Harboring Offense

How many of us remain in wounded offense? Are we living for the glory of God, or are we reacting to, nursing, or harboring a grievance? Keeping an offense alive and well is just as destructive (and sinful) as committing an offense. Let’s face it: at one time or another ALL of us are going to offend someone, whether we mean to or not. Here’s my sensitive advice: GET OVER IT!

For when we nurture our hurts, hold them and keep them as part of our life portfolio, we resemble juvenile eagles, fully capable of powerful soaring, but letting our hurts and fears confine us to a small life.

It is time to FLY! Time to rise up, shake off the SIN that so easily entangles and get on with it! Forgive those who have offended you. Forgive just as God forgave you, and MOVE past it. How would we like it if God remained offended by our sins? What if He mulled it over and kept a record of wrongs?

My daughter told me a funny story the other day: apparently one day when she was around junior high age, she and her younger brother were alone together while I was at work. During this time they had a spat. She ended up being so furious with all his “sins” that she kicked him. She knew he would tell on her when I got home, so she went to her bedroom and wrote a long list of everything he did that day to provoke her to violence. He came in and asked her what she was doing, and she told him she was making the list. He admonished, “Remember Teal, God doesn’t want us to keep a record of wrongs!” I have laughed over that daily since I heard it. Yes, just as God does NOT keep a record of our wrongs, He doesn’t want us to keep a record of sins committed against us. He wants us to soar with power and freedom, and each time we refuse to move in favor of nursing our hurts and wounds or we avoid the call on our lives because of past bad experiences, we are like those giant baby birds…fully powerful, yet completely crippled by our own decision to remain in offense.

 "He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust." Psalm 103:10-14