Word of Encouragement for Every New Day ~ 23 May 2008

Word of Encouragement for Every New Day ~ 23 May 2008

Developing our character for battle: Handling offense. Learning how to handle offense is vital in developing our character for battle. Why? Because offense is part of life. Being hurt by something offense is real, is upsetting, and many of us have been wounded by people offending us. Everyone responds to offense in different ways, take a few minutes right now and think of the last time someone offended you and how did you respond? Did you get hurt? Has it been resolved, or are you still holding on to the issue? 3 Keys in dealing with offense: Accept you are hurt. Ask God to heal the wound. Forgive the offender. Accepting that you are hurt is the most important step. Some people (like me) say, “I don’t care” when actually deep inside us, we are offended. Accepting, is humbling ourselves before God and letting Him control the situation. Asking God to heal the wound in the second step. When we get hurt, there is an open wound. If we don’t take care of the wound it gets infected, it gets deeper, and it leaves a scar. In my opinion, the only way that we can remove the scars and heal the wounds is by asking God to heal it. If we trust in ourselves to heal our own hurts and wounds, we haven’t really brought healing to the situation. Finally, the third step is to forgive. It is hard to forgive the offender. Sometimes we view them as our enemy. But Jesus says we are to love our enemies. To forgive brings resolution to the issue. Some people have been walking their entire lives with open wounds, isn’t it time to bring complete restoration? Today, I pray that we would strive to bring healing to our wounds, so that we would be affective in the day of battle. The test of our character is present, and I know God is preparing us all. Matthew 6:14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. © May 2008 Shaun Lee. www.everynation.org.sg archive: www.shauntzen.blogspot.com