Matthew 24:10
And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
When you harbor a grudge over what someone has done, it is like eating a bitter pill that refuses to be digested.
I know because I am one who minds what people say of me, especially when it's personal attacks at me. It replays in my mind and something brews in me. Often it is a dramatic response that I envision will happen if the person next crosses my path.
As a young adult in my early 20s, I was taught that the feeling of offense is such a corrupting spirit because it goes the opposite direction as love. Love envies not, forgives and endures. The feeling of offense is self oriented. All about feeling that we are correct, everyone around us is wrong or we are wronged.
Just before I left for Hong kong, I received an sms from my secretary to keep my own nasty comments to her to myself and that evoked a range in me. The incident that led to her messaged reply was due to the fact that I asked her, before I left, why she did not note my leave application despite being informed in an email months earlier. Clearly unhappy, I threw a couple of caustic statements at her for not doing her job. Having received this sms, I was clearly more unhappy that she dared to make me the accuser.
However, the last thing I wanted was to ruin my own holiday and brood over the situation. so I told myself again and again to let go and not be bothered because even though I feel I'm in the right, sparring via sms or confrontation would not do anything more than make me feel even more offended.
Everything goes wrong once we allow the feeling of offense into us. It often is the first step of a spiritual decline and also an outward manifestation of aggressive, self-righteous behaviour is an evidence of a person who is corrupted and estranged from God. Sadly, over the weekend, I was told of a nasty incident which spoke so much of the wrong spirit in individuals as they arose in offense instead of enjoying the fellowship with the right spirit of love.
In these days of the end times, let us not push our rights and entitlements as individuals thoughtlessly. The church is not perfect, neither is anyone of us. But because we are of God, selflessly redeemed by the blood of Christ, we no longer live for ourselves.
M.
