Becoming a Woman with an Unoffendable Heart

This week we read John 5-8 in our devotions. Did you notice how many times people got mad at Jesus, they wanted to kill Him, they argued and how much division there was among the Jews?  I have one word to summarize this– OFFENSE!  Many people were offended at Jesus and as a result of this, they grumbled, argued, called Him names and tried to kill Him. 

• Is Jesus Perfect? YES!
• Is everything that Jesus does perfect and right? YES!
• Then why were people offended at Him?

If people could be offended at a perfect, loving, holy and righteous God – how much easier will it be to be offended at each other, considering that we are sinners?

That’s the thing about offense – we become offended because our hearts are wicked and sinful.  One sign that we are broken or wounded is that we offend easily. This is also good news because it means that you are in control of the amount of offense in your heart. This means that we can become women who are unoffendable in all our relationships. 

In reality, in day-to-day life with all its challenges, we are tempted to be offended by other people.  People hurt us and don’t treat us as we think they should.  The occasions for taking offense are practically endless. 

CAVEAT – we are not saying that the person who offends you is in the right, they could be dead wrong.  But that gives us no right to be offended. 

We are daily given the opportunity to either be offended by something or to possess an unoffendable heart.  God’s desire for us is an unoffendable heart.  He wants to use every possibility of offense as an opportunity for us to become more like Christ.  Taking offense against another person will only turn into bitterness and unforgiveness.  It will hinder our prayer life and affect every other area of our life.  The devil will use it to bring division, ruin our relationships and make us totally ineffective.  The biggest struggle for most Christians is in the area of relationships, especially in families.

Often little offenses accumulate and cause our love to grow cold, especially in marriage.  This causes women to fall out of love with their husbands.  The same is true in other family relationships – so many women struggle with being offended at a sister, a mother, or in-laws…. Maybe someone fails to meet our expectations or we don’t like someone’s personality  Someone might hurt us by something they said, and we react out of pain.  Little offenses turn into big boulders that we stumble over.  It is very dangerous to harbor little offenses. 

Personal differences are a breeding ground for offence, especially among women:

• Bottle feeding vs. nursing – how long to nurse…
• Disciple of children
• Stay at home mom vs. working mom
• Home school vs. public school
• Organic food, sugar and sugar substitutes, flour or spelt???
• Chemical cleaning products or no chemicals
• Then there are multiple church issues that come up… doctrine…etc.

One of the reasons why we have sharing guidelines in this cell is because when we share out of a heart of offense, we spew hurt and bitterness and unforgiveness.  This often makes us feel better temporarily but in the long run we actually aren't fixing the problem, we are masking it and without dealing with the real problem we end up worse than before.PLEASE FOLLOW THE SHARING GUIDELINES – they are to protect you from offense. 

Personal differences cause great irritation and offense that can became a trap of Satan.  How can we walk through life successfully and avoid the trap of offense?  .

Luke 6:

Vs. 27 – love your enemies, do good to those who hate [offend] you

Vs. 28 – bless those who curse [offend] you, pray for those who mistreat [offend] you

Vs. 31 – do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Vs. 35 – love you enemies, do good to them without expecting to get anything back

Vs. 41 – worry about the plank in your own eye instead of the speck in your brothers…

Vs. 47 – don’t just hear my words but put them into practice

How can we walk through daily life and avoid traps of offense?  How can we learn to have an unoffendable heart? 

We need to listen carefully to our thoughts - These are like silent conversations in our heart.  Has someone or some situation caused us to be offended?  These ongoing conversations can be destructive.  They are dead-end conversations that get nowhere.  We must guard our hearts and not even let our minds go there. 

We need to look carefully at our conversations – we must learn to shut our mouths and not talk to others about our hurts but bring them to God.  Pray about the things that offend you instead of running to a friend to dump on.  Each time you are tempted to be offended, ask the Lord to show you what’s wrong with your heart. 

We need to be careful with our online activity - especially Facebook. People smear their problems and hurts all over FB.  It’s sinful.  It’s not just FB, I’ve read many blogs that are women just using the internet as an emotional dumping ground.  Stop doing this, stop reading this!    Also, FB chat’s – many of which are just people arguing and being divisive without real ministry being done.    They argue about churches, doctrine, TV shows…it’s mostly rooted in being critical and negative.  Again, just stop posting and reading this garbage.    

We need to learn to forgive - We must learn to forgive from the heart and not seek revenge.  This takes time, and we must work at it until it works into us.  Then our internal dialogue begins to change.  We need God’s grace to forgive.  He will help us to forgive and pray for our enemies. 

We need to die to self - We must use every offense as an opportunity to die to our selfish ways.  We need to use these offenses as an opportunity to become more Christ like. 

We need to focus on God - Jesus is our example.  He will give us a new heart.  When we let ourselves get offended, we are focusing on self instead of God.  We need to look up and ask God for help.  We need to focus on His attributes and worship Him.  He will help us through every offensive situation.  He will bring justice into our situation.  God is absolutely just, and only He can ensure that justice is fully carried out.  If we are impatient and seek revenge, we presume that we are wiser than God, and we reveal a blatant lack of trust that God will do the right thing.  Only by trusting God’s sovereign wisdom will we be free from our anger and preoccupation toward those who have committed evil.  If we refuse to trust God’s justice, we become enslaved to bitterness and anger.  We must guard our hearts and trust God to exercise His judgment against those who oppose Him.

Prayer Sheet:

Read Luke 6: 27-36

1. Ask the Lord to show you someone whom you have been offended at, no matter how little the offense.  Confess this as sin, repent of it and ask the Lord to help you turn from this sinful behaviour.
2. Ask the Lord to show you any ways where you have been protecting your heart from this person, either consciously or unconsciously.  Ask Him what He wants you to do about this. 
3. Ask the Lord to show you how He wants you to show His love to this person.
4. Ask the Lord to show you what area He wants you to work on in order to grow an unoffendable heart:  Thoughts, Conversations, Online activity, Forgiveness, Die to Self, Focus on God
5. Ask the Lord if there is anything else He wants to say to you today?