Two Sundays ago I preached a sermon about handing people in the Church. One of the words used in the passage from Colossians is translated “patience.” Other places in the New Testament it is translated as “patient endurance.” The original Greek word is best and most literally translated as “long suffering.”

I love the image. There are some people God has put in our lives that our relationship with them is best described as a continual suffering. The picture is not one of mutual love and respect but a tolerance of another person out of my obedience to Christ.

Here is the funny part about reading and studying a word like this from the Bible. As soon it is explained to us, all of us immediately have someone who pops into our mind. Yes, even in the Church. Maybe especially in the Church.

Over the past couple weeks I have wondered why God would want us to keep people in our lives that we have to endure. Why not just sever all bad relationships and just live with joy and happiness all the time? I have come to believe there might be some good reasons for this.

1. I may need to learn something from them. Some of my best teachers were not the people I agree with, but rather the people I didn’t agree with in their thinking. They pushed me and pulled me in directions I never would have chosen on my own.

2. They may need to learn something from me. It is easy to think only in terms of the benefits of a relationship for myself. I believe God sometimes brings difficult people into my life so that I can have an impact on them.

3. Maybe God is teaching me something about people. There is often a big lesson to be learned even from difficult people. Honestly, all of us have things we can learn even from bad examples.

4. They may push me to trust God more. I have a couple of people in my life that the moment I see them coming I stop and say a prayer. The prayer is usually something like, “Lord, help me to handle this person.” Maybe it is more specific like, “God, don’t let this encounter end with the arrival of the police.” Difficult people push me to rely on God to teach me and use me when I don’t want to be taught or to be used.

5. In time people and relationships change. Sometimes I think God wants me to endure difficult people because in a few years there might be a change that will bring us together. I have known many teenagers that tried and tested me who then went on to be wonderful adults. Sometimes we endure people because it brings long-term benefits. Benefits that would have been lost if I had given up on that person years ago.

It is hard to imagine that one of the ways God sees our relationships with each other is a form of suffering. But all of us know it is true. There is that difficult person at work, in our extended family, or even at our Church who we struggle with each time we talk. We might want to give up, but God tells us to be patient. He is at work in every situation and will use it for good, if we allow Him.