I was watching a movie with a friend recently, one of the characters in the movie had been wronged and she was very livid. This character had quite a strong personality, and by ‘strong’ I mean, she was generally confident, outspoken and very sanguine. The person who had wronged her on the other end was generally shy, avoiding confrontations and extremely phlegmatic.

The character who was wronged accosted the one who wronged her about what she had done and immediately, the one who wronged her started to cry lol. Before the scene ended, everyone had been attracted to the cry of the one who had done wrong and somehow, the person wronged now appeared to be the bad guy because she had now ‘made someone cry’.

Similar situations have played out in my life before, to the point that I largely avoid confronting people now, I would rather leave you a text or a message expressing how I feel and I usually do that only after I have accepted what has happened and forgiven the person, it is a wisdom the Holy Spirit has taught me over time.

I am also someone with a strong personality, it is not something I developed, but something that came naturally because my 2 sisters are largely opposite from me.

Before I surrendered to Christ, I myself can attest to the fact that I misused my personality, in that I could literally convince a person to do anything and also talk myself out of anything. God uses same gifts now, but for convincing people to do things for His kingdom and also counselling people who have been through tough situations in life.

The Holy Spirit taught me to be gracious and forgiving because when I am not, it could look like something else in the eyes of other people, so you’d find that with me, things don’t stick, offence blows away with the wind and that came by the Holy Spirit and He gets the glory.

Generally, I have observed that people with stronger personalities need to take more responsibility when it comes to handling conflicts in relationships, not in a bad way by hiding your feelings but rather being conscious of how you convey your message, so that the other person is receiving the message without being unnecessarily hurt.

I always talk about the Holy Spirit temperament because the Holy Spirit purifies our natural personalities and teaches us to incorporate the fruits of the Spirit into our lives. Our characters are refined by the Holy Spirit as we engage Him but somethings would be required of us and it might appear bespoke sometimes, like in my case, writing more than actually approaching them physically.

It gets better with time, we learn to relate with people in a way that glorifies God by adjusting the parts of us that stands in the way of that. God actually calls us to live at peace with all men and sometimes that looks like changing some things about yourself. Change that glorifies God is always good change so let’s be willing to adjust ourself to accommodate others.