All of us have hard-to-love people in our lives
– folks who, because of past hurts, are very difficult to be
around. These people need healing that can only come from God and
while I haven’t cracked the code on how to consistently love the
hard-to-love people in my life, I have discovered four things I can
do that really help.
All of us have hard-to-love people in our lives – folks who, because of past hurts, are very difficult to be around. These people need healing that can only come from God and while I haven’t cracked the code on how to consistently love the hard-to-love people in my life, I have discovered four things I can do that really help.
First, I can try to discover the story behind why they are so hard to love. By learning what happened in the past I can better deal with their attitude today.
Learning the story behind their pain isn’t necessarily going to cause me to love them more, but it will certainly give me some understanding about why they are that way, which, in turn, will cause me to be more patient with them and better equip me to deal with them from now on.
A second helpful strategy is for me to downgrade what I expect to receive from the relationship. Proverbs 24:29 says, “Do not say, ‘I’ll do to him as he has done to me.'” We all approach life and our relationships with various expectations – at the very least we want a quid pro quo kind of deal where we expect to get back whatever we invest in a relationship. Things usually get rocky when our expectations aren’t met, and that’s especially true in our relationships with hard-to-love people. We would be wise to downgrade what we expect to receive.
When I say we need to downgrade our expectations, I’m not saying we are to think less of them or to devalue who they are. I’m just suggesting that we not base what we do on what we expect to receive in return. We recognize they have such a big hole in their heart they are naturally going to only focus on that. I can be okay with that when I love them without the expectation they are going to give the same kind of love back to me. When I love them unconditionally and without expectations, I am doing exactly what Jesus would do in my place.
I’ve discovered the bottom-line reason people are hard to love is they take more than they give back, thus draining the people around them. This is where the third strategy becomes absolutely critical in responding appropriately: I must depend on a different source of love. All of us have discovered there is a limit to human love. It works okay when there is a healthy level of give and take, but hard-to-love folks are mostly all “take” and little “give,” and quickly show us how limited and inadequate our love resources really are.
That’s when we need the kind of love that only God can provide, which brings us to our fourth consideration: see this relationship as an opportunity to show God’s love. Jesus once shared a few of the contrasts between God’s way of responding to people and our way: “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best; the sun to warm and the rain to nourish to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you” (Matthew 5:43-48, The Message).
