Getting along

I am certain that I am not alone when I say that I sometimes come across people in everyday life with whom I find it difficult to get along.

What should we do? I make a commitment to pray for them—not to pray that they will become nicer in my eyes but for some of the following:

I might pray that I will understand them better; that I will learn to love them as God loves them; that God will give me opportunity to spend time with them so I can get to know them more. 

I don’t find these things easy.

Three experiences

I can think of three instances of people in churches I have belonged to where God has stepped in most particularly and in three completely different ways the nature of my difficulties has been dealt with by God. Since it is my desire to get along with everyone as far as possible I hope that these people never knew I had difficulties with them—I am a work in progress and God is still working on me and one day I will love as He loves, but unfortunately that’s not yet.

The first person of these three was an elderly man with whom I just did not have any common experience and frankly I felt uncomfortable in his presence and embarrassed at many of the things he did. He went to my church but I had done quite well at avoiding him. One day I went to a sit-down party and I saw to my horror on the seating plan that I was placed next to him and his wife. There was no spiritual commitment to pray—I thought only of myself, “Oh God, please change me so I can see this man as you see Him otherwise I am going to have a horrible evening.” Not my greatest hour in prayer, nor an example of good practice for you to follow now that I have shared it with you. Never-the-less God did a good thing, somehow I had a great evening with this couple. Indeed I saw with God’s eyes and that prayer changed the nature of my relationship with this person for the next years until he died.

That was an easy/quick one in time. The next person I want to tell you about took longer. Again it was someone in my church at the time. I want to get along with everyone and I made a commitment to pray for this person most days for the long haul. “God change me, God show me what to pray for, God change him,” kind of prayers.

I trust God did change me and that God did change him because no prayer goes unanswered and we both certainly need changing and will do until the day we die. I didn’t see any change in the way I saw him though. One day I received a most surprising intervention to my prayers. I had just started to pray for him when I felt God overwhelm my thoughts and tell me not to pray for him any more because he was going to leave the church. (I don’t believe that I should never pray for this man again but that I should not pray with the motivation and reasoning that I was praying with at that time.) I stopped praying for him there and then without finishing my sentence and indeed, this man left the church a couple of months later.

The last person I want to tell you about I never see anymore. This person is someone who others found difficult too. I didn’t particularly dislike her but preferred not to have to work with her. I made a commitment to pray for her virtually every day. I know God loves her and as a fellow Christian she is gifted to work in the family of God just like me. In her case I asked God to show me what had made her the person she was and to help me see her as He sees her. It took a long time but God did show me what has shaped her to be the way she is and He did open my eyes to see her with a compassion I had never had before. That compassion enabled me to get alongside her with a new sympathy and understanding which gave me a new level of patience.