I am insensitive, I have a tendency
To pay more attention to the things that I need
Sometimes I drink too much,
Sometimes I test your trust,
Sometimes I dunno why you stay with me?
I'm hard to love, hard to love, oh I don't make it easy
And I couldn't do it if I stood where you stood
I'm hard to love, hard to love and you say that you need me
I don't deserve it, but I love that you love me good

Surprised I chose Lee Brice’s, Hard to Love, as the song to open this post with, especially given the picture I chose, a couple obviously in the throes of love? Does anything resonate with you in the opening lyrics? Do you have anyone in your world that is hard to love? Do you often find it easier to love total strangers than someone in your own family?

When I travel, God always seems to speak to my heart about people, to really notice and see the people around me, and I am reminded that we are called to love all people, because all people are his people.

He puts on my heart this relentless sense of empathy and compassion, to talk to and connect with strangers, and this deep desire for getting to know and understand their stories.

I’m sorry, have you traveled lately? At the airport, I don’t see a lot of happy campers out there.

I say to him, because I am always having a dialogue with God in my head, “are you serious right now? People are grumpy. People are in a hurry. People do not want to be bothered. Traveling is stressful, no one wants to socialize when they travel, people are tired, their angry, their anti-social, and let’s face it, personally, I don’t want to deal with them.”

We all love the idea of love. We all want to love and be loved, and we all know, it’s no secret, there are people in this world that are just plain hard to love! (I feel like I see many of those people at the airport.) Sometimes those are people in our family, with the same DNA as us, sometimes it’s a colleague, or a person at church, or school. Sometimes it’s US!

If love is so wonderful, and something we all want, why then can it be so darn difficult to actually live it out?

I hear conversation after conversation, particularly with the younger generations of how love is the answer to all the world’s problems, that we all just need to love each other and there would be peace.

I’ve had conversations with them about seeking a common definition of love and what that would look like if we all had the same definition of love, and how better off the world would be if love were the baseline of everything.

This is not a new conversation. History shows many generations of youths marching for love, living for love, seeking love , and seeking peace through love.

First, let me say that I am glad they are searching. It’s important not to be apathetic and just throw our hands up and not seek understanding, or to not question anything. Second, they are right. This is true. Love is the answer. There would be peace if we all just loved one another, and we all had a common definition of love.

But wait, don’t we actually already have all of that?

Webster’s defines love as, “(1) : strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties, [such as] maternal love for a child. (2) : attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers.” This is the world’s definition of love. Do you notice anything about this particular kind of love?

Is it unconditional? Is it limited to fit in a box, kinship, maternal, romantic, or personal ties? Does this definition mention anything about peace, or anything about what is really, truly required of us to genuinely love others?

So, in my humble opinion, while this might be a universal worldly definition of love, I believe it is safe to assume, by Webster’s definition, the sort of love they’re defining is still very limited. It’s not the kind of love that would bring world peace. So, where can we go to find an already defined, solid, never changing, life giving, and peace generating definition of love?

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son, [Jesus], into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us." (John 4:9-12)

Friends, world, anyone who will listen, we already have the kind of love people are always searching for, a universal definition, and example given to us by the creator of love himself.

God gave us an example of this perfect, life giving, world changing love years and years ago at the cross. It’s called agapé love.

Agapé love is selfless, and it’s unconditional.

Agapé love extends beyond emotions.

It’s more than a feeling or sentiment, it is active.

It demonstrates love. (Jesus at the cross)

So, why do we still search and search for a common definition, one that we believe will be earth shattering to unite the world and bring about peace on earth, and why, for those of us who know this biblical definition of love, why is it still so hard to love in this way?

Because agapé generally requires too much from us. It’s a risk and we have to be vulnerable. The world tells us love is a feeling that we should just naturally have. This world lies.

Love is a choice requiring action and intentionality on our part to actually implement, and that my friends is the piece of the puzzle that most do not like because it’s hard.

In my travels this week, I took the challenge to set aside my personal agenda to just read and mind my own business, and instead I listened to what God put on my heart about reaching out, noticing the people around me, and connecting.

I won’t say it was completely comfortable, nor was it filled with endless pleasantries, but overall it was quite enlightening and informative, and a needed lesson for me about peace and people.

Here are some of my key takeaways…

First of all, I had to remind myself that God loves all people. Difficult people are loved by the same Heavenly Father that I am loved by. He went to the cross for them as much as he did for me. God reminded me of this over and over as I intentionally reached out to people who made me uncomfortable.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 NIV)

Secondly, and I say this all the time, we live in a fallen and broken world with an enemy who wants nothing more than to prevent peace and unity among anyone, let alone people who love Jesus. People search for more because deep down inside we all know this world is not meant to be our final destination. This was a common, overarching premise of conversations. There has to be something more!

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2: 15-17 ESV)

As long as we live on this earth we will never experience complete peace and no one will ever love everyone as we should, but that’s not an excuse for us not to try.

Third, it’s important to understand, YOU, ME, all of us, are difficult people to love to someone out there in this big wide world. We all sin and therefore, as shocking as this might sound, you can be a difficult person. I can be a difficult person. It was so apparent that we are more alike than we are different, and we all have similar needs.

Maybe that is precisely why God says, “‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’“ (Mark 12:31 NIV)

Fourth, often times difficult people are overburdened. Our lives are busy. Technology is constantly distracting us, we measure our worth by social media standards, never of course matching up, single parenting is rampant, people are stretched and stressed. Again, this is not a hall pass for bad behavior, but it’s something to consider when challenged to love someone.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

Difficult people are everywhere, and they have been around forever. Did it ever occur to you that difficult people are exactly who we need to encounter in order to intentionally choose to be who we are called to be? If we are never pushed outside our comfort zone we don’t grow.

Difficult people push our buttons. They force us into a corner of reacting from the hip, or intentionally choosing to rise above their challenge and show agapé love. They test our true character. Our natural tendency is to run away from hard to love people, to shut them out.

I thought I would share some suggestions I am still learning to implement in my own world of challenging people to love, because difficult people are not going away, and perhaps they are there to make us a better version of ourselves?
1.      Ask God to help you see people through his eyes. Seeing people the way he sees them will soften your heart towards others, trust me.
2.     Pray for the hard to love people in your life and those you encounter. Praying for others also changes us.
3.     Keep asking God for the grace to stay and demonstrate agapé love. Move toward getting to know them, not away from them.
4.     Ask God to help you to extend grace to them just as God extends grace to you.
5.     Find ways to encourage them. People are stretched to their limits, maxed out, and many never hear one encouraging word. You could change that.
6.     Remember, YOU could be the difficult person in someone’s life. Be aware of your own shortcomings and sins.

At the end of the day, "We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

The following song was inspired by a conversation Amy Grant had with a homeless man on a park bench on Santa Monica beach overlooking the sea. He approached her and asked her to watch over his things while he went to find a toilet. So she said she would. He returned and sat down by her, and they talked the entire afternoon.
Grant says, “I was really impacted by that conversation. For one thing, I think I was always kind of mystified, like how does somebody end up on the street? He was a very real person, and when I got up and left the bench, he said, 'Don't forget me,' and I said, 'I won't.' When I got back into my hotel room, I got a piece of paper and wrote down 'the shelter of | each other' because I truly enjoyed his companionship that afternoon.”
Turn This World Around, gives words to why we need to love all people, as difficult as it is, and even though we can’t fix the world or change everything or love everyone all at once, like Amy says,” as we respect ourselves and we're not afraid to embrace what's there, we are changed, one relationship at a time, and that's basically the song in a nutshell." (crossrhythms.co.uk-Amy Grant)

Turn This World Around - Amy Grant

We are all the same it seems
Behind the eyes
Broken promises and dreams
Our good disguise

All we're really looking for is some place
Safe and warm
The shelter of each other in the storm
Maybe one day
We can turn and face our fears
Maybe one day
We can reach out through the tears
After all it's really not that far
To where hope can be found
Maybe one day
We can turn this world around

Who can trace the path of time
Not you or me
The twisting road we call our lives
We cannot see
The hunger and the longing every one of us
Knows inside
Could be the bridge between us if we try

Maybe one day
We can turn and face our fears

Songwriters: Darnall / Grant / Thomas

Turn This World Around lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Copyright Solutions, Music Services, Inc, Reservoir Media Management Inc, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Something to consider: Are you hard to love? Would you like to change? 10-signs-youre-hard-to-love & how-to-change

DISCLAIMER: As always, I want to be intentional to mention, this post does not apply to unhealthy, harmful people. If you have people in your life that are toxic, abusive, or harmful in any way, mental, physical, spiritual, whatever, boundaries are necessary and not wrong!

Resources & References:

Amy Grant-Behind the buzz of-Behind The Eyes

Loving-difficult-people

myfaith.com/loving-difficult-people

proverbs31 its-hard-to-love-difficult-people

how-to-love-one-who-is-difficult-to-love

hard to love