By John Stallings
It is with pleasure that I tell you that I represent Glory Realtors Inc., an exciting investment opportunity.
Let me quickly confess that I haven’t always lived there but have visited enough to honestly be able to present it to you as a wonderful place to live.
I am trying to persuade as many people as possible to buy property on Praise Avenue. I don’t know where you live now but it would be safe to say many of you live in exclusive residential areas. Maybe you live on,
Complain Court,
Lamentation lane,
Grumble Gables,
or Barely Getting by Boulevard, down at the end of the street, next to
Ain’t It Awful Ally.
However, I’m asking you to pack up, sell out, and move to Praise Avenue.
“Why should I do that? You ask. Good question. When an intelligent person decides to relocate, he does it for good reasons, so let me give you several reasons to make this move.
REASON #1:
WE ARE COUNSELED BY GOD’S WORD TO LIVE ON PRAISE AVENUE.
Psalm 135:1 says, “Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the name of the Lord; praise him O ye servants of the Lord.”
Psalm 106:1 says, “Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks to the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever.
Psalm 103:1 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me bless his holy name.”
Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.”
Many other places in Gods word implore us to live on Praise Avenue.
Psalm 96:1-6 tells us; “Sing unto the Lord a new song all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people; For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all Gods. For all the gods of the world are; but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.”
REASON #2:
SOMEONE WHO WE SUPREMELY LOVE WANTS US TO LIVE ON PRAISE AVENUE.
When you love someone, you are always looking for ways to please them. You will have a keen listening ear to each and every suggestion because you know that some special day such as a birthday or Christmas is coming up and you don’t want to miss an opportunity to please the one you love. If you catch the slightest hint, you will file it away until you can fulfill that desire.
Some people are terribly hard to please, but look how easy our God has made it for us. He has plainly told us that He craves our love and praise so much that if we build him a house of praise He’ll be quick to inhabit it. To be frank, the very reason He created us was so that the creature could praise the creator. When a child climbs in his fathers lap and gives him love, the father receives great joy from it. Likewise our God receives genuine pleasure when we respond to His love for us with expressions of worship and praise.
REASON #3:
WE WILL GREATLY BENEFIT FROM THE MOVE TO PRAISE AVENUE.
Nothing blesses us in every way more than praise does. Note that God is always seeking to do us, His children good. A close investigation of all Gods commandments will prove that they are all designed for our benefit. If you feel that God isn’t answering your prayers, maybe you could make a change and start mingling more praise with your petitions and see what happens. When you and I start to recognize the goodness and mercies of God He will then start to consider our wants and needs more. Praise benefits us in another way, in that it will always make the devil run.
Have you ever noticed that if you are talking to a person about someone they don’t have much affection for, the more you say positive about that person, the more uncomfortable the person is who doesn’t like them. If you don’t stop building that person up, you’ll soon lose your audience. That’s what praise does to Satan. He so despises God that he won’t be around long when we start to praise the Lord.
REASON #4:
THE LANDLORD ON PRAISE AVENUE WILL KEEP US SAFE AT ALL TIMES.
As soon as you make the move to praise avenue, you’ll get a protection policy, not that you’ll never have a problem, but that God will always go through it with you. Someone might ask; if I already have problems and a move to praise avenue won’t guarantee no problems, why should I move? The answer is simple. If we try to solve life’s problems by ourselves, we are sure to end up in trouble. But if we live on Praise Avenue, God will fight our battles for us. The bottom line is; without praise, life will sooner or later become too much for us.
Think about how faithful God has always been to wake you in the morning as well as sustain, protect and provide for you with such regularity. Think how he’s blessed you with sight, hearing, and the ability to move around and enjoy life. If you saw the movie The Passion, it reminded you of what Jesus went through to purchase our salvation.
Should we not sing with the songwriter?
MERCY THERE WAS GREAT AND GRACE WAS FREE.
PARDON THERE WAS MULTIPLIED TO ME,
THERE MY BURDENED SOUL FOUND LIBERTY,
AT CALVARY.
REASON #5:
MOVING TO PRAISE AVENUE WILL EXPRESS OUR FAITH IN GOD.
Our ability to burst into praise regardless of the circumstances is truly a measure of the quality and quantity of our faith in God. If we believe that God is both willing and able to do “exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think,” if we believe that our lives are in his care, if we really believe that nothing comes to us except what in His providence He allows, why would we not praise him in bad times as well as good?
As the old song goes, “anyone can sing when the suns shining bright, but you need a song in your heart at night.”
When you live on praise Avenue, you may be “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9.
You see, even in the darkest circumstances, we can praise God because we know that all things are not good, but “all things work together for good to them that love God. “Romans 8:28. When we believe Him, we turn everything over to Him and praise Him for whatever he does.
Some well known Old Testament residents of Praise Avenue are Jehoshaphat and his army, who were surrounded by three hostile armies. The story says, “Then Jehoshaphat appointed singers unto the Lord and that should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army, and to say “ Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth forever.” 2 Chronicles 20:19-21.
Notice that Jehoshaphat put his full trust in the word of the Lord, not stationing the praisers behind the army where they’d have some measure of protection. No, they were stationed before the army relying on the fact that their praises would be suitable habitation for an all-powerful God who would fight their battle for them.
Two well known New Testament occupants of Praise Avenue are Paul and Silas. They had been thrown in jail in Philippi on trumped up charges. They had been flogged and their backs were sore and swollen. Their feet were in hard, brutal stocks. Every movement added more pain. By all rights they’d have been complaining but they weren’t. Instead they decided to praise God. And God, the mighty deliverer responded to those praises. The record says that suddenly a great earthquake came and the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s hands were loosed. Hallelujah!!!
The fact that God shows up when we praise is a good reason to keep praising, isn’t it?
REASON #6:
LIVING ON PRAISE AVENUE WILL ALLOW US TO PRACTICE FOR HEAVENS CHIEF ACTIVITY.
You can read Revelation 5:11-14 and Revelation 19 for a lifestyle of the redeemed as pictured by John the Revelator. In Revelation 5:11-13 John gets a glimpse on the inside of heaven and paints a word picture of a glorious service in heaven. He says;
“And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature that was in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honor and glory be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” Hallelujah!!!
I don’t know how many trillions that is but let’s say that John saw more angels praising God than our minds can comprehend.
Aren’t you glad that this old world isn’t our home; we’re just pilgrims passing through. We have got a lot to look forward to because according to John, we’ll join the saints of all the ages and engage in Praising God throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity.
So I’ll tell you what. In the light of all we’ve said, I have decided to move to praise Avenue and I’m inviting all of you to move with me. Regardless of our problems, let us praise the Lord.
God forbid, but if you sprain your ankle, praise him that he’s Jehovah Rophe, the mighty healer.
God forbid, but if you are dead broke, and the bills are high, and funds low, praise God he’s Jehovah Jireh, our provider.
God forbid, but if your spouse runs out on you or your children turn their backs on you, praise God he’s Jehovah Shammah and he’ll never leave you or forsake you.
God forbid, but if one day the devil, the accuser of the brethren, mounts a massive offensive against you and you feel your filthy rag of righteousness is filthier than ever, praise God that Jehovah Tsidkenu is only a prayer away and is eager to cover you with his robe of righteousness.
Have you ever noticed that the last five Psalms start with the words, “Praise ye the Lord?”
Reading these Psalms gives us the principles for improving the emotional landscape of our minds and the attitude structure of our hearts, so that we may have a blessed and happy life. The One-hundred fiftieth Psalm says;
PRAISE GOD IN HIS SANCTUARY,
PRAISE HIM IN THE FIRMAMENT OF HIS POWER,
PRAISE HIM FOR HIS MIGHTY ACTS,
PRAISE HIM ACCORDING TO HIS ABUNDANT GREATNESS,
PRAISE HIM WITH THE BLAST OF THE HORN,
PRAISE HIM WITH THE PSALTERY AND HARP,
PRAISE HIM WITH THE TIMBREL AND DANCE,
PRAISE HIM WITH STRINGED INSTRUMENTS AND PIPE,
PRAISE HIM WITH LOUD-SOUNDING CYMBALS,
PRAISE HIM WITH CLANGING CYMBALS;
LET EVERY THING THAT HATH BREATH PRAISE THE LORD,
HALLELUJAH.
I IMPLORE YOU, AS I AM DOING, TO MAKE THE PERMINENT MOVE TO PRAISE AVENUE SO THAT WE CAN,
…. “BLESS THE LORD AT ALL TIMES AND LET HIS PRAISE BE CONTINUALLY BE IN OUR MOUTHS.” Psalm 34:1.
Blessings,
John
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
Offended Christians
By John Stallings
…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation
What’s the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?
What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.
Offense is described as-“an act causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”
If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.
When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.
Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”
Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach.
It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.
Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.
People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” We all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.
People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.
CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE
If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake- but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.
The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]
When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.
HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?
We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.
We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.
Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.
GOD'S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM
In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.
It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.
Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.
Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.
In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.
When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.
Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.
Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”
The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.
As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.
Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.
But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.
FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS
These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”
There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity's sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”
Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.
So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.
It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.
But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.
Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, -servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.
Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.
But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.
The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.
GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS
God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.
The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.
The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.
Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.
THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.
He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.
Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.
Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.
We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.
We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.
We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.
“Father, forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.
Blessings,
John
…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation
What’s the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?
What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.
Offense is described as-“an act causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”
If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.
When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.
Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”
Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach.
It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.
Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.
People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” We all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.
People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.
CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE
If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake- but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.
The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]
When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.
HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?
We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.
We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.
Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.
GOD'S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM
In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.
It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.
Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.
Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.
In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.
When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.
Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.
Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”
The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.
As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.
Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.
But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.
FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS
These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”
There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity's sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”
Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.
So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.
It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.
But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.
Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, -servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.
Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.
But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.
The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.
GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS
God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.
The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.
The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.
Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.
THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.
He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.
Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.
Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.
We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.
We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.
We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.
“Father, forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.
Blessings,
John
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