – So often relationships are broken by hurt and unforgiveness. Whether the hurt occurred yesterday or years ago, unless you forgive those who wronged you, the heart wound will become infected and spread. Eventually, you can become a prisoner of your own wounded heart. In this course, you will explore how you can find the freedom and peace your heart longs for. Discover forgiveness that is for real and forever.
- Making Choices That Will Transform Your Marriage – Marriage relationships can be the most beautiful…and the most challenging! If you’ve settled for “good enough” in your marriage, if you feel hopeless, if you want to give up, or even if you’ve already quit trying, take heart. You can transform your marriage. In this course, Dr. Ron Welch, psychologist and professor at Denver Seminary, will walk you through making specific choices that will help you in every facet of your marriage. Most importantly, you will discover why you have reason to hope for a transformed marriage in which you and your spouse can help each other grow into the people that God intended you to be.
- SoulCare Foundations I – Part of being in relationship with others means journeying with them through challenges and moving into their lives in ways that will make a real difference. This series (this course and the three following) seeks to help you become more spiritually effective in helping those who are struggling and will also help you better understand how you relate to others and to God.
Once you’ve finished part one, you can go even deeper.
- Interpersonal Communication and Conflict Management – Though this course is aimed at those in church leadership positions, it provides biblical principles of interpersonal communication and conflict management useful in any human relationship. Explore communication models, self-concept, nonverbal messages, stress, and strategies that will help you develop better interpersonal communication skills. The course also focuses on the nature of conflict, how to identify common styles of conflict management, and how to work through conflict acceptably and productively.
- Group Dynamics – While geared toward leaders facilitating small groups, the principles in this course are applicable to any kind of relationship, including family relationships and friend relationships. Explore concepts like authenticity, the importance of listening, appreciating differences, and more.
- Ministering to People in Pain – At some point in our lives, we will all be in relationship with someone who is experiencing deep pain. How can we best support the ones we love when they are hurting? In this course, Dr. Alice Mathews and Dr. Karen Mason explain several types of interventions, which help us understand how we can come alongside people in pain and minister to them more effectively.
Have any of these courses helped you? Which one will you take next? If you’re a Premium Subscriber, please let us know what you’re taking in the comments below.