Loving Difficult People
Luke 6:27 But I say to you people who are listening to me, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
We all need to be loved. You do, I do, the people around us do and you know something, even the most difficult people in our lives, do. Yep, we all need to be loved.
Let’s just think about what it means to love those truly difficult people in our lives. That guy who always manages to criticise you, even when you’ve done well. That woman who drains you emotionally. Those people who are constantly rude to you.
I have one like that in the apartment complex where I live. I’ve tried to help him with his problems, but all the help I could muster wasn’t good enough for him. He is so rude to me when we get in the elevator together or pass each other in the corridor. In the flesh, we want to be rude back. In the flesh, we want to give them a piece of our mind.
And yet so often, those who need our love the most, ask for it in the most unloving of ways. The truth is that that rude individual desperately needs to be loved. How do I know that? Because we all need to be loved. Jesus knew that too:
Luke 6:27 But I say to you people who are listening to me, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
There are two parts to the Lord’s command here. The first is to soften our hearts, to love our enemies rather than scheming how we can get back at them. The second is to act out that love, to do good to those who hate us.
The challenge for me, the challenge for you, is to figure out how to do that, with that difficult guy in the elevator.
Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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