Here are two things that are very important for relationships with people from 2 Timothy chapter four. Paul is talking to a young leader here but we can all benefit from this...
'...preach the word; be ready in season and out of season...'
That means all the time from the start and all through the relationship. Preaching or just talking about honest, real eternal things.
'...reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching...'
This is not instant. That phrase 'complete patience' speaks of long investment times. Teaching means your have and are discussing real things with that person or those people. They know that you care and are invested and they also know that truth is something that is important to you and that you have something weighty to contribute to their life.
Rebuking a stranger may just make them angry and with good reason because who are you to them? Have you visited them in the hospital? Have talked things out? No. Their first, second or even third impression is a rebuke? A humble wise person might receive that rebuke but that is a lot to ask from anyone.
"I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching..," - 2 Timothy 4:1-3a ESV
I'd say that time is now but maybe part of the reason people won't hear sound teaching is because they have been rebuked with unsound and unkind words.
"We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church." - Ephesians 4:14b-15 NLT
Relationships can grow into something beautiful. Once they have deep roots they can withstand storms.
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