Loving Difficult People

Bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

–Colossians 3:13

By God’s grace, we can keep loving the difficult people God has placed in our lives. The easy thing is to cut the troublesome person out of your life when possible, or just avoid them at best. But I suggest we are more like our patient and loving Savior when we bear with each other and seek to show mercy and kindness, no matter how we are treated.

Here are six practical ways, among many others, to show love to a difficult person God has placed in your path. This may apply to your marriage right now, but if not, it will before too long. And it definitely will throughout your life when it comes to people outside your marriage—and finding greater peace in relationships outside your marriage will have benefits within your marriage.

1. Pray for Your Own Heart

Ask God to soften your heart toward this person, to put off anger and irritability, to put on meekness and kindness, to understand this person’s struggles and meet them with compassion (Col. 3:12–14).

2. Pray for Them

Ask God to be at work in their hearts, drawing unbelievers to himself and sanctifying believers to become more like Jesus (Phil. 1:9–11).

3. Move toward Them, Not Away from Them

Although our tendency is to want to steer clear of people with whom we have strained relationships, they are exactly the people we need to be intentionally moving toward. Find ways to engage them in conversation, meet them for coffee, send them a text.

4. Find Specific Ways to Bless and encourage Them

Write them a note of appreciation. Buy them a book that has been an encouragement to you. Tell them you are praying for them.

5. Give Them Grace, Just as God Extends Grace to You

Remember God’s lavish grace poured out for your own daily sins. Ask God to help you bear with them, forgiving them, as he has forgiven you (Col. 3:13).

6. Realize That You Too Could Be the Difficult Person in Someone Else’s Life

You might not even realize that you are a thorn in the flesh for someone close to you. Don’t be oblivious to your own shortcomings and sins.

So when that child has you on the brink of tears, or you’ve just received a harsh and critical email, or you’re confronted with that extended family member who drives you up the wall, ask God for grace not to run away, but to keep engaging that hard-to-love person with the sacrificial love of Christ.

God will be honored and our hearts will find deeper satisfaction as we seek to love people just as Christ loved us when we were his enemies.

TALK ABOUT IT

Each of you share with your spouse the one or two people in your life right now who are the most difficult to love. (It may be your spouse; that is not abnormal.) Be honest, and give specific reasons that come to mind.

Whoever your “difficult person” is, discuss together how to help each other draw on God’s strength to overcome your natural weaknesses.