Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Psalms 62:5

It never ceases to amaze me, the way the devil uses our offenses and our "offendedness" to divide and conquer marriages, relationships, churches - even entire nations!

Many of us are not careful enough about the things we say and more importantly, we get offended way too easily. As we were discussing this topic recently, a good friend gave this analogy and we loved it:

If you are holding a baby and his little arm swats you in the face, would you take offense to that? Of course not! We know the little guy didn't intend to hurt us. We respond with "awwww" or laughter or something to that effect. But if it is a friend, a family member or a brother or sister in the church who offends us with a little swat of words or actions, we are undone. We expect more from them! What hypocrisy! We become angry and we want to defend ourselves, fight back or leave forever.

What did Jesus say about this? Well, Jesus said that even if someone despitefully uses us, that means on purpose, that we are to respond in love! We as human beings are troubled and sinful. We are not perfect and we should never expect others to be, no matter what their positions are in the church. God is perfect and He is the one from whom our expectations should come - not man.

Am I talking to you today? We are all guilty of this one way or another. Let's give our offenses to the Lord. Allow Him wash over us today. Allow Him Heal us. Get us back to where we need to be. There's so much work to be done in the Kingdom to allow Satan to get us side tracked.