Prayers From PrisonExemplo

Say it out loud right now, “I’m un-offendable!” Be careful to mean it because once you are determined to live without offense everything in your world will seem offensive. Typically this is what happens when we want to live in the calling God has for us. We will experience tests throughout our lives.

It’s so sad to see people who live in offense. Everything seems to hurt their feelings. It’s like walking on eggshells around people who are constantly offended. Sometimes these people end up leaving the church and their calling in Christ all because they got offended about something that happened years earlier! 

The writer of Hebrews warns us against a root of bitterness that can spring up in our lives. It doesn’t just ruin our lives but also the lives of people around us. In essence, being offended makes you bitter and bitterness doesn’t just affect you but affects the people in our lives.

The apostle Paul also wrote to the Romans and reminded them, as he does us, that we are alive in Christ and dead to sin. That means that we are dead to being offended. I can guarantee you’ve never seen a dead person who is offended. If we say we are alive in Christ then we have to fend off offenses. If anybody had the “right” to be offended, it would have been Paul. He was writing today's passages in prison, not because he had done anything wrong, but because of preaching the gospel. When we walk in forgiveness we have to remember that forgiveness has far more to do with us being free than with the person we are offended at.