Dealing With Difficult People..
“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
— Matthew 18: 21
One important key to keeping our sanity is to keep your relationships right.
How do you keep them right?
Confront with love. Jesus taught that when you’ve been offended, you need to confront the individual who has hurt or offended you and express your concern (Matthew 18: 15). You can choose the time, manner, place, and you can do it in a gentle, positive manner.
Recognize the power of forgiveness. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you’re saying “What you did is okay.” Rather it means you are willingly placing in God’s hands the wrong that someone did to you, confident that He can deal with the person better than you can. And once an issue is dealt with, you can forget about it. Don’t file the offense away in your memory bank.
Concentrate on what’s important. We waste far too much adrenaline on trivial things that will not matter next week. Nothing will drive you crazy faster than anger, hostility, and thoughts of revenge.
I remember Pastor Elmer Arroza once said in his message, “Forgiveness is all about sin. It’s not about the deservingness of the perpetrator or the doer.”
“I dont want to be angry. I want to heal.”
— Courageous
