An Offense Free Summer

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. I'm super pumped. This is my first time up here at Salt Church. A little nervous, but I'm gonna be okay.

I've been coming to this church now for about two years, pretty much since we were meeting in Pastor Leon's living room. And so, just seeing it grow and seeing it come, you know, and just seeing everyone here, it's just like so exciting what God is doing in this church and just being a part of it. And I'm not exactly a pastor, just a lay, I'm a lay person, you know, but I do love Salt Church and I am part of this body. I work on the setup team and also the prayer team here. And I like to, but my specialty, just so you know, is moving chairs.

All the chairs you're sitting on, you know, your butts are so comfortable right now. That's my favorite thing. I actually call myself the chairman of the board of the setup team. So, that's my specialty. Just a little bit of life statistics about me.

I'm 35 years old and I've been following Jesus for about seven years now. And I've been, also been married for seven years now. Actually, next week is my anniversary. I'll be married seven years to my beautiful wife, Lisa Marie. And so, there was a lot of years of darkness, you know, if you add those up, where I didn't know God and I was in the world, like completely all in the world.

And it was not a good scene, you know. I was self-absorbed. I was selfish. I was completely, just wanted to be involved. Everything the world thought was cool, I was all in with that.

And it led me down a really destructive path. About 15 years ago, when I was probably in the height of that, I ended up going to jail for about eight months and made a lot of bad decisions. And so, I come from this background of like just rebellion and just being in a lot of trouble. And so, you know, and my parents would actually come and visit me in jail. You know, they were, my parents are strong believers.

And they love me. And they were doing everything right. But yet their son was out in rebellion. And so, now, you know, my parents went from visiting me in jail to now they're here seeing me preach. So, give Jesus some praise.

Everyone praise Jesus right now. Only he can do that. Only God can do that. And so, for any of you, you know, who are struggling just with a prodigal and thinking about someone you've been praying for, God can just do anything. I just want to, I want you to have that hope.

I'm a living testimony of a trophy of God's grace of what he can do. You know, and so, but I just have to say one of the toughest challenges, you know. And after, you know, after getting out of jail, I went to college. I actually got accepted to the criminal justice program while I was in jail. And I went to college.

And I eventually went to law school. And, you know, and eventually now I, you know, I went to law school at Regent University. That's what brought me down here to Virginia Beach. And so, I've been through, like, a lot of different struggles through that. There's a lot of challenges.

But I'd have to say one of the toughest challenges I've had to face is probably being married. And it's a lot of work for anyone out there. And one of the things I struggled with when I was, you know, just first being married and things like that is just getting, like, hurt and offended by things, getting really bothered by things. And I remember about four years ago, I was at church, and my pastor at the time, and also my mentor, he was sharing this message. And he was preaching on Psalm 119.

And the verse that he brought about, which was the first time I heard this, and this is going to be our theme verse today, is Psalm 119, verse 165. And it says, Great peace have they which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. See, when I first heard that verse, I was offended. Because I was like, how is that even possible? You know, just giving you a little context about where I was in my life, you know, I had just been, just started, gotten married, and we were, we were struggling.

And I think what it was, was when I came to Christ, and it was like right at the beginning of our relationship, I like 180'd. I was like a Saul to Paul. And, but my wife, she was more of a gradual process, and she was, you know, moving in her own space. So like, when you have that, when two people are in two different places with their relationship with God, it can really cause conflict. And, you know, if you don't handle that conflict, it can get bad really quick.

And if you don't handle that right, and I was handling all wrong. And I was so zealous for the Lord, but I was pushing my wife away from me. And I got to be so bad one point that, you know, one night, we, Lisa Marie was sleeping in another room because, you know, we'd had a, we'd had a fight. And I remember God woke me up in the middle of the night in my bed by myself, and I had like this vision. And I literally saw like these amazing things that God was doing in Lisa Marie's life.

I, I saw. Like, as a young girl, and coming before God, like, with nothing hindering her, just in tears, just worshiping God with nothing, no baggage of the past, and I just saw this beautiful picture of where God was bringing her to, like, in this amazing thing, and I heard this voice, and it said, in your zeal, do not get in the way of what I am doing in her, and when I heard that, I was so freaked out. I woke up, and I was, like, shivering in the fetal position in my bed, and I, and I just, and it really came to me that I had, I needed to back off, you know, it, there's a verse, Proverbs 19, 2, it says, It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way. Another translation, King James says, It is not good for the soul to be without knowledge, and to be hasty and miss the way. So, it's not good for us to not have knowledge in our soul.

The soul involves your mind, your will, and your emotions. God was calling me to an increased emotional IQ. You see, I was, you know, zealous, and when we're zealous, we set people up on this, to our own standards. Like, we have this standard, and we hold everyone else to it. And when people don't miss, don't make that standard, we get hurt, we get disappointed, we get frustrated, we get offended.

And what had happened was, I was not able to understand what was really going on with her. And so, my first point, you know, sort of in this introduction, is that we need to ask God for an increased emotional IQ, so that we can understand what is going on inside of us, and what is going on inside of other people. You know, because I knew in my heart, you know, that this verse, this Psalm 165 verse, Psalm 19, 165, that it was true. I knew that it was possible, you know, to not get offended, but that wasn't what I was experiencing in my life. I was hurt and offended a lot.

I was, you know, constantly being disappointed. I was constantly struggling, and it was manifesting in all these unhealthy ways. So, I started to ask God to help me. Help me understand how this verse can start to come into my life. You know, sometimes what can happen is, we read the Scripture through the lens of our own experiences and through our own abilities to see what is possible in the Scripture, rather than looking at our life experience and our abilities and looking at it through the lens of God's Word and God's abilities.

See, what can happen is, we can actually build this theology justifying our experiences or our lack of experiences. This can even happen, you know, when someone, you know, the verse, John 14, 6 says, you know, you, Jesus says, you will do the works that I have been doing, and you will do even greater works because I'm going to be with the Father. So, Jesus was saying that when I go to be the Father, you're going to have the Holy Spirit, and you're going to have the power to do what I was doing on a regular basis. Jesus, but a lot of us as Christians, we're not seeing that happen in our life. We're not seeing that power of the Holy Spirit the same way it worked through Jesus.

You know, we might see a lot of people where that is happening, and there is that happening with people in America. But we can start to read our Bible and water it down just to justify our lack of experience. Instead of the other option is, we could humble ourself, we could repent, we could ask for more of God. We could say, I know this is possible, God, because I see it in your word, and I'm going after it no matter what. I'm going to pray into this thing, I'm going to seek after it, because it is possible, and I believe you can do it through me.

James 1.21 says, those that hear God's word and do not do it are deceived. There is a deception that happens in your life when you listen to God's word, and you don't apply it. Knowledge without application is useless. It's like eating a bunch of food without exercising.

You just get fat. So, you know, aren't you tired of, like, living under this deception, you know, that limits how far God can work through you? That limits, like, where you feel like God could deliver you from? That limits, like, how far you feel like God could work through you? The chains that you have in your life that you're feeling are unbreakable, when really this is a deception?

That God says He can do this? And so, this morning, I just want to cast this vision for you, that it is possible to live the rest of your lives without being offended. It says it in God's word, and I want to go through these scriptures to just show you how it's possible in the process that you go through with God. And to start, I just want to define the terms. What does it actually mean to be offended?

What does it actually mean to have an offense come against you? The original word in the Hebrew talks about when somebody has done something wrong to you that's, like, that is almost like a criminal offense. Like, in the court of law now, you bring what's called a criminal complaint. And you bring that to either a judge or a magistrate, or you bring it to the police station, and they have you fill it out. And if someone has done an offense against you, and you have to fill that out, or in a lawsuit, you know, it's called a warrant in debt.

You fill that out when someone has, you know, done something that is basically stealing from you or broke something or whatever. There's tons of different ways. Someone has offended against you. And so, it's actually, like, a legal term. But in today's culture, this word offense is a lot more flexible.

It's more of a meaning, I guess, for everyday common day is our feelings are wounded. We're hurt. We're, we're really irritated. We're annoyed. Our expectations have not been met and we're disappointed and so we're offended and so it's a lot more flexible now and we also live in a day and age where people just getting offended so much more easier and it's so much harder for, it seems like for people to be able to hear opinions expressed that aren't their own.

It's like people's ability to be able to cope with, you know, things that they don't agree with. They just, it makes them so much more tense. They have a hard time being able to work through that and so we can even see that now in our society and the division in our country and so this is something huge that could really transform the way that we see things and transform our country for us to be able to live without this offense and this being offended. And so when you look at whether something is an offensive, so you hear like, oh I'm offended but oh that was an offensive to me. And that's a completely subjective standard like, what one person thinks what one person thinks is offensive to them, somebody else would think is not offensive to them, you know, and it just depends on who it is.

And what's important to know though is that just because something is offensive to you doesn't mean that you have to become offended. The first, the first main point of the definition of offense is being offended means you have to pick up an offense. You get to choose whether you hold on to it or not. I don't mean to blow your mind, but you get to choose. And so another way that God defines being offended in the Bible is He talks about when you, when someone does something wrong to you or someone has offended to you, it can put what's called a stumbling block in your way.

It's something that can cause you to sin or fall away from God. Think about, think about throughout your whole life, when you've seen someone who was in authority, who had just, who was hypocritical. Or you saw a moral failure in the church, or you saw somebody that you looked up to and they messed up and they did something wrong. Or you had a friend that really let you down because they, they just, they did something wrong. And that can actually be something that draws you away from God because you see this, it's an offense that draws people away.

And God, that hurts His heart. He hates seeing that people do that. So God does not promote offending people. He's not cool with it. It breaks God's heart to see these things happen to you.

You know, people have hurt us. They've let us down. They've disappointed us. But that's not God. And there's a difference.

There is a difference between being hurt and becoming offended. There's nothing wrong with being hurt and going through that and being wounded. Like, that's, that's okay. Like, that, that happens. But when you hold that person in judgment, and you don't release that hurt to Jesus to allow Him to heal you, that's when you become offended.

And that is the difference between being hurt and offense and being offended. So where do these offenses come from? We need to know where they're coming from. And we want to be more aware of it. And the short answer to this is, wherever there are people, there are offenses.

Wherever there are people. And, you know, have you ever been harassed? Have you ever been disrespected? Have you ever been embarrassed by somebody? You know, unmet expectations.

Your boss at your job, you know, he doesn't give you the credit you deserve. He treats you poorly. You know, maybe you get falsely accused of something. It can come from family members. Sometimes the people closest to us have the most capacity to be able to offend us.

For, for boys, you know, or guys, we get more offended when people disrespect us. We get angry when we want to fight. For girls, we get offended when our emotional, when the emotional needs aren't met. When we feel like we're, you know, when you feel like you're not validated, or you're not being understood, it can be offensive to you. And, you know, we can get offended through body language.

We can get, you know, you can get offended by someone's facial expressions. People can be very sensitive to that. The list goes on and on, and social media is like a beehive of offense. So, it is all, you know, one thing that is important to know, and you might not always think about this, it's possible to get offended at God. You know, in the Bible, we have this account of the man Job, and he went through tremendous suffering.

You know, because of an attack from the devil, we knew in, in that account that it was the devil that was afflicting him. And he lost all his possessions. He lost his health. He was afflicted with open sores. All his kids had died, and he was left with nothing.

And all he had left was his wife, and she was nagging him. And she told him, you should curse God and die. See, she was calling him to be offended at God and just to hang it up. You know, the ultimate thing the devil wants you to do is just hang it up. That's when he wins.

You know, a good way to know what is from God and what is from the devil is John 10.10. It says, the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But Jesus comes that you may have... Life, you may have it more abundantly.

If you understand these two mission statements, you will understand more what is going on in your circumstances. God is for life. The devil comes to destroy. If you keep that set in your mind, you will not become offended at God, because that, the devil will use that to draw you even to even worse destruction, draw you down even to worse depression, because then all your hope is gone. You know, you can have, you know, especially when you grow up, you know, with parents that, like, really just weren't loving you like you really desired, you can have what's called a father wound.

It makes it harder for you to see your heavenly father the way he really is as a lover of your soul, because you didn't see that growing up, and you have this wound. And so, it affects the way you look at God. You know, sometimes, you know, you see this even with people that become atheists and become agnostic, because they are actually not really believing there isn't a God. At some point in their life, they were hurt. Someone let them down.

They were offended by something, and they started just to move away and see, if these things happen in the world, there can't be a God, or at least he can't be good. And so, they just start to drift, and they just say, he doesn't exist anymore, because I just don't even want to deal with this. And Jesus, he longs so much to bring everyone in, for there to be a unity, for people to come together and support each other. One of Jesus' last prayers that he prayed in the Bible was in John 17. And in this prayer, Jesus prayed for all who would believe in him.

He prayed that we would be brought into complete unity. Then the whole world will know that you have sent me, and I have loved them, even as you love me. When we come into unity, when we drop away the offense and come out of the divisions, the world will actually know that Jesus was sent by God. That's how the world will know. And Jesus prayed for us that we would be able to do that.

So, one of the biggest strategies of Satan to come and attack the church is to divide us. He knows it. Satan knows the scripture. Mark 3.24 says, if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

So, one of the first ways he attacks is to try to bring a spirit of offense on his people, to separate them, to cause them to have anger and bitterness and to divide them. And he wants to isolate you. He wants you to break away from fellowship. That's one of his biggest tools. He knows an isolated Christian is a paralyzed Christian.

And so, he wants you to kind of just be off by yourself. He knows, like, all these people, they hurt me. I can't go back into that. And so, he wants you to get away from your support network. And, you know, but there's a lot of hurt.

There's gossip. There's slander. There can be harsh judgments. There's all these things happening. But we have to realize that the reality is that the church is a hospital for sinners.

We just realize we need a doctor. You know, Mark 2.17, Jesus says, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners. Jesus realized this, that it was we need a doctor.

We need help. And that's what this church is. It's a hospital. So, we have to stop getting mad and offended by everyone, frustrated with people who are not fully healed yet. We have to be able to let that go.

And, unfortunately, one of the things that we struggle with as Christians, one of the biggest things is unforgiveness. And the reason why is because when you become a believer, suddenly you're reading the Bible and your eyes are open to everything that's right and wrong. Whereas before, you kind of were desensitized to it. And now you're behaving a little better. So, it makes it easier for you to judge what everyone else is doing because you are, you know, you got a little bit better behavior.

And you forget the reason why you were saved. It was through the blood of Jesus. It's not because you're behaving better. It's nothing to do with your works. It's everything about what Christ has done for you.

It's His love, not ours. And so, we have no right to look down or hold against things, against people who are stumbling. We have to be there to pick them up when they're stumbling. That's our job. And we can't do that while we're looking down at them.

So, we've talked about what it means to be offended, where they come from. Now, I want to share with you how do we process offense. I want to talk to you about the godly way to do this. And this is going to be super practical. This is something that you can take with you after you leave here today.

And the first thing that is so important when an offense comes at you is you need to bring it to God right away. You can't wait. You don't want to go to anger. You don't want to go to where you just internalize it and just, you know, kind of push it away. You don't want to go turn on the TV.

You don't want to go to food or substances, drugs or alcohol. Or go put it on blast on social media. Like, you don't want to do that. You want to go to God right away. You need to seek His peace in the situation.

And so, Ephesians 4, 26 through 27 is really sort of the benchmark verse when it comes to how to process offense. It says here, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give an opportunity to the devil. See, another translation of this, which I really like, it says, If you're angry, beware of sinning. Let not your irritation go down.

Or let not your irritation last until the sun goes down. So this word for anger is actually kind of flexible. It means like an irritation. It's like a negative. So, this first point, kind of, when it comes to processing offense, is we don't want to let the sun go down on our negative emotions.

We want to deal with them right away. And, you know, because Jesus always brings things to a thought level. Like, He will talk about how, you know, lust, how it starts, it's a thing that starts in the heart. It's a thing you need to start to. The battle is going on in your mind, and that's where it has to start.

That's where you have to start to stand your ground right away. And, you know, I once heard a friend say, you don't want to let those thoughts get Nikes, you know, and start running on you. Don't let those thoughts get Nikes. And because you can start holding animosity, you know, really quick. And so, when you bring it to God, what do you do?

Because now you brought it to God. But what do you do now that you brought it to God? And here's what I like to do. Here's how I process this. I treat God as my therapist.

That's how much I'm opening up to God. I'm talking to Him out loud. There's something that happens in your prayer life when you begin to talk out loud to God. It's like your prayer life becomes so much more vibrant because you're talking to Him, you're processing things. And the first thing you need to ask Him to do, help me to forgive this person or forgive this thing.

I need to forgive because if you don't forgive, it says, how can we, how can God even forgive you? The verse on this is Mark 11, 25. And it says, when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your Father in Heaven may forgive you your sins. That says anything against anyone. Like, He brought it to that level.

And when you're there, and it's not, it's, forgiveness is not saying that what they did was okay. It's not that at all. It's not justifying what they did. It's saying to God that I'm releasing this person to your judgment. You are the only one that can be.

I'm no longer going to be judge over them. I'm no longer going to say what their punishment can be. Only you can say that. And when you do that, when you release that and realize, you know, and forgiveness is also not saying that you're going to trust that person right away. Trust is something that is earned.

Forgiveness is a gift that you give yourself because it releases the poison from within you. And so when we go into, when we go into forgiveness, it actually starts to release things. There's another verse that says that when we don't forgive, that actually it opens up opportunity for the devil to come in and torture us. So these spirits, you know, come in and, you know, it can be really bad and it can just compound on itself. So how do we do this forgiveness thing?

My wife actually helped me out with this because she's a psychologist and she shared with me this model called the Enright model of forgiveness. And this is by Dr. Enright and he's a psychologist. He's also a Christian, but this is a completely secular model that psychologists regularly use and they're bringing people through the process of forgiveness. And the first phase is called the uncovering phase.

And this is where you're processing through the various layers of your pain, your justifiable anger. And I like to do this with God out loud. I say this person did this to me. It hurt me in this way. It made me feel this way.

It caused this to happen like in my life. It even affected this person in my family member. And I go through a litany with God of everything that the reasons. It's almost like when you say when you're a father and you say to your kids, you know, you know, you got to ask tell tell Johnny you're sorry. And they're like, oh, yeah, Johnny, I'm sorry.

No. What are you sorry for? And you want them to know what they're sorry for. You want them to understand. Well, when you're coming to God with this forgiveness piece, you need to tell God what the offense is.

You need to process it because if you say I forgive them, it doesn't, it really doesn't mean anything because you haven't gone through the thing in your heart. You have to engage your heart in order to forgive somebody. And so that's called the uncovering phase. The next phase is decision phase where you're actually deciding to say and put the words out of your mouth. And forgiveness is a choice.

It's an act of the will. You choose to say, I forgive them, God. You choose to say, God, would you help me forgive them? And so there's a decision phase that you have to go through in order for it to be a free choice. And the next phase is the work phase.

And this is hard. Sometimes, you know, forgiveness can be a real process. It can take months. You have to continuously forgive this person because, you know, you're dealing with a lot of memories. And every time things come up, you need to forgive them again.

And so also you're trying to see the person in a different light. One way to know whether or not you've forgiven somebody is whether you can pray for them passionately in a compassionate way and actually see them through God's eyes. If you are still feeling this strain about praying for them and actually blessing them, you might not have forgiven them. You know, another way you could know is, was this person a friend? Was this person a family member you were close to?

Can, are you now avoiding them? Are you now not, can you not be around them? Do you feel when you're listening to this person or is it now going in one ear and going out the other? You're just blocking them out. You know, because sometimes it just, it just becomes white noise.

You can know that you might have a little bit of angst against this person and you need to deal with it. And so that's the work phase, like, and you go into this deepening phase and that's where you actually start to find meaning in what has happened to you. You start to realize how God has used your suffering to help other people. You start to share your story without pain. One good way to know you've completely forgiven is when you can share these things that can happen to you and you're not, it's not evoking all kinds of pain and emotions when it's coming up.

You can share that story and begin to help others so they can get set free of the same things that were plaguing you before. That's when you take... Vengeance on the enemy. So you have this deepening phase. And so that's this forgiveness process.

It's a lot more than sometimes give it credit for. So just be thinking about that. Look up the Enright model when you get out of here. Google it. I'm telling you there's some really good nuggets in there.

So the next thing we've got to do when we're processing offense is we've got to make sure not to make harsh judgments. When you look at Matthew 7, it says, Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Now this is not saying, you know, a lot of times people go, you can't judge me.

Only God can judge me. As Christians, we're allowed to say, hey, this stuff is wrong. You know, this is not right. Like, you can call a spade a spade. But what you're not supposed to do is judge people harshly.

Because it says in the same way that you judge others, it will be measured to you. Like, you don't like it when people judge you in a harsh way and you feel like they're kind of judging you in a way that's not accurate to who you are. And it really hurts when you feel like they're looking at you through these eyes that are just skewed. And so, how do we do this? How do we not make a harsh judgment?

Well, it's the first thing that we need to do when we're looking at, like, other people, is we're not supposed to judge their motives. In 1 Corinthians 4-5, it says, So don't make judgments about anyone ahead of time before the Lord returns. For He will bring our darkest, darkest secrets to light, and He will reveal all our private motives. Then God will give each one whatever praise is due. We're not supposed to judge why people did that.

We don't know what's going on in their heart. We can't, we can't start to judge what that is. And another thing that we're not supposed to judge is we're not supposed to make assumptions about the facts of something. When you, when you jump to conclusions about somebody, you don't know anything. Maybe you heard it from somebody else.

In court, they call that hearsay. You know, it's not admissible in court because you heard it from somebody else. You're not an eyewitness to it. You didn't see it. So you're hearing things over social media, over this or that.

You don't know all the facts of situations, but yet you're jumping to conclusions about that person. That's a harsh judgment. We want to avoid that like the plague. And so another way that we can have harsh judgments is when we judge someone's identity. And this is when, you know, and this is something the devil will push you to try to do.

He wants you to make an ultimate decision about a person in the negative. He wants you to label them. He wants you to put them in a box. He wants you to say, man, this is just a mean person. This is just a bad person.

Or this is just, this guy's just a real piece of boop. You know, you know, that, that is, we're judging their identity, who they are, the person. Rather than saying, man, this guy, man, I just, this guy, he's bothering me. But man, he's so broken. He's hurt.

Like, you know, I know that hurt people hurt people. I know his behaviors, you know, the way he's acting, he's acting mean. That's the difference of saying they are mean. See, you're not judging their identity. You're not making this harsh judgment.

And when you put that judgment on it, you're heaping more condemnation on that person. You're making it worse on them. And you're making it worse on you because the same way you do it, it comes back measured to you. And so we just want to avoid making those judgments out of people. It almost can, like, operate like a curse over ourselves.

When you, and sometimes when you see people doing stuff that are sins that, like, you don't appreciate, a lot of times those are things that you struggle with yourself. And you're just insecure because you're seeing the things they're doing. You're thinking, man, I do that too. So you make a harsh judgment on them. It almost becomes like a curse that, like, follows you.

You know, in the Bible, it talks about a bitter root judgment. It says in Hebrews 12, 15, it says, see that none of you fail to obtain the grace of God. See that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and defiles many. See, when you come into these judgments, you defile everyone else around you. They start to come around your environment and they start to get skewed by the judgments that you have about everyone else.

You defile everyone. So we have to start to let go of these things. And, you know, how can you tell if you're bitter? You know, are you offended by that person? Can you still talk to that person?

And you have to decide to choose, man, I'm just going to believe the best in that person. You know, love always hopes for the best. Love, you know, believes all things, bears all things. It's always looking for the best in each other is what it says in 1 Corinthians 13. So we have to try to look through people through God's eyes and start to try to look through the silver lining.

And so now that we have kind of dropped our harsh judgments, we've forgiven them, how do we approach the person? How do we approach the offender? You know, and sometimes you may not even need to tell them what they did was wrong. You know, sometimes it's better just to like just say, all right, I've forgiven them. This was a small thing.

I'm just going to let it go. Proverbs 19 11 says, a man's wisdom gives him patience and is to his glory to overlook an offense. So sometimes it's better just to let some of these things go and it's to your glory to do it. But there's other times where like it's really still bothering you. You're having a hard time interacting with this person and you're thinking, man, like, I just need to talk to them about it.

You shouldn't let that fester. If it continues to bother you, you need to talk to them about it. And in fact, for Christians, when we're dealing with other people that are believers, there's actually a scripture that prescribes how we're supposed to bring offenses to other people. And it's in Matthew 18. And I'm not going to go through all of that.

But it says that when someone has sinned against you, you're supposed to actually go and talk to them aside. You're not supposed to go and talk to anyone else about it. You're supposed to go and talk to them. And if they don't... There's a key.

You know, and they're not able to take it, and they're still keep doing it, and it's actually affecting other people, then you need to go and grab someone else, and then you go and talk to them, you try to gently counsel them. And if they keep doing it, eventually you got to bring it to the church, and there's a whole cycle. But you go into Matthew 18, it says, go to the person first. It says, if you, so if you see someone in the church doing something you don't agree with, and you think is kind of harming the church, maybe even the preaching is kind of off or something like that, you need to go and talk to Leon about it. And that's sort of like what, you know, that's sort of how we're supposed to do it.

That's what the Bible tells us to do. And you know what happens is? Reconciliation can come. Healing can come. The body gets stronger.

We keep moving forward. Everyone around who may be not be a believer, they can see that, and they're like, wow, these Christians, man, like they don't hold on to this stuff. You know, their favorite song isn't Taylor Swift, Bad Blood. You know, they're able to let this stuff go. And, and so, um, the, the, the last way, um, and that I want to talk about how, you know, how do you receive, or how do you process offense is, um, how do you receive correction?

This is a tough one. Um, one area of offense is, is when people come to us and they have some constructive criticism. It's very hard to receive that sometime. And, you know, there's different extremes that can happen. Um, you know, one thing is, um, you know, does it crush you?

You know, and the, the, the first point I have is don't let it crush you because it doesn't define you. That constructive criticism, even if, even if it's off, that doesn't define you. Don't let it crush you. You have to be, and, um, and when we're performance oriented, when we're so, um, we care so much about doing everything with excellence, you know, it can be hard sometimes when we get that correction, but, um, we can't let it crush us. And, um, the, the verse that's so important, um, Proverbs 19, 20, it says, I don't know if this is in your notes, but it says, Proverbs 19, 20 says, listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom in the future.

You can't just hear, so people that have, that, that say something to you that don't, that you don't agree with, or that is, you know, your, your lifestyle, maybe it doesn't agree with you. Um, you know, like it's easy to say, well, oh man, they're just haters. Anyone who is don't, doesn't agree with me or thinks what I'm doing is wrong, man, they're just haters. You just can completely write them off. And that's the other extreme is it doesn't like crush you where you're like just completely, you know, depressed about it, but you can also just completely brush it off.

You know, that's, that's the other extreme where you just blow it off and that's pride. And we can't just completely blow this stuff off. We have to be able to listen to people. And, you know, it, another verse, Ecclesiastes 10, 4 says, and this is like talking about when your boss gets on you. A lot of times when you have people in authority over you and they get on you, it can really bother you and you can, you know, and this verse talks about that.

You might, if you ever had problems with your boss, write down Ecclesiastes 10, 4. It says, if a ruler's anger rises against you, do not leave your post. Calmness can lay great offenses to rest. Sometimes when people come and offend us, we want to immediately say, whatever, I'm out of here. You know, I'm done with this job.

I'm done with this church. I'm done with this team. I'm done with this group. You know, but it says, don't leave your post right away. Bring this to God.

Let his calmness come upon you. Calmness can bring great offenses to rest. So we have to try to give God a chance to start to process these things. And so another thing is when we have close friends to us, when they bring correction. Sometimes it's hard when close friends bring correction because we know them so well.

So we feel like they're being hypocritical all the time if they say things to us because you're like, you do the same crap, you know. But Proverbs 27, 6 says, wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. How true is that? Wouldn't it be better just to receive things from a sincere friend than just your enemy just blowing compliments at you when really you're going down the wrong path? That's what we really need.

We really need good friends. We really need that support. And so just in closing, I want to share with you just back to the theme verse. Great peace have they which they have loved thy law, nothing shall offend them. This is possible to live a life with nothing offending you as you process this offense and you do it in a godly way and you bring it to forgiveness.

And when you look at this verse, and I realize this, you know, great peace of those that love God's law. What is God's law? It's his word. And who is the word? It's Jesus.

Jesus is the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And so when we come into a relationship with Jesus, a loving relationship with Jesus, we're finally able to break these chains of offense that we've been holding on to. Outside of this relationship, it's almost impossible. So start to think about this and open up your hearts to what it would be like to come into this relationship with God. Romans 5.

8 says, God demonstrated his own love for us in this. Why we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And therefore, since we've been justified with by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest way to have peace with other people is to have peace with God, peace within ourselves. And the only way to get that is through relationship with Jesus Christ.

And we need that. He died on the cross to release us from these offenses. He was offended the most. He died on the cross, and He said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

The greatest injustice the world has ever seen was being done to Jesus. And He said, forgive them. They know not what they do. That is our example. That is our Savior.

That is His love for you. And so to close, I want to pray with everyone. I want everyone to stand up. If everyone could stand up. And if you could just do something for me.

Put your hand on your heart. Because we're going to engage with God right now. And I just, just while the music is playing, just get quiet. Quiet your souls. God has been speaking to you about some things.

He's been opening up some things for you today. Things have been coming to the surface for you. Maybe things you didn't even realize, they're coming to the surface. And right now, God, He wants to help you to forgive the people that have hurt you. He wants to help you to release the pain right now.

He sees what has happened. He sees what you've gone through. And He hated it for you. He hated it. And He wants you to release it to Him right now.

So I want you to think about, if anybody has hurt you. If anyone has offended you. And right now, just in your own words and in your own heart. As the music's playing. Just tell God.

Tell God who that was. Tell God what they did that hurt you. Tell the Lord what they did. Just take a moment right now. I'm going to give you just 10, 15 seconds.

Just explain it to God. He hears every word. He saw it. He knew what you went through. He knew what they did.

He knew the love you were desiring and you didn't get. Just tell God about it. He's listening to you. He loves you. And right now, if you're ready.

God would like to help you to be able to forgive those people. God would like to help you right now. And if you could just say a prayer right now. Just like this. And just say, Father God, in Jesus' name.

I forgive this person. Just say their name in your heart. I release them right now. I will no longer be the judge over them. God, only you can judge them.

I let them go. Jesus, would you come and heal my hurt? Would you heal my broken heart? And set me free of this. Help me to forgive them.

Help me, God, to be able to process offenses in a better way in the future. Help me, God, to remember that you're always there for me. And that you are my therapist. And I can bring things to you. That you're always listening.

And for any of you out there right now. Still with hands on the hearts and eyes closed. That don't have that relationship yet. That you've never really allowed Jesus to come into your life. You've never really accepted him.

But today you feel his love. You feel his presence. You know he's here. You know it's real. If you want that relationship right now, you can just say a prayer with me.

You can say, Father God, in Jesus' name, I choose to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. That you died on the cross for my sins. So that I could be forgiven. And right now, Jesus, I ask you to forgive me. Forgive me of all my sins.

Set me free. Break my chains. Please, come into my life. Make your home in my heart. Holy Spirit, would you fill me?

Would you follow me right now? I choose to follow you the rest of my life. I make you Lord of my life. I submit control to you right now. And I choose to follow you this day forward.

In Jesus' name, amen.