Proverbs 18:19
A brother offended is more unyielding than a fortified city; disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Whatever time of the day it is that you’ve landed yourself here, I humbly extend my gratitude to you for choosing to do so.
Right now, I’m taking full advantage of a surge of encouragement I received this past weekend from my church’s conference for God’s preachers/communicators, and creatives. It was three days full of jam packed soul food that I personally, prior to registering, had no full idea how much I really needed.
So yeah, I’m still in geek mode right now eager to see how me and God are going to put this new found knowledge to the test.
Excited is an understatement.
#TheLituation: HE WILL DELIVER!
Last week, we convened over the topic of how important community with other people is, how God moves greatly through communal agreements, as well as the hurdles we must acknowledge when attempting to lock arms with others for the sake of fellowship. I must add that it is my honest opinion that people will stop using other people as building blocks to reach a certain status if they actually appreciated and cherished the assembling.
I want to stay in that vein somewhat and skurr skurr over to an area of which many have ventured into. It’s the area of OFFENSE and how we deal with it.
Here's the definition of offense;
Annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one's standards or principles.
It really doesn't matter our varying experiences and personal backgrounds, we've all been made offended someway and somehow.
If you're reading this and you've never been offended,
I say keep living.
Here we have it in Proverbs 18:19 the author King Solomon, expressed how hard it is to win back someone who's stewing in offense. Comparing this situation to the gates of a citadel or in other words a fortress that protects a city.
Offense is a tricky shape shifting emotion that causes people who are not mature enough to handle it well, to act out irrationally or withdraw themselves completely. Making an attempt to reconcile with them, will prove almost impossible.
I read an article about a man in Florida who chose to buy multiple people's meals at a waffle house. A woman got upset because the good Samaritan didn't buy her meal. Her male cousin jumped into the argument but left to run to his car and retrieved a gun. Then, came back and shot and killed the free giver.
This is an extreme case of offense that was birthed from rejection bi-proxy.
It is actually natural to feel offense from time to time. This is evidence that you're human and have feelings. It happens, or else King Solomon would not have expended his wisdom on this subject.
It's just how you process and channel it, that is the key factor.
Offense birthed from rejection branches off into violence, an abusive tongue, or passive aggressiveness. Prophet Nehemiah in 13:25 was so offended by the Israelite men for disregarding the standards to marry from within and not from other foreign lands, that he admitted to beating the men and pulling out their hair.
Prophet Elisha was in Bethel in 2 Kings 2:23 and a group of kids in the neighborhood were making fun of him and kept calling him baldy-locs.
My dude became real offended and cursed them in the name of the Lord. The bible said that two bears came from out of the woods after he cursed them and ripped some of them to shreds. #TrueStory.
Unsupervised offense is dangerous as all homemade hell. It has to be leashed so it's birthing place can be located and suffocated. It's people right now, operating in offense and cursing people with their mouths and using God's name to validate this. How backwards is that?
I'll tell you this much, you shorten your lifespan by choosing to allow offense to take the driver's seat in your heart. If you don't shorten your life, you prolong seasons in your life that are riddled with various kinds of dis-eases and misfortunes.
Elisha died alone and sick with no ability to pour into anybody else because God was not going to allow him to raise up a brood of offended PROPHETS!
If God says, that He will curse those who curse you, what do you think will come of this if you're the one doing the cursing, justifying it with your offense?
Hmmm?
I told y'all offense is a multi-headed hydra. Check this out, if there is a dormant insecurity somewhere resting in you, offense will be birthed into criticism and unprofitable, distracting appetites to expose the presumptive weaknesses or faults of others. We see this in the gospels of the new testament in the bible when Jesus was on the scene.
Wherever he went, you saw the Pharisees and Sadducees popping up taking it upon themselves to blast Jesus because his method of responding to the needs of the people offended them so much.
Catch this please!
When someone is disobedient, offense births into jealousy. This one here has to be one of THEE most vexing reactions to me. Because it often looks like someone being jealous of a person's reward failing to realize that their reward is a direct result of them following the necessary instructions to reap said reward. Therefore they become offended with the person and jealous by the reward.
We see this in Genesis with Cain and Abel. It can be assumed that these young men were raised on the concept of sowing. However what we see is one of these men would slightly deviate from this concept where Abel gave the fat of his firstborn flock and Cain just picked some fruits and gave it to God. God favored Abel and didn't favor Cain. But He gave Him an opportunity to get it right. (Genesis 4:6)
Cain instead chose to remain offended giving birth to jealousy which provoked him to kill his brother.
#Tragic
We must be so intentional when it comes to this lethal emotion to keep sin from crouching at our door. I have seen the assembling being ravaged by offense like a dog violently shaking a rag doll. As soon as it arises, we have to, knowing it's toxic reproductive tendencies, make it infertile by giving it straight to God!
We can do this by being completely honest, "God this person offended me." "This action is triggering offense in me." "I'm offended by this." You may be in every right, justified by your hurt feelings. On the flipside, you may not be. Still what you are not justified by are the negative actions you allow yourself to partake in, in order to feed it. Offense does not need to be fed. EVER! It needs to be starved since it's a flesh emotion. And we know that relatives of the flesh MUST DIE!
So make for yourself a system for dealing with yourself when you're offended, which includes Jesus being at the forefront and the back end of how you feel. Don't deny what you feel. Acknowledge it for what it is. Then expect to have a conference with our Father, the son, and Holy Spirit to discuss the proper method to move forward. This may look like you being made to sit still to exhaust in private and to be sobered.
If you are right now, struggling with the spirit of offense and have found yourself on the verge of doing something or saying something ungodly, let's initiate a conversation with God, offering Him to take everything including this feeling in exchange for Him and then wait for your next set of marching orders.
Consider this a preemptive warning.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Whatever time of the day it is that you’ve landed yourself here, I humbly extend my gratitude to you for choosing to do so.
Right now, I’m taking full advantage of a surge of encouragement I received this past weekend from my church’s conference for God’s preachers/communicators, and creatives. It was three days full of jam packed soul food that I personally, prior to registering, had no full idea how much I really needed.
So yeah, I’m still in geek mode right now eager to see how me and God are going to put this new found knowledge to the test.
Excited is an understatement.
Last week, we convened over the topic of how important community with other people is, how God moves greatly through communal agreements, as well as the hurdles we must acknowledge when attempting to lock arms with others for the sake of fellowship. I must add that it is my honest opinion that people will stop using other people as building blocks to reach a certain status if they actually appreciated and cherished the assembling.
I want to stay in that vein somewhat and skurr skurr over to an area of which many have ventured into. It’s the area of OFFENSE and how we deal with it.
Here's the definition of offense;
Annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one's standards or principles.
It really doesn't matter our varying experiences and personal backgrounds, we've all been made offended someway and somehow.
If you're reading this and you've never been offended,
I say keep living.
Here we have it in Proverbs 18:19 the author King Solomon, expressed how hard it is to win back someone who's stewing in offense. Comparing this situation to the gates of a citadel or in other words a fortress that protects a city.
Offense is a tricky shape shifting emotion that causes people who are not mature enough to handle it well, to act out irrationally or withdraw themselves completely. Making an attempt to reconcile with them, will prove almost impossible.
I read an article about a man in Florida who chose to buy multiple people's meals at a waffle house. A woman got upset because the good Samaritan didn't buy her meal. Her male cousin jumped into the argument but left to run to his car and retrieved a gun. Then, came back and shot and killed the free giver.
This is an extreme case of offense that was birthed from rejection bi-proxy.
It is actually natural to feel offense from time to time. This is evidence that you're human and have feelings. It happens, or else King Solomon would not have expended his wisdom on this subject.
It's just how you process and channel it, that is the key factor.
Offense birthed from rejection branches off into violence, an abusive tongue, or passive aggressiveness. Prophet Nehemiah in 13:25 was so offended by the Israelite men for disregarding the standards to marry from within and not from other foreign lands, that he admitted to beating the men and pulling out their hair.
Prophet Elisha was in Bethel in 2 Kings 2:23 and a group of kids in the neighborhood were making fun of him and kept calling him baldy-locs.
My dude became real offended and cursed them in the name of the Lord. The bible said that two bears came from out of the woods after he cursed them and ripped some of them to shreds. #TrueStory.
Unsupervised offense is dangerous as all homemade hell. It has to be leashed so it's birthing place can be located and suffocated. It's people right now, operating in offense and cursing people with their mouths and using God's name to validate this. How backwards is that?
I'll tell you this much, you shorten your lifespan by choosing to allow offense to take the driver's seat in your heart. If you don't shorten your life, you prolong seasons in your life that are riddled with various kinds of dis-eases and misfortunes.
Elisha died alone and sick with no ability to pour into anybody else because God was not going to allow him to raise up a brood of offended PROPHETS!
If God says, that He will curse those who curse you, what do you think will come of this if you're the one doing the cursing, justifying it with your offense?
Hmmm?
I told y'all offense is a multi-headed hydra. Check this out, if there is a dormant insecurity somewhere resting in you, offense will be birthed into criticism and unprofitable, distracting appetites to expose the presumptive weaknesses or faults of others. We see this in the gospels of the new testament in the bible when Jesus was on the scene.
Wherever he went, you saw the Pharisees and Sadducees popping up taking it upon themselves to blast Jesus because his method of responding to the needs of the people offended them so much.
Catch this please!
When someone is disobedient, offense births into jealousy. This one here has to be one of THEE most vexing reactions to me. Because it often looks like someone being jealous of a person's reward failing to realize that their reward is a direct result of them following the necessary instructions to reap said reward. Therefore they become offended with the person and jealous by the reward.
We see this in Genesis with Cain and Abel. It can be assumed that these young men were raised on the concept of sowing. However what we see is one of these men would slightly deviate from this concept where Abel gave the fat of his firstborn flock and Cain just picked some fruits and gave it to God. God favored Abel and didn't favor Cain. But He gave Him an opportunity to get it right. (Genesis 4:6)
Cain instead chose to remain offended giving birth to jealousy which provoked him to kill his brother.
#Tragic
We must be so intentional when it comes to this lethal emotion to keep sin from crouching at our door. I have seen the assembling being ravaged by offense like a dog violently shaking a rag doll. As soon as it arises, we have to, knowing it's toxic reproductive tendencies, make it infertile by giving it straight to God!
We can do this by being completely honest, "God this person offended me." "This action is triggering offense in me." "I'm offended by this." You may be in every right, justified by your hurt feelings. On the flipside, you may not be. Still what you are not justified by are the negative actions you allow yourself to partake in, in order to feed it. Offense does not need to be fed. EVER! It needs to be starved since it's a flesh emotion. And we know that relatives of the flesh MUST DIE!
So make for yourself a system for dealing with yourself when you're offended, which includes Jesus being at the forefront and the back end of how you feel. Don't deny what you feel. Acknowledge it for what it is. Then expect to have a conference with our Father, the son, and Holy Spirit to discuss the proper method to move forward. This may look like you being made to sit still to exhaust in private and to be sobered.
If you are right now, struggling with the spirit of offense and have found yourself on the verge of doing something or saying something ungodly, let's initiate a conversation with God, offering Him to take everything including this feeling in exchange for Him and then wait for your next set of marching orders.
Consider this a preemptive warning.
Amen. The spirit of offense MUST be extinguished quickly when it tries to flame up. It can cause long lasting almost unrepairable damage. I know the affects of it first hand. It is NOT pretty.
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