Difficult people are everywhere—in your neighborhood, at your workplace, at your children’s school, and, inevitably, in your church. And while it’s natural to want to avoid those who can be difficult, you can impact their heart, bring joy to yours, and possibly even improve the overall atmosphere at your church when you choose to love the difficulty right out of them.
I believe Satan works overtime to divide the unity in our churches. Why would the enemy of your soul and Christ’s church care if you are at odds with unbelievers? He wants to target your relationships with believers in order to destroy unity among God’s people because Jesus said the world would know His followers by their love for one another—which really means each other.
Paul told the early Christians to make his “joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.” He then told them to “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves” (Philippians 2:2 NASB). Therein lies the formula for unity in our churches today, as well. And if you and I follow those instructions as best we can, we can keep Satan at bay instead of letting him gain a victory every time he incites you and me to dislike or just feel frustrated with difficult people to where we don’t want to be around them anymore.
Don’t give in. Don’t fall for the schemes of the enemy who constantly tries to sow dissension among believers. And don’t succumb to the temptation to be carnal or self-serving when it comes to getting along with others. To bring glory to God, joy to your heart, and more unity to your local fellowship, here are seven ways to love the difficult people in your church.
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1. See difficult people as God’s refining work in your life.
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another,” Proverbs 27:17 tells us. We look at that verse to mean Christian fellowship makes us strong. But think about it. God can refine and sharpen us when we are around people who are difficult because it makes us rely on God to shift our attitudes, soften our hearts, and make us people who need an extra measure of His Spirit’s help when it comes to developing spiritual character traits like love, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control, (Galatians 5:22-23). God can make you and me more like Jesus when we’re around difficult people. He can refine us and smooth out our edges by allowing us to be in uncomfortable, trying situations with others. As God has shown grace to us, He wants us to show grace toward others. That means taking an opportunity to love others unconditionally as God has loved you.
2. Pray for those you’d rather avoid.
When we pray for someone, God changes our hearts toward them. And, as a result of our prayers, sometimes God actually changes the other person and softens their heart and makes them less difficult to be around, or He changes us and how we perceive them. Offer up your difficult people to God in prayer, but don’t just ask God to deal with them. Ask God to bless them, to bring them joy, to cause them to want to extend kindness toward others. Ask God to reveal to you some tangible ways you can show love toward that person. Scripture says, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him” (1 John 5:14-15). We know it is God’s will that we pray for unity in His church, so we can be certain our prayers for that person, or our heart toward them, will be answered.
3. Heap some love on their heads.
You thought I was going to tell you to “heap burning coals” on their heads, didn’t you? I always thought that verse from Romans 12:20, which quotes Proverbs 25:22, was peculiar. When you love someone who doesn’t love you (or acts like they don’t), you are “heaping burning coals on their head.” Does that mean you’re making them uncomfortable because of how they’re being convicted by your nice treatment of them? Possibly. Does it mean you’re giving them a foretaste of what hell will feel like (burning coals on one’s head certainly can’t feel good, right?)? Romans 12:20-21 in The Message reads: “Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy [the difficult person in your life] hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.” In other words, start loving them as Jesus does. They may not return the kindness, but God will convict their hearts and protect your heart from becoming bitter.
4. Ask God to show you the similarities between that person and yourself.
I’m not a gossip, you may be thinking. I’m not overly critical, or I’m not a snob, might also be crossing your mind right now. But chances are, the person you believe is difficult might be thinking the same thing about you. Many times, we don’t like certain people, or we find them difficult because we see something in them that we don’t like about ourselves. Or, maybe that person really is difficult, but so are you to someone else and have no idea, just like they may appear to be clueless about your annoyance with them. That is when we pray: “Show me, God, what you want me to learn from this person’s actions toward me or my irritation with them. Show me, God, what exists in me that might be similar, and rid me of it.” We can more readily express grace to others when we realize God—and others—may be extending that same grace toward us.
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5. Ask God to give you His eyes and heart for that person.
There’s an old saying that we shouldn’t judge a person until we’ve walked a mile in their shoes. I think a better way to say that today is “Everyone has a story. And we don’t know it until we ask.” People who are hurt, hurt others. People who have been wounded tend to wound others. When you ask for God’s heart for difficult people, you may begin to see their hurts or a bit of their past wounds, which God sees, and it will give you more compassion in knowing how to deal with them. The crotchety old man who always complains just may be in physical pain and doesn’t know how to express anything else but complaint. The woman with the critical edge may have been betrayed and doesn’t trust anyone else and is still dealing with deep emotional pain. As you pray for God’s eyes and heart for them, He may allow you to learn something about them that will soften your heart and give you God’s compassion for them. Practice the heart of your Father in heaven and determine to change the way you see and respond to that person, out of your love for God and how He has loved you.
6. Practice simple acts of love toward those who need it most.
Difficult people have few friends. If Ashley has a problem with Karen, and Jerry has a problem with Karen, and the children’s ministry director has a problem with Karen too, Karen is most likely the problem. And she’s not making it easy for others to be her friend, either. So, when you determine to love Karen in spite of herself, in spite of what she does, and in spite of the cold prickly feelings she gives off to anyone who comes near her, you just might crack her icy exterior that will allow her heart to eventually melt. There are a number of ways to show simple acts of love. You can start by greeting them sincerely each time you see them, walking them to their car, offering to do something for them, and asking how you can pray for them. Eventually, it might lead to handing them a handwritten note telling them you appreciate that they’re always there and that you’re praying for them in whatever circumstances they might be going through. Ask them about their loved ones, and maybe one day invite them to join you for lunch after church. As you extend with simple acts of love, you will experience the joy of loving others as Jesus does. You may even find you eventually begin to wonder why you thought that person was so difficult.
7. Tag-team the difficult person with a friend or mentor.
It’s difficult to try to break another person’s icy exterior or a difficult personality on your own. So, tag-team the difficult person with a friend at church who can help you show kindness to them. Do you have a Christian friend or mentor in your life whom you can count on to say the right thing when that difficult person spouts off careless words, gossips about you, or rejects your attempts at kindness? We all need positive, encouraging Christians in our lives to balance out the challenging ones. Meet regularly with a mature believer who can help you stay grounded spiritually, pray with you for the difficult people in your church, and cultivate a heart and life that is pleasing to the Lord (Titus 2:3-5). Meeting regularly with someone wise can help you step back from hurt, expectations, and overall “difficult people drama,” and align your heart and thoughts with God’s so you can not only know how to handle a difficult person, but also make sure YOU are not being one, as well. And when your mentor or friend can join you in your efforts to be kind and loving to the difficult people in your church, you then have a team project and not an individual effort. Ecclesiastes 4:9 tells us “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor” and tag-teaming a difficult person with love might be a perfect example of that.
For more on dealing with difficult people or improving your relationships overall, see Cindi’s book, Drama Free: Finding Peace When Emotions Overwhelm You.
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