How to Have That Difficult Conversation by Henry Cloud

Author:Henry Cloud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2020-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

DEALING WITH RESISTANCE

If you have a resistant person in your life, the number one stance you will need to adopt to learn how to deal with her is this: Stop being surprised that she does not welcome the truth. Nothing can happen until you accept the reality that, for whatever reason, she avoids confrontation. Many people who want to confront someone adopt a “false hope” stance; they simply hope that one day the other person will hunger for feedback. While one purpose of this book is to help make that happen, simply hoping against hope is not enough. So take the steps below to increase the chances that in time she will see the truth as something that heals her and brings her life.

Show Grace and Love

When you are preparing to confront a resistant person, remember that he also needs relationship, safety, and grace. He may resist due to hurt or past experiences that made truth dangerous or unsafe for him. Grace and love are not everything a person needs; however, they are the most important elements he needs. In addition, without grace and love, it is unlikely that anything redemptive will happen in your conversation.

Come to the talk being “for” him, knowing that you also are in need of love and grace: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). This doesn’t mean to avoid truth. Grace is not the absence of truth. Rather, it allows truth to be accepted and digested more easily.

It is easy to forget this, especially when you have tried many times to address problems and have been frustrated or hurt by a person’s avoidance. You may be tempted to start off with something like “I am fed up with trying with you. I doubt that this talk will even help; the others sure haven’t. But I will try this one more time to get through to you. I will not be surprised if you throw this back in my face, like you have a million other times.” If you are feeling this way, you may need to receive some grace yourself from others to process your own emotions about the difficulty of the situation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.