Unoffendable
(En Español)
"I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will
remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh"
(Ezek. 36:26).
God
has a new heart for us that cannot be offended -- an "unoffendable"
heart. Beloved, possessing an unoffendable heart is not an option or a
luxury; it is not a little thing. An offended heart is in danger of
becoming a "heart of stone."
Consider:
Jesus warns that as we near the end of the age a majority of people
will be offended to such a degree that they fall away from the faith.
Listen carefully to His warning:
"Then shall
many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one
another. . . . And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall
wax cold" (Matt. 24:10-12 KJV).
"Many"
will "be offended." The result? The love of "many" will grow cold. My
prayer is that we will hear His words with holy fear.
The Danger of Harboring Offense
When we allow an offense to ferment in our hearts, it causes serious spiritual consequences. In the above verse Jesus named three dangerous results: betrayal, hatred and cold love. When we are offended by someone, even someone we care for, we must go to them. If we do not talk to them, we will begin to talk about them. We betray that relationship by whispering maliciously behind their back to others, exposing their weaknesses and sins. We may mask our betrayal by saying we are just looking for advice or counsel, but when we look back, we see we have spoken negatively to far too many people. Our real goal was not to get spiritual help for ourselves but to seek revenge toward the one who offended us. How is such action not a manifestation of hatred? For an offended soul, cold love, betrayal and hatred are a walk into darkness.
The Danger of Harboring Offense
When we allow an offense to ferment in our hearts, it causes serious spiritual consequences. In the above verse Jesus named three dangerous results: betrayal, hatred and cold love. When we are offended by someone, even someone we care for, we must go to them. If we do not talk to them, we will begin to talk about them. We betray that relationship by whispering maliciously behind their back to others, exposing their weaknesses and sins. We may mask our betrayal by saying we are just looking for advice or counsel, but when we look back, we see we have spoken negatively to far too many people. Our real goal was not to get spiritual help for ourselves but to seek revenge toward the one who offended us. How is such action not a manifestation of hatred? For an offended soul, cold love, betrayal and hatred are a walk into darkness.
People
don’t stumble over boulders; they stumble over stones -- relatively
small things. It may be that the personality of someone in authority
bothers us, and soon we are offended. Or a friend or family member fails
to meet our expectations, and we take an offense into our soul.
Beloved, if we will "endure to the end" (Matt. 24:13), we will have to
confront the things that bother us.
When
Jesus warns that we need endurance, He is saying that it is easier to
begin the race than finish it. Between now and the day you die, there
will be major times of offense that you will need to overcome. You might
be in such a time right now. Do not minimize the danger of harboring an
offense!
No
one plans on falling away; no one ever says, "Today, I think I’ll try
to develop a hardened heart of stone." Such things enter our souls
through stealth. It is only naiveté that assumes it couldn’t happen to
us. I know many people who consistently become offended about one thing
or another. Instead of dealing with the offenses, praying about them and
turning the issue over to God, they carry the offense in their soul
until its weight disables their walk with God. You may be doing fine
today, but I guarantee you, tomorrow something will happen that will
inevitably disappoint or wound you; some injustice will strike you,
demanding you retaliate in the flesh. Will you find more love, and
hence, continue your growth toward Christlikeness? Or will you allow
that offense to consume your spiritual life?
Lord,
forgive me for being so easily offended and for carrying offenses.
Father, my heart is foolish and weak. Grant me the unoffendable heart of
Jesus Christ. Amen.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Adapted from a chapter in the In Christ's Image Training course that begins July 5.
A young college student from Grace University will not be given her degree this year, even though she earned it.
But
it didn’t stop there. Not only did they expel Danielle, refusing to
allow he to finish her degree, they are also billing her for the final
semester of tuition at Grace University–the semester which she was not
allowed to complete.
Christian unity is one of the highest Christian goals, which is why we are always encouraging one another to grow in unity.
We
typically think of the incarnation as something that happened only when
Jesus Christ became human, that is, when He was born of a virgin, grew
up as a boy under the parentage of Joseph and Mary, became a man, and
then lived, taught, ministered, suffered, and died. Strictly speaking,
this is probably true. The definition of “incarnate” is “to become
flesh.” So prior to the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, it is not
exactly accurate to say that God was in the flesh—that God was human.
God only became human when He entered the womb of a woman and grew up as a human, just like one of us.
Forget
for a moment that you live 2000 years after the death of Jesus Christ
on the cross, and forget that you have the New Testament which tells you
about who Jesus was and what He did. Imagine that you pick up an
ancient history book and it tells you about three men who were put to
death around 33 BC for religious and political crimes. Two of them were
criminals and one was a rabble-rouser, a trouble-maker, and a
blasphemer. If you knew nothing else about these three men, you would
assume they were most likely guilty.
The
death of Jesus on the cross is the pinnacle and apex of the
incarnation. It is His most triumphal moment. Which of us would seek to
take it from Him and say, “No, no! Jesus! You cannot die a criminal’s
death! You are innocent! That is only for guilty people. You must live!
You must rule! You must reign! You must act like God!” In response, as
Jesus dies, He says, “I am acting like God. Don’t you see? This is what
God has been doing all along!”
This
is a guest post by Vince Latorre. As a young boy, Vince always had an
inquisitive nature. He immediately wanted the answers to questions such
as “Is there a God?” “How did I get here?” “How was the world and
universe created?” His search for answers to these questions led him to a
personal encounter with Christ at age nine or ten. As his faith grew,
his desire to analytically research and validate the Word of God
intensified.
Nelson
Mandela once said “Courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph
over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who
conquers that fear.”
Yet
still He forgave. Jesus faced the fear that His forgiveness would
continue to allow them to live in ignorance, to treat others as He was
being treated, or to understand who He was or why He came.
So I went and looked it up.
Did you hear 
It
saddens me deeply that people could believe such things about the God
who is revealed in Jesus Christ. It saddens me that people could believe
that this is the type of God who went to the cross on our behalf. It
saddens me deeply that when people experience pain, suffering, torture,
and death in this world, they don’t say, “An enemy has done this!” but
rather, “This is the work of God.” It saddens me that rather than
recognize that God is with us in our pain and suffering, crying when we
cry, holding us when we tremble, wailing with us in our pain, some
people think God is actually the one making us suffer, causing us to
cry, inflicting us with fear, and torturing us with pain.
One
common objection to the proposal I am making in my series on how to
understand the violence of God in the Old Testament (see the link list
below) is that this view seems to make God out to be a liar.
And this is not deceptive.
This post contains three more ways to develop friendships with your neighbors. 
When
we learned that our neighbor’s cancer had returned, we started spending
time with her. When she told us that she wanted watermelon, we found a
store that had watermelon in January. When she couldn’t keep down any
food we made her lots of batches of “pear pudding,” the only thing she
could keep down. We looked at her pictures with her and her husband –
the church where they married, vacations they had taken, and other
pictures from her life. We prayed with them. We tried to answer their
questions about God. We sat by her bedside the night before she died. We
hugged her every time we saw her. We cried with her, and then again
with her husband after she passed.
As
we try to understand the theology behind the idea that on the cross,
Jesus reveals to us what God was doing in the Old Testament, we are in a
section where we recognize that there are no “pat answers” to the
problem of evil in the world, and that the situation is much more
complex than most of us realize. I have about six points to a “
Nowhere
in all of this does God force us, push us, or drive us to do what He
wants. This is not the way of love, and this is not how God works with
the freedom He has granted to us.