The Path to Peace: Experiencing God's Comfort When You're OverwhelmedSample

Peace with Difficult People

Do you have a difficult person in your life? Maybe someone you can’t get away from? That person might be in your family, in your friendship circle, or in your church. It might be a co-worker or the coach of your kid’s soccer team. Whoever it is, we all have a difficult person we’re dealing with (or several of them, if we’re being honest).

Sometimes these people are difficult because they are unkind or emotionally distant; sometimes it’s just because they rub us the wrong way. But being around them steals our sense of peace because we feel off-kilter in their presence.

I can imagine that when Jesus first brought all of his disciples together, there was the potential for a lot of friction—and a distinct lack of peace. Before Jesus called them, we don’t know if the disciples were friends or enemies, if their families had long histories of love or hate. Perhaps some of their families held old grudges. Or perhaps some of the disciples had snubbed Matthew when they walked by his booth. But regardless of how they interacted before Jesus called them, once he spoke their names, everything changed. They were the original small group—and they didn’t get to choose each other.

When Jesus called these disciples to himself, he did so for his own purposes and his own plan. And they had absolutely no say about whether they liked the other members! If these disciples wanted to be part of what Jesus was doing on earth, they had to learn to live in community not only with Jesus, but with one another. They had to learn to be at peace with Christ and each other.

This is our call too—to be at peace, even with those who are difficult for us. This does not mean that every hard relationship will suddenly morph into butterflies and rainbows—or that we should ever stay in abusive relationships. What it does mean is that, like the disciples, we can learn to have souls that are at rest in the middle of relationships we would never choose on our own—especially with those who are also part of God’s family.

Whether our struggle is with a challenging child or a difficult in-law or an annoying colleague, there is an opportunity for our souls to be at rest when we are with them, because we can trust that God has brought our lives together for his purposes. When we struggle with anxiety over relationships with other believers, we can ask God to help us “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7). We can ask the Holy Spirit to give us peace as we interact with those who exasperate us.

God brings people into and out of our lives for his plans and purposes. Although we will never be able to avoid every difficult relationship we have, it is possible to learn to be at peace with others as we walk with Christ. Take heart! If a tax collector and a zealot can go from being enemies to fellow disciples at peace with each other, there is hope for all of us in the challenging relationships in our lives.