For those of you who have been following my blog for the past two weeks, you know that we are currently in my course, Tearing Down the Fences of Offenses. This was our final week of this mini-course but we’ll follow up with more about how we fill our space with “God space” instead of offenses with our next course – Living in God’s Presence – which starts next week.
So, back to offenses. I’d like to share with you some of my notes from my teaching this week. Here’s some food for thought…
If offenses are birthed in the womb of perceived insults known as deception, it is our responsibility as Christians to ask God for kingdom lenses to perceive things as He sees them and ask for God’s love and respect for those who offend us.
Wow, that’s pretty thought provoking, isn’t it? But there are some traps we often fall into.
- We believe a lie
- We allow our thought life to go unchecked
- We refuse to see the person through God’s kingdom lens
- We refuse to forgive
- We think that if we forgive we are saying they did nothing wrong
- Pride holds us in the trap
- We think that if we let it go it will go away eventually
Here’s another question for reflection — what is the object of your desires? If you look at the place of your desires (that have been unfulfilled), that is firm ground for offenses to grow.
So, how can we avoid this trap of offenses? It all goes back to God and His kingdom lenses…
Principles in avoiding the trap of offenses:
- Invite the Holy Spirit to do a heart inspection
- Ask the Holy Spirit if there is any action step needed such as confession of sin, forgive someone, forgive yourself?
- Keep short accounts
- If there is a root of bitterness, seek healing, find root source and ask the Holy Spirit to cut the root
- Spend time in prayer and the Word- let the Word read you
- Don’t fall in the trap of losing sight of the vision of freedom
- Let the big define the small
- Get God’s perspective
- Beware of tactics of enemy to take you off course
- Beware of falling into the self preservation trap
- Beware of the comparison trap (remember Salieri and Mozart story)
Another way to keep from being offended is to have a grateful heart — gratitude and anger cannot coexist.
So let’s continue this journey together, seeking God’s kingdom lenses by Living in God’s Presence. If you are just now joining our community, I’d love for you to join that course via streaming, starting next week. I’d also love to hear your feedback and thoughts in the comments below!
