How to Love People You Don’t Like [45]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, TJ, a rural pastor, addresses the challenges of living peacefully with others in small towns. He emphasizes the Christian responsibility to glorify God by maintaining harmonious relationships, even with difficult people. TJ shares personal anecdotes from his teaching days and references various Bible passages that advocate kindness, forgiveness, and love towards both fellow Christians and non-believers. He encourages the audience to reflect on their interactions and actively demonstrate Christ's love in their communities. The episode concludes with practical advice on how to represent Christ to neighbors.

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook
• Email: tj@brainerdinstitute.com

Transcript

What do you do if you live in a small town and you don't like some of the people around you very much. Does that ever happen to you? Uh, if so, you're not alone and you're gonna enjoy this episode of Back to Rurality.

Well, thank you for joining us for another edition of Back to Rurality. My name is TJ. I am a rural pastor, which means that just like you guess where I live, the middle, a stinking nowhere.

Sometimes I feel like that. Other times I'm really glad I live in a place that no one's ever heard of. It's kinda nice. And you know what I really care about is making sure that God is glorified in places that the rest of the world is kind of content to overlook. Places like the town that you live in.

So in fact, it's true what they say. There really is no middle of nowhere. It's all the middle of somewhere. Somewhere that matters to God because he wants to be glorified in that place you live in. And one of the ways that he is glorified is by you getting along with people who are not that easy to get along with.

Did you know it's the job of a Christian to live at peace with all men so much as it depends on you? That means you have a responsibility to do all you can to have peaceful relationships with the people around you, even if the people around you aren't very peaceful. You gotta do your part to own your 100% of the equation and be kind to those folks.

And I just wanted to talk through a couple of passages of scripture that might reorient you. And here's how I'm gonna frame it. I used to teach school. And when I taught school, I taught in the high school that I attended when I was a high school student. That was weird. You know what was really weird about that?

I taught down the hall from my soccer coach, and my soccer coach was legendary. He had fiery red hair and they called him Red Fox. We called him Mr. Laver or Coach. Those were the only names allowed. Well, when I became a teacher and I taught alongside Mr. Laver. He said, call me Barry. And I said, ain't no way I can do that, ever.

And I called him Coach when I would see him in the hallway. Anyway, I, when I taught in that school, taught with some people who had a different worldview than what I had. Different values, different interests, even different dispositions, and it wasn't always easy to get along with some of the folks there.

I had some students that were pretty tough to get along with as well, and yet I. I was a Christian in that environment. And that means something. That means that I'm not there primarily to enjoy my relationships, to be nice to people who are nice to me, give the cold shoulder to people who are mean to me, to avoid the people I don't click with.

I'm actually there to represent Christ to the whole lot and I've gotta take that seriously and you know who else does. That's right. Look over at the mirror that guy, that gal, you. You have a responsibility as a Christian in your small town to make Christ known to the people there, whether you like them or not, whether you click with them or not, whether they like you or not.

And I was thinking about just a couple of things that I read in scripture. And how even within the church, it can be difficult sometimes for us to get along with the people who are there. So I actually wanna start at that level. If you have other Christians living in your town, here are the kind of things you need to think about when you consider them.

Things like this. Be kind to one another and tender hearted. Are you tender hearted toward other believers in your community who might even believe things a little differently from what you do? Who might go to a different church, who might not go to any church but they're Christians living in your community?

Are you kind to them? Is your heart tender? Are you able to forgive those who offend you as God in Christ forgave you? Are you able, if you have a complaint as, by the way, those first two were from Ephesians 4 32, this one's from Colossians three 13. If anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you.

So also you must forgive. So you see the principle that's at play here. You who have been forgiven have a responsibility to be forgiving toward others, and that's not that whole, like cheeky, oh, I have to forgive you, but it doesn't mean I have to like you. You know, that stuff's just nonsense that our hearts tell us.

The reality is we need to be loving and humble no matter what. The Bible even tells us that we need to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. That's from Galatians six, two. We need to care for each other. We need to comfort each other. We need to live peaceably, as I've mentioned already with one another.

We even need to be to the point where, like what it says in James five 16, where we're confessing sin to each other, being in encouragement regularly. First Thessalonians four 18 says To encourage one another with the words that are found there. You can go read that later if you want to. First Thessalonians chapter four.

Chapter five also says to encourage one another. Hebrews 10 talks about gathering together more and more as the day draws near as a way of encouraging each other. We can exhort one another. In fact, if you wanted to do something fun, you can just google the one anothers of scripture and you'll be amazed at our responsibilities toward one another. Now, let's look back at outsiders a little bit. I think one of the most sweeping passages of scripture is when Jesus has asked what the greatest commandment is, and he says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, that whole bit.

And then he says. Right along with that, you need to love your neighbor as yourself. And that's pretty sweeping 'cause you know who your neighbor is. Everybody. That's right. Your neighbors are the people all around you. If you think about the Good Samaritan, for example, that's a guy who saw. Another person in distress, didn't know him from Adam, and yet took care of him and invested his own money in making sure that that other person was okay to show him just kind of a radical hospitality.

We need to be hospitable toward outsiders, and it is our responsibility to actually be loving toward the people around us. And so that's kind of how I want to wrap this up was just by leaving you the question. What in your life demonstrates love, the love of Christ toward people in the body of Christ and people outside?

Let me ask it another way. How are you actively trying to show love to your neighbors? How are you actively trying to show love to people that you don't really care to be around? What are you doing to represent Christ to the person who makes you mad? To the person who weirds you out? To the person that you've got beef about from however long ago? To the person you offended, but you haven't made it right yet?

It may be helpful for you this week to just sit down and assess who are my neighbors? Who are the people I'm around? Who are the people in my community? How can I show them the love of Christ? Because Jesus saved me. He forgave me, and he placed me here in a place that the rest of the world thinks of as the middle of nowhere, so that I can make 'em known to these people.

If you are having a hard time finding fulfillment, joy, and satisfaction in your life. One of the reasons may be connected to the fact that you actually exist to make Christ known to people that you might be ignoring unintentionally, maybe even intentionally.

So what have we covered today? We've looked at the fact that God places us in our communities to make him known that we have a responsibility, especially to care for the other Christians in our community, to bear their burdens, to pray for 'em, to love 'em, to serve 'em, to forgive them, etcetera .

And then we have a responsibility to the lost around us to love them, not just to tolerate 'em, not just to be near them. But to actually actively pursue them in love. And it'd be good for you today to sit down and think about that more carefully. Pray and ask for the Lord's help and go out and make Christ known.

For now though, you know what we should do? You should go to the Brainerd Institute website, brainerd institute.com just got a facelift and I think it turned out pretty good and a lot of resources there that I think you'd be encouraged by. You know what else you should do? You should get back to life.

Back to rurality.