How Do I Love People When They Make it Hard?

Sometimes people make it hard for us to love them, and it’s very easy to respond in ways that don’t help us or them: like getting resentful, getting walked all over, or just giving up on the relationship completely.

But often the people who are hardest to love are the ones who need love the most. Think of the times in your life when you’ve been the most flakey, guarded, or even downright unfriendly. What you probably needed most was someone to see past your walls and understand your heart.

This is God’s specialty. He loves us in our worst moments.

Loving like this is hard for us as humans, but we can learn from God how to do it:

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

Ephesians 5:1 MSG

The best way to let God teach us to love is to look at how Jesus loved. In today’s Mini QT, we’re looking at a story of Jesus choosing to love someone a lot of other people had written off: a notorious sinner named Zacchaeus. Though Zacchaeus came with baggage, Jesus’ decision to love anyway completely changed Zacchaeus’ life for the better.