Offense: Don’t Take the Bait
Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.
Matthew 11:6
How many of us have been offended? Someone says or does something to us and we dwell in the offense for days or months. What you must know is that it is a setup from Satan. If you take the bait and hold on to that grudge, you will be doing exactly what the enemy wants you to do.
I love how God works in my life! He allows me to go through these painful trials so that I can learn His way and receive His truth on a subject so I will learn His way of handling things. Sometimes, He instructs me to share my experience with you. In the following paragraphs I will show you what God’s word says about offense and I will give you keys you can use to escape the offense when it comes. Now in one respect it is a setup from Satan, but it is also how God exposes areas of our lives that need work. Don’t you just love how God works? He makes everything turn around for our good. He always makes a way of escape.
Offense is deadly and it will make you sick and block God’s blessings in your life. First, you must know that the unforgiving servant of God is turned over to torture. These are demon spirits that come to inflict pain and agony. So we need to release others and forgive them from our hearts. In Matthew 5:24, it says that if you have anything against anyone you need to forgive. It has been revealed that unforgiveness and bitterness are linked to certain diseases such as arthritis and cancer. You can’t say you love God but you don’t love this brother or sister that has hurt you. If so, you are being deceived and that is a terrible thing! A person who refuses to obey the word deceives his own heart. We need to learn to release others. We must learn to forgive from the heart and not seek revenge. This takes time, and we must work at it and ask God to help us see the person from His perspective. Most people that are hurting hurt others. We need God’s grace to forgive. He will help us to forgive and pray for our enemies. We may need to talk to God about the situation, repent, or pray for that person.
We need to have discernment so that we are able to walk around the traps, which means we must live carefully and wisely. Satan will use every opportunity to bring offense. He will lie to us about others. We must not minimize the danger of harboring an offense. We need to walk through life carefully because offenses are Satan’s bait to try to trap us. But, if you meditate on the word when the offense comes you will have your armor on! I recently was with a group of people and one of them was doing things that were unkind. I noticed immediately what they were doing. I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be affected by what they were doing or saying and I was able to escape from the trap of offense. We must crucify our flesh. We must use every offense as an opportunity to die to our selfish ways. We need to use these offenses as an opportunity to become more like Christ. We need to diligently work daily at bringing our thoughts captive to Christ. Jesus is our example. He will give us a new heart. When we let ourselves get offended, we are focusing on self instead of God. We need to look up and ask God for help. We need to focus on His attributes and worship Him. He will help us through every offensive situation. Let’s learn to walk carefully. Let’s not fall into the bait of Satan and the trap of offense. Our just and sovereign God has all wisdom, and we can trust in His perfect justice. He can break through every difficult relationship, if we learn to focus on Him. We will go through suffering at times, but God will use it for our good. He will make us steadfast in spirit. If we want to see breakthrough prayer, we must learn to live without offense. We must learn to trust God to bring about justice in His own way and time.
I found a great resource that has become a great blessing to me and I know it will be a great blessing to you too! A must read on the topic of offense is the book, The Bait of Satan, by John Bevere. In the book, John states that God is a just judge. He will pass righteous judgment. But, He will repay according to righteousness. If someone has done wrong and genuinely repents, Jesus’s work on Calvary erases the debt. When we seek to correct the wrong done to us, we set ourselves up as a judge. In Matthew 18, it says that the unforgiving servant did this when he put his fellow servant in jail. Remember that the unforgiving servant was then turned over to the tormentors and his family was sold until he could pay back all of the debt. If Jesus had waited for us to come to Him and apologize, He would not have hung on the cross, and cried “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do,” (Luke 23:34). If we plant seeds of debt, unforgiveness, and offense, another root will spring up and that is the root of bitterness. Bitterness is unfulfilled revenge. The book of Hebrews 12:14-15, states that we are to pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord; looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.” Please get your hands on the book. It is an amazing tool you can read over and over again and will help you to overcome the bait of offense.
God Bless,
Paula Biancalana
The Bait of Satan by John Bevere can be purchased on Amazon.