Dealing with Difficult People
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Thank God, It’s Monday: (Part III)
DEALING WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE
Romans 12:18
18) If it is possible, as far as it depends on you,
live at peace with everyone.
Luke 19:1-10
1) Jesus entered
2) A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a
chief tax collector and was wealthy.
3) He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short
man he could not, because of the crowd.
4) So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to
see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5) When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said
to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house
today."
6) So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7) All the people saw this and began to mutter,
"He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.' "
8) But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord,
"Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and
if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the
amount."
9) Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come
to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.
10) For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what
was lost."
A recent survey was taken from over 2, 500 American
workers listing the top five irritating things at work
1. Condescending tones - When someone talks down to you or talk to you like
you are dumb and you don’t know your work.
2. Public
reprimand from a boss. Instead of
talking to you in private, they humiliate you in front of everybody,
3. Micromanaging. Having a boss that is breathing down your
neck and not letting you do anything on your own.
4.
Loud talkers, using speaker phones in public areas, and cell phones
ringing.
5.
Using a PDA during a meeting. In other words, you are leading a meeting and
someone is so involved that they pull out their PDA and start emailing someone
or searching the web on it.
Notice what our key text says about this - “If it is possible, as far as it depends on
you, live at peace with everyone.” You see, we play a part in bringing
about peace in the difficult relationships that we face in our life, whether it
is with a co-worker, friend or a family member. . That means our focus, when
we are talking about difficult people, should not be the other person but how
we respond to the other person because by changing our response to difficult
people in our life, we can change the outcome of the situation and the outcome
of the relationship.
The way Jesus dealt with Zacchaeus provides us a
clear example. Zacchaeus was a Roman tax collector. To understand what that
meant, you have to understand what was going on in the first century
We don’t know what happened exactly at that dinner, but
we do know what came about as a result of Jesus having dinner with
Zacchaeus. At the end, Zacchaeus told
Jesus, “I will no longer cheat anybody and if I took from people, and I cheated
people, I will give back to them four times what I took from them.” Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this
house today.” This is interesting. There was a huge turnaround. But I want you to notice the point. Zacchaeus didn’t change as long as people
were putting him off and treating him the same way as a difficult person. He didn’t change until Jesus stopped that
cycle, went to his house and treated him with love as a human being. I believe
some of us are caught in a destructive cycle with difficult people. When they
do something that hurts us or aggravates us, we respond in the same way every
time and it leads to the same argument and same hurts over and over and over
again.
You
see, we have to change our actions if we want the situation to change. We need to ask ourselves - How does God want
me to respond to the difficult person or to the difficult situation that is in
my life so that I can experience God’s best. Here are some of the things we
need to do when we face difficult people:
I I
SHOULD CONSIDER GOD’S PURPOSE:
Now you may find this hard to swallow, but God
intentionally places difficult people and difficult situations in our
life. God is not always there trying to
help rescue us from difficult situations or trying to remove difficult people
from our life. Sometimes, He puts those
people and those situations in our lives for specific reasons.
James 1:4
4) Perseverance must
finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
To understand this verse better, let’s read in the
Message Translation - So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its
work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. Notice
the underlined part. Literally, it shows that we should not run from the
difficult people in our life. Don’t try
to automatically remove yourself from the difficult circumstances in your
life. Don’t do it prematurely because
God has placed that difficult person or situation for a reason. The fact is -
God usually has some specific reasons for bringing difficult people into our
lives. Here are two possibilities:
A. God wants
to develop you – Going back to the statement of James, God is in the
business of shaping our character. Often, He does it best through adversities.
Listen, most of the time God does not put difficult people into your life for
you to change those people. God puts
those difficult people into your life so that He can change you.
Matthew 7:3
3) "Why do you look
at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank
in your own eye?
II I
SHOULD COMMUNICATE KINDNESS:
All of us can benefit so much in the words of James
Most of the time, if we have the choice between harsh
words, critical words, angry words, or kind words, the Bible says we should
choose kind words every time.
Proverbs 15:1
1) A gentle answer turns
away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
This verse reminds us that if we respond in kind
words or gentle words even wearing a smile instead of anger, it diffuses the
situation. You would be surprised at the power of a kind word or a kindly smile
to interrupt this cycle of violence. For instance, you go into work one day and
your boss yells at his subordinate, and his subordinate go in and she yells at
her secretary, and the secretary goes home and she yells at her family, and the
son goes outside and kicks the dog.
Well, it’s not the dog’s fault that this happened. Why does the dog get kicked? It got passed down.
Of course, we don’t manufacture kindness on our own.
We need to seek the control of the Holy Spirit to manifest this:
Galatians 5:22-23
22) But the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23) gentleness and
self-control. Against such things there is no law.
In here, what Paul is saying is if God is in control
of my life, kindness will be a natural result of my life. Listen, if you find
yourself always responding to people harshly or if you find that most of your
words are harsh, and angry, you need to ask yourself, where is God in my life?
You see, kindness is a natural response of a life that has received God’s love.
Kindness isn’t something that should only come out of our lives when someone
else is kind to us, but even when someone is harsh to us. We should be pro-active in our lives in
showing kindness to others.
III I
HAVE TO CONFRONT CONFLICT:
Now, let me say this, as we have been talking about
kindness and some people get the wrong impression of who a Christian should
be. Being a Christian does not mean
getting walked over all of the time.
Being a Christian does not mean letting people take advantage of
you. You see, there are times when you
need to stand up, as a Christian, for what is right. Look at 2 Timothy 1:7:
7) For God did not give us
a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
The background of this verse is that Paul wrote to
Timothy who is a younger leader in the church who often have the tendency to be
intimidated or put down by older people in the church who have more experience and
maturity. Timothy should never be
intimidated. He should learn to face conflicts and resolve them quickly.
You know, we all have the tendency to let conflict go
unresolved or we let it sit for too long. As a result, our resentments have
turned into bitterness, and it is destroying us. It’s making your like
miserable. It’s even possible that it is hurting your work performance. In
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He speaks about resolving conflict:
Matthew 5:23-24
23) "Therefore, if
you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother
has something against you,
24) leave your gift there
in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come
and offer your gift.
Jesus words emphasizes that unresolved conflicts with others will affect our relationship with God as well. Going to worship, praying, and giving tithes and offerings will not mean anything, if we have a broken horizontal relationship. Obviously, we should not expect our vertical relationship with God to be right if we are not settling our horizontal relationship. So before a conflict brings more damage to you and the other person emotionally, even spiritually, do your best to resolve it. Sometimes, confronting the conflict is the kindest thing that you can do.
IV I
HAVE TO CULTIVATE JESUS’ HEART:
You might be asking, what do I mean by cultivate
Jesus’ heart? What I mean is this—loving
people as is, with all the imperfections, faults, baggage, problems, etc. Commit
to love them as they are, not on the condition of them changing. You see,
that’s hard to do because there are certain things about the people around us
that we would like to change and we say to ourselves—I don’t want to love this
person if they are not going to change.
I want them to change and I want them to get better.
Now, let me ask you
this. What if God had decided He wasn’t
going to love us until we changed. I’m
sure were all familiar with Matthew
28) "Come to me, all
you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
What
if God, instead of saying these words has said, “come to Me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will
give you rest after you get all of your junk straightened out. After you get your life in order.” You know what, if that was the case, none of
us would be here today because none of us have their junk in order. None of us have our lives all in order. We are all messed up. But sometimes that’s what we ask other people to
do. You see, honestly, most people in
this world are looking for someone who will love them unconditionally. And so many of our work relationships would
be better if instead of judging other people, we would accept them and love
them. And so many of our marriages would
be better if instead of trying to change the other person, we accepted them and
loved them. This is exactly what Jesus is challenging us to do:
Matthew 5:44
44) But I tell you: Love
your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
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