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"Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing shall offend them."
Ps. 119:165
We won't get through life without being deeply hurt by others. Though people can hurt us knowingly; most often they don't realize the true effect of their actions. Offenses will come. People are imperfect and they will do hurtful things. The difficulty lies when we go from simply being offended…to having an Offended Heart-a cyclical habit of being hurt and offended; a life identified by one's wounds and bruises. Of all the character flaws, this is the most divisive and wounding to those around us.
"See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled."
Heb. 12:15
When we allow the accuser of the brethren to begin to deceive us into believing the worst of people around us, we will find our minds being filled day and night with critical thoughts and suspicious feelings of others. If we rehearse an offense long enough, we'll widen the circle of suspicion and begin to feel that most people just can't be trusted…that no one is safe. This tendency always offers to measure the inaptitude of another's actions, but is armed with a ready defense for its own path of destruction.
If we have an offended heart, others secretly give us labels like: high maintenance, touchy, moody, critical, unwise, picky, demanding, angry, harsh, begrudging, manipulating, unforgiving, passive-aggressive, hard to get along with or not easily pleased. If we struggle with this, we're not alone…but we are surely lonely. Let's unmask this tendency in each of our hearts-without blaming anyone-and find again His deep refreshing waters of forgiveness, freedom and trust.
Here's a simple test to determine if we have an Offended Heart. We know we are easily offended when:
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- We find ourselves in one battle after another with various people. There always seems to be someone, somewhere, with whom we're struggling.
- We tend to stack up the offenses of people within our hearts without communicating with them. Every once in awhile, we just explode. But most of the time, we keep it all inside.
- We may feel that certain people are out to hurt us-that they don't want to help us-that people do not deeply have our best interests at heart (If they did, they would do things the way we think they should).
- In every job, every church, every group, every relationship, we eventually find ourselves having issues with those over us and around us. We find it hard to find inner resolve; walking in peace and harmony.
- People in authority always end up troubling us. They seem to be forever abusing us, offending us, wounding us, letting us down, not being polite enough, or sensitive enough, or attentive enough, soft enough, strong enough, forceful enough or________enough.
- When we arrive at a place or relationship we enjoy, we are too often secretly waiting for this place/person to disappoint us. We can begin to (often subconsciously) sabotage the serenity to find out where the problems are secretly lying in wait to ambush us.
- People we get close to always let us down. No one seems to get us quite right or take the time to understand us or our family and give us what we need!
- We have no inner contentment-our heart is loud and conflicted--not filled with His quiet peace and His still voice.
- We have very few real friends. We do however; have a list of people with whom we've had a falling out.
- We may have even arrived at the point where being weary from offenses, we just back off from people and don't get too close anymore…it's just too painful.
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