Love One Another - How to Deal with Difficult People in Your Life, Part 2

Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram Daily Podcast

Living on the Edge

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We all can be hard to get along with at times, but there are some people who seem to be especially gifted at it! Before you put someone in a headlock, and before you lose your temper, join Chip as he teaches us how to deal with the difficult people in our lives.

Main Points

Thesis: Sometimes the person we most want God to remove from our lives is the person we need the most.

Why? Because:

The way we treat difficult people reveals the true condition of our heart.
Difficult people cause us to grow in ways we couldn’t on our own.
The most distinguishing mark of Jesus’ followers is their love for those they would not and could not love on their own.

What does “bearing with” others look like?

With humility – See them and treat them as people of equal or superior value than yourself.
With gentleness – Extend undeserved acts of kindness and acceptance that are foreign to you with this person.
With patience – Refuse to allow your irritation and frustration to erupt into negative thoughts, feelings, and comments to or about them.
With forgiveness – Release them from your internal desire to pay them back for the frustration, difficulty, and wounds they inflicted upon you.

Why is “bearing with” difficult people so important?

It increases my appreciation of God’s love toward me.
It demonstrates God’s love toward them.
It changes me where I need it most.
It communicates the reality and authenticity of Christ to the world.

Conclusion: Sometimes the person I most want God to remove from my life is the very person I need the most!

Action Steps:

Identify the most difficult person in your life right now.
Begin praying everyday for this person for the next two weeks.
Stop consciously avoiding them and start seeing them like Christ does. (see Colossians 3:12)
Serve them in some specific way this week.
Discuss these action steps with your friends, family, growth group, Bible study, and/or ministry team.

Broadcast Resource

Additional Resource Mentions

Free Your Divine Design Book

About Chip Ingram

Chip Ingram’s passion is helping Christians really live like Christians. As a pastor, author, and teacher for more than three decades, Chip has helped believers around the world move from spiritual spectators to healthy, authentic disciples of Jesus by living out God’s truth in their lives and relationships in transformational ways.

About Living on the Edge

Living on the Edge exists to help Christians live like Christians. Established in 1995 as the radio ministry of pastor and author Chip Ingram, God has since grown it into a global discipleship ministry. Living on the Edge provides Biblical teaching and discipleship resources that challenge and equip spiritually hungry Christians all over the world to become mature disciples of Jesus.

Connect

Partner With Us

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We can all be hard to get along with the times, but there are some people that just seem to be especially gifted at it.
0:07.8	Before you put them in a headlock or blow your temper or just go completely out of control,
0:12.9	why not learn God's way to deal with that person that's making you crazy in your life?
0:19.2	That's today.
0:22.0	Thanks for listening to this edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.
0:26.5	We are an international teaching and discipleship ministry that motivates Christians to live like Christians.
0:32.5	In this program, we're picking up in our Love One another series as Chip continues explaining how to understand
0:38.7	and respond to the difficult people in our lives. He'll also address the question,
0:43.0	why are these individuals in my life in the first place? We'll get ready to have your perspective
0:48.1	utterly changed. Here now is Chip with the remainder of his insightful talk from Ephesians
0:53.0	chapter 4. I'd like to suggest that God may well have purposely put the difficult person in your life
1:03.0	to help you grow. The first step, then what?
1:06.0	Is you need to bear with them, not grudgingly how, but with humility. But it goes on. After that,
1:13.0	it's with gentleness. We've looked at this word before. It means power under control. See,
1:19.1	it's the idea of instead of using your power to control, you use your power to love. That's what
1:27.4	Jesus was. He said, I'm me. He had all love. That's what Jesus was.
1:28.1	He said, I'm meek.
1:28.8	He had all power.
1:30.7	He speaks, it comes into existence.
1:32.3	But instead of using his power to make people obey,
1:35.4	Jesus was so strong that he could be meek or gentle
1:40.5	and extend love because it was secure.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Living on the Edge, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Living on the Edge and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.