We are called to love. Jesus said, that we should love God and then love others as we love ourself. That can be easy sometimes to love the lovable, but what about those who get on our nerves or are difficult to love? Joyce encourages us with a few ways where we can begin to start loving those who are hard to love.
Joyce Meyer, one of the world’s leading practical Bible teachers and New York Times best-selling author, shares encouragement and advice to help us enjoy our daily lives.
With a heart to share Christ and love people, Joyce’s messages help people in all walks of life to grow in their faith, learn to study the Bible, find healing from the wounds of life, get answers to life’s questions and encounter the love of God in a powerful way.
if we want to love people that are
difficult to love the first thing we
need to do
is pray for ourselves
to have a proper attitude before we ever
bother to pray for them to change
and i’m serious i learned a long time
ago i do not go to god and pray for my
husband to change
without approaching the throne in this
fashion lord this thing is really hard
for me
and obviously i would like you to work
in dave’s life
i bet he usually sits down there he’s up
here tonight because he’s got a cough
and if he started coughing he wanted to
escape
quickly however he’s now closer to me so
if i say much
he can come up here and take the
microphone
but first i will pray now lord maybe i’m
not even seeing this right
i may be the one with the problem and so
first of all deal with me
don’t ever go to god in prayer about
somebody else’s faults if you don’t go
with a humble
attitude
amen that’s just not a very safe thing
to do
because just because we think we know
what’s wrong with somebody
doesn’t mean that we do amen
this is better than i thought it might
be
pray that we will see our own faults
because if we do
it will make it much easier to be
patient with the weaknesses of others
because we see our own faults it brings
a degree of humility
into our lives matthew 7 3
why do you stare from without at the
very small particle that’s in your
brother’s eye
let me give it to you i think it’s the
living bible why do you
why do you stare from without at the
toothpick that’s in your brother’s eye
but you don’t become aware of the
telephone pole that’s in your eye
and that’s it just imagine if there were
two people up here and one one had a
toothpick sticking out of his eye
and another one had a telephone pole
sticking out of his eye and the guy with
the telephone pole sticking out of his
eye is trying to correct the guy with
the toothpick in his eye
and actually if you go and read all
those scriptures in matthew 7 i mean it
gets really good because he said
go first and get the telephone pole out
of your own eye
then you will see clearly how to take
the toothpick out of your brother’s eye
see we really we don’t know how to help
people properly
there’s no compassion no gentleness if
we’ve got a bigger mess in our life than
they do but we’re blind to our faults
and only see theirs
maybe there’s just somebody listening
in here by tv maybe you could just
think about this a little bit maybe you
could just
think about all those people you don’t
like
and you could just maybe ask yourself is
it even remotely possible
i mean i know it would be very remote
but is it even remotely possible
that i could have more problems than
they do
hmm well i’ll just leave that with you
now you’ll like this one better number
three
pray for the person who’s being
difficult to get along with
yes thank you but don’t pray for them to
change just to make it easier for you
but pray for them to be all that god
wants them to be
so pray for the person with humility
realizing but for the grace of god there
go i
romans 12 3 for by the grace
i love what paul how paul approaches
this he’s getting ready to correct
the romans and he says by the grace of
god
i warn everyone among you
not to think more highly of yourself
than you ought to so he didn’t just go
in there and start telling them off
he said look i’m only coming to you and
daring to tell you this
because god has given me a grace to do
this
and so i’m telling you don’t think more
highly of yourself than you ought to
don’t have an exaggerated opinion of
your own
importance now you know honestly and
truly sometimes being judgmental of
other people
it is a mechanism that we come up with
to not have to deal with our own
problems
as long as i stay busy thinking about
what’s wrong with you i don’t have to
deal with what might be going on in my
own life
so i’ve kind of found out in my many
years of experience of doing a whole
bunch of stuff wrong and
hopefully learning to do a lot of it
right now
that i really need to spend less time
on other people and more time on me
amen
don’t have an exaggerated opinion of
your own importance but rate your
ability with sober judgment
each according to the degree of faith
apportioned by god
to him pray for people i’m just going to
give you a few ways to pray for people
pray that god will help them be all he
wants them to be
to do what he wants them to do
pray that god will open their eyes
that they actually can see and recognize
when they hurt other people
because they don’t see it they didn’t
get up that day planning to hurt you
pray that god will help them get to the
root of their problem
because behavior modification is not the
answer
you can be a relationship with somebody
and you can say if you don’t do this and
this
i’m leaving well maybe out of fear
they’ll straighten up and be able to
change something for a period of time
but you’ve all had the experience it
comes back
it pops up again somewhere else because
just behavior modification is not what
people
need they need a heart change they need
a nature change
and if they’ve got so many problems in
their life that they can’t see god
themselves
then they need to see us act like god
and it is a sacrifice i am going to talk
to you a little bit this weekend
about being willing to live a little
more sacrificially
for the sake of the gospel
listen we’re not going to be here
forever
jesus is going to come back and maybe
pretty soon the way things are looking i
don’t know
but when it’s over honey it’s over
there’s no do-overs
and i want to really make an effort to
take as many people to heaven with me
as i possibly can
[Applause]
so if i have to keep forgiving the same
person over and over and over and over
and over
or i have to keep believing the best
believing the best believing the best
believing the best
now we all need to see a little progress
there’s no doubt about that
but i i i really believe
that you can kill the meanness in people
with kindness
i mean i proved that with my own father
and it’s too long of a story to get into
right now but
many of you’ve heard me testify about
how god put it on my
heart to take care of him and my mother
until they died and if anybody in the
room thinks i wanted to do that or
thought it was fair you have got another
thing coming because i did not
but it was the single most powerful
thing that i’ve ever done in my whole
life
and my father’s in heaven getting to
hear the message tonight so isn’t that
good news
pray for discernment we need more
discernment
we are we are too much off the top of
our head
we need to pray for discernment
discernment goes deeper than just what
we see
or what we think you remember jesus when
the woman was caught in adultery and
they were trying to trap him because
they knew he
you know was this big love guy and now
here she’s broken the law
and the law says you got a stoner so now
okay mr love what are you gonna say
about this one
and so he knelt down on the ground and
the bible says he wrote in the dirt with
his finger
now what what’s that all about
you know what
and then he slowly gets up and he says
well i’ll tell you what let
whichever one of you has no sin throw
the first stone
you know what i believe he was doing
this is my personal opinion but
i believe that he was taking just enough
time
to hear from his father about the just
right way to handle that situation
[Applause]
what would happen in our lives and in
our families instead of just
well if you do that again i’m out of
here and if you give
i mean come on we all know that don’t
work i mean when my kids were teenagers
i
i screamed at them and my son would roll
his
eyes at me and there’s nothing that i
dislike worse than a teenager whose eyes
roll back in their head every time
every time you try to correct them
or when the room looks like a slop house
and you say clean this up and then i
went through
with it
but it didn’t change them
you scream at your kids till you don’t
have a voice left it’s just going to
make them hate you
but through more discernment
through more prayer through more
realizing what you were like at that age
oh no you were all perfect when you were
12 and 13
14 i mean i did some dumb
stuff when i was a kid
pray for more discernment take a little
more time with things
oh i’m praying i’m praying praying
praying
you can pray for me i’m praying that i
can
just think before i open my mouth and
say something
now not up here when i’m preaching
because you know i believe god’s
speaking to me i don’t have to think i
just open my mouth and out it comes but
you know man when i’m dealing with
people sometimes i’m like
oh why didn’t i just
shut up for a few minutes
all right number four you’re not gonna
like this one but
it’s gotta be part of it number four way
to love people that are hard to love
you gotta be ready you gotta get up
ready
to forgive them often
you know if you’re with somebody that’s
fairly obnoxious there’s not much of a
chance of getting through a whole day
so you need to make your mind up before
it ever starts i’m going to forgive you
you are not going to beat me the devil
working through you is not going to beat
me
i’ve got more love
i have got more love than you’ve got
meanness
[Applause]
here again i’m not saying you know i i
like
okay let’s bring it down a notch you
don’t need to talk to me like that
there’s nothing wrong with that i’m not
talking about not confronting people’s
bad behavior but what i am
talking about is not then building walls
around yourself
and keeping them out of your life
thinking you’re protecting yourself from
ever getting hurt again
got to keep in mind that if you wall
people out you wall yourself in
be ready to forgive them often seven
times i can do seven lord
no peter just over and over and over and
over and over
forgiving one another ephesians 4 32
says forgiving one another readily and
freely as god in christ has forgiven you
you will never
and i will never have to forgive
somebody else for more than jesus has
had to forgive me for
every day every day every day every day
every day