Loving People Who Are Hard To Love

How do you love the people in your life who are hard to love? We're never going to be able to prevent people from saying or doing things that hurt our feelings. We will always have opportunities to get offended. But if we do things God's way, we can choose to save ourselves a lot of misery and hardship. This doesn't mean we allow people to abuse us. No, there is a time for confronting people and dealing with situations. However, the Bible commands us to love our enemies and forgive those who have wronged us, even when it feels impossible. Everything the Lord asks us to do in the Bible is ultimately for our good. In fact, when we choose to love our enemies and forgive those who have hurt us, we are actually helping ourselves more than anyone else. Because whatever the Lord commands us to do, He is going to give us the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish it - and that includes loving and being good to difficult people! God's love flowing through us is strong enough to melt even the hardest hearts, so use kindness as a weapon to overcome the meanness in people.

Discusses how to live with difficult persons.

Pastor John Piper shows how to sever the clinging roots of sin that ensnare us, including anxiety, pride, shame, impatience, covetousness, bitterness, despondency, and lust in Battling Unbelief. When faith flickers, stoke the fire. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it offers some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us, until we believe that God is more desirable than life itself (Psalm 63:3). Only the power of God’s superior promises in the gospel can emancipate our hearts from servitude to the shallow promises and fleeting pleasures of sin. Delighting in the bounty of God’s glorious gospel promises will free us for a less sin-encumbered life, to the glory of Christ. Rooted in solid biblical reflection, this book aims to help guide you through the battles to the joys of victory by the power of the gospel and its superior pleasure.

Maybe you’re a bride-to-be who is about to gain a mother-in-law. Or perhaps you’re a mother-of-the-groom who is about to gain a daughter-in-law. Or maybe you’ve been in an in-law relationship for decades, one that’s been struggling in painful tension for years. No matter your age or stage, every daughter-in-law and mother-in-law needs help navigating their relationship sometimes. Whether the struggle is one of feeling unseen, unheard, or unvalued, authors and in-laws Barbara and Stacy Reaoch have been there, and as they’ve put the Bible’s wisdom to practice over the years, they’ve found that the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law really can thrive in the midst of difficulty. In this biblical, practical, and heartfelt book, Barbara and Stacy Reaoch share from their own 20 years of forming a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law bond. As you walk alongside them in their own journey and lessons learned, prepare to be encouraged and equipped in these areas: Expectations Conflict Suffering Communication Parenting And more With the Bible as your foundation and this book as a helpful companion in the journey, take heart: a healthier relationship with your mother-in-law or daughter-in-law is closer than you think!

Renowned Bible teacher and #1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer teaches readers to love the people in their life who are hard to love. We’re never going to be able to prevent people from saying or doing things that hurt our feelings. We will always have opportunities to get offended. But if we do things God’s way, we can choose to save ourselves a lot of misery and hardship. This doesn’t mean we allow people to abuse us. No, there is a time for confronting people and dealing with situations. However, the Bible commands us to love our enemies and forgive those who have wronged us, even when it feels impossible. Everything the Lord asks us to do in the Bible is ultimately for our good. In fact, when we choose to love our enemies and forgive those who have hurt us, we are actually helping ourselves more than anyone else. Because whatever the Lord commands us to do, He is going to give us the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish it—and that includes loving and being good to difficult people! God’s love flowing through us is strong enough to melt even the hardest hearts, so use kindness as a weapon to overcome the meanness in people. A Study Guide is also available for purchase.

Prickly, defensive, nasty, volatile, withdrawn, miserable . . . aren't there days when you feel surrounded by difficult people? How do you cope? You can try avoiding them, gossiping about them, or giving them a piece of your mind. But wait! Don't your reactions make you hard to love too? William P. Smith explains that learning how to deal ...

A sharp and entertaining essay collection about the importance of multiple forms of love and friendship in a world designed for couples, from a laser-precise new voice. Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine. I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers. Briallen Hopper's Hard to Love honors the categories of loves and relationships beyond marriage, the ones that are often treated as invisible or seen as secondary--friendships, kinship with adult siblings, care teams that form in times of illness, or various alternative family formations. She also values difficult and amorphous loves like loving a challenging job or inanimate objects that can't love you back. She draws from personal experience, sharing stories about her loving but combative family, the fiercely independent Emerson scholar who pushed her away, and the friends who have become her invented or found family; pop culture touchstones like the Women's March, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and the timeless series Cheers; and the work of writers like Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O'Connor, and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick like you've never seen it!). Hard to Love pays homage and attention to unlikely friends and lovers both real and fictional. It is a series of love letters to the meaningful, if underappreciated, forms of intimacy and community that are tricky, tangled, and tough, but ultimately sustaining.

30 devotional readings for couples from John Piper, Francis Chan, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and 10 others. / God designed marriage as a pointer to and catalyst for your greatest joy. It's not meant to be a storybook ending, but a fresh beginning, to help ready you for the true "happily ever after" when we see our great Bridegroom face to face.