the trouble with getting offended

After being offended and having people offended at me so many times, Lord, you pointed out to me what an enemy "offence" is to You.  And just like a vision that unfolds before our eyes, I saw all the situations and circumstances in my own life when "offence" played the key role.  But the most profound revelation was seeing the = sign at the end of each situation.  Behind that sign was always a destructive end.
[i.e. - Joe spoke; Jane was offended; and it equaled . . . anger, hate, insecurity, sorrow, etc.]

Why do we see 'being offended' as such a natural and common response to daily situations when You observe it as an enemy?  Why do we accept it as an outcome when You warn us so pointedly?

Please help me, Lord, to do as you always did - walk away from being offended; to make the decision 'I will not play in this game of destruction'. 

Learning, learning, learning

Learning amazes me.  Especially when I learn about You, Lord.  And the learning You have brought me into lately has been the kind that elicits deep "Oooo's" and "Ahhhh's" from me.

For instance, the Kerite Jew who studied original manuscripts and deciphered the most probable name for You.  I never noticed all the scripture that tells us specifically to call on the "name" of the Lord.  But we have taken for granted all the names we use are generally "titles" and not your actual name.  What a profoundly friendly and neighborly thing it is to know Your name.  A deeply satisfying effect it had on my heart to learn this.

And next You swooped me right into research of our "religious traditions".  Now that was eye-opening how far we are from the "church" that Jesus knew.  But again, so comforting to hear of the simplicity of worship You chose, the leadership of Your Spirit without the buffering of men, and the completely personal communication You had with Your believers. 

I thrill at Your educating me.  Freely I gave You the reins and quickly You have forged ahead.  I barely have time to digest the one and the next is before me.

One common thread goes through it all.  You are showing me Yourself, as a personality, a character of depth, with a singular desire to "be in love and share it all".  And I find that You are interesting and lovable and . . . so comfortable.

Why are there those who fear searching?  Those who fear that knowledge and truth will crumble their faith?  In taking the chance to trust You and plunge forward, I have learned horrible truths about mankind which lead only to more pleasant truths about You.  I'm no longer afraid.  I have found that there is no fact that cannot lead me even closer to You.

I am in awe.

just so glad

I'm just so glad, Lord.  I'm glad for all those years.  You know; the ones I've regretted and looked back on all my mistakes and my ignorance of you . . . and I've seen it all through tears of shame and misery.  But no more.  I'm just so glad, Lord.  Just so glad.

You shine a different light on it all.  And in that light I hear the music we used to play on records and listen for hours; you know, Bob Seger and Journey; as we washed dishes, mopped the floors and cooked meal after meal.  The kids were little and the jobs were hard.  The money never went far enough and my joy never lasted a whole day.  I didn't think I was doing it right.  I lived in shame that my kids deserved better.  I apologized to them.  But I put them to bed with a hug and a kiss and told them I loved them and told them to believe in You.

But now I'm glad, Lord.  I don't regret anymore.  I can hear the music and remember the moments when I found a slice of contentment; when old friends were near and we scuffled through it all together; always believing that somehow it would all be OK.  That we were doing the best we knew how and that the kids would always know that; so they could believe. 

And I'd pray with tears in my eyes, "God, I love them so much and I know I'm not doing this right.  But I'm doing the best I know.  I'm so alone and so lost.  Please, God.  Please love them and take their wonderful little hearts and fill them with good things; and let them grow knowing that You are always there, always loving them.  And don't ever leave them.  God, please make all my mistakes turn out OK in their lives.  Don't let them suffer because of me.  Thank you, God.  I can't do it.  But I know you can."

And now I'm glad, Lord.  Now after all those . . . seems like thousands of years . . . I can see backwards.  I can see it now.  It was big as day.  It was huge as the sun.  It was in the middle of the pain and the mess and the day-to-day.

It was your great, big, awesome, powerful Hand.  There it was.  Always there.  Never leaving.  Always there.

Now I'm glad.

are you kidding me? I did that.

It popped into my mind out of the blue and was just as clear as if it happened yesterday. I was 26 yrs old again and my Momma had just died. I was so heartbroken and devastated, not to mention afraid. Yeah, even at 26 it frightened me that my Momma was gone. Who would be praying for me that I would be safe? Who would I call when I was confused, hurt and alone? I had a husband and I had children, but there's no one like your Momma. And I wasn't sure that God heard anyone else except my Momma.
In remembering that moment, I also remembered the decision I made in that fear. It was this: "I will continue to walk forward and try to raise my kids, but I know I will be a terrible Mom because I don't know what I'm doing, so I'll just hope that loving them and praying for them will be enough and God will do the rest."

It wasn't such a horrible thought/decision except for the part that I would be a terrible Mom. Looking back on that moment from 30 years later, I can see how that one thought trailed through my life and haunted me. But I didn't remember it until yesterday. I wondered why I couldn't be a good Mom, or why I thought I was such a bad one. And OHHHHH the guilt. Guilt is an evil, ugly, cruel companion that will never go home until you expose him for the liar he is.
Seeing this scenario yesterday, I welcomed it like I welcome my feet touching the ground after flying. Finally I know where this came from. I'm stunned that I did it. I'm usually more analytical about my thoughts and decisions. But I remember the emotional trauma I was experiencing at the time. My thinking was far from clear and I was desperately grasping for something to "ground" me and take away the fear.
I know that fear comes from my evil enemy. It never comes from God. And I also know that I can actually "TELL IT" to leave me by telling "him" that he's a liar and that I am a Child of God full of God's love and protection. It took me a long time to learn this. But it has released me from many emotionally "freezing" episodes of fear. And I have found such wonderful peace in doing this.
But I didn't know these things back then. I didn't recognize the lie and I didn't recognize the fear. I only knew that I was living in desperation.
Blame is usually the next step in our society. Find the source and place the blame. But we don't seem to understand that this piece of the process is the smallest part of healing. Nor do we seem to realize that it doesn't take hours of tears and additional re-living trauma to place the origin of the trauma, the lie and the result of believing it.

My revelation came from a simple statement I had made to God in prayer the day before. I had asked Him to show me where this "terrible Mom syndrome" had come from. I didn't travail in prayer. And when the revelation came, it was a simple scene that popped into my mind while I was busy doing something benign. When I saw it, I didn't stop what I was doing and grab my chest as my heart palpitated. No. My reaction was "are you kidding me?". "I did that."
My next step, I already knew, was to simply renounce that old decision and cast it into the sea of forgetfulness never to be retrieved.
By that I mean, that I will not blame myself, berate myself, carry guilt over it, and suffer any consequences for it. I refuse all of that in Jesus name. Why would I treat it that way when we usually expect those reactions as the normal course of human emotion to spend lots of time "dealing through it"?
I won't because I don't have to. Jesus set me free from the bondage of emotionally "dealing through it". His healing was not the result of that course of action. His healing was a result of my faith that He is real and that He not only made healing available to me, but that He did it already 2000 years ago and all I have to do is claim it as my own and believe that it is done.
This whole trauma and life-long lie was the result of my enemy taking advantage of my weakness and seeing it as an open door to tell me a lie that I wasn't mature enough to recognize. So, it's not my fault. I will not carry any fault for it. Not only did Jesus make my healing available, but He also healed the results of that lie - at the moment I recognized it and placed it in its proper category. (In my weakness, He is strong).
Why do we think that we can fix anything emotional by "working through it"? Where did we get this power to heal ourselves? Recognizing the source of the problem and placing blame doesn't do anything for us except when it is approached through Jesus' terms of healing.
See it, Place it, Renounce it, and be Healed.

Too simple for you? Yeah, I know, I battled that argument years ago and persisted in fighting emotional issues the "normal" way for so long. Then I realized how much time I was wasting. We have work to do promoting the Kingdom. And this is part of it. Healing is simple. It really is. Just do it. You have the faith the size of the mustard seed. Use it. And if for some unknown reason your healing doesn't manifest in some area, keep believing and keep walking forward. You WILL know why later. He promises that to us.

Don't just sit down and cry

Did you ever notice that Jesus didn’t sit down and cry when His Hometown and His Family rejected him? (Mark 6, Matt 4, Luke 4)

And I know that He is not a hard hearted person; actually just the opposite. He is full of more love than any of us can fathom. So, why didn’t it seem to affect Him?
Jesus wept once. It was at the grave of His friend Lazarus – the man He raised from the dead. And many people think he cried in grief. But I don’t think that was why; because He knew He could raise him from the dead. As I posted previously, I believe His grief was in response to the lack of Faith in the people He was teaching. They had already seen many miracles and He had hoped that they would have learned more about Faith by now. That’s why he delayed his journey to Lazarus; hoping they would finally exercise their Faith. It grieved Him that they lived victimized by everything that hit them, and still didn’t “get it”.
But in regards to people hurting His own feelings . . . He doesn’t cry; He isn’t sad; He doesn’t get down and depressed and incapacitated by it. He mentions that He is rejected by His own. But there’s no reaction that we would normally expect.
Why?
One answer might be that He already knew this was how it would be. He expected it. He knew exactly how everyone would react to Him. He was prepared.
But even if you knew your Hometown and your Family were going to reject you . . . wouldn’t it still affect you? I think it would. You can’t prepare enough for those kinds of emotions. And Jesus has emotions just like ours.
So, how did He do it? We need to know. Why? Because mankind spends an enormous amount of time being sad, disappointed, upset, depressed, and worse. It is the cause of a huge market for the pharmaceutical industry. And it is a major cause of drug abuse, alcoholism etc. Psychiatry would crumble without it.
Since Jesus is our Savior – the one who conquered all – our example; maybe we should really look at this part of Him.
Why doesn’t Jesus get sad?
I think I know why. I really do. I think it is because there is no sadness in God’s presence. God is full of light and joy and love. He associates sadness with darkness. And there is no darkness in Him.
This came to me when I was going thru a devastatingly “sad” situation in my life during which God was teaching me how to be an overcomer and change the circumstances. However, sometimes it doesn’t come about instantly. Therefore I had to learn to “abide”. He told me that this was the only way I was going to get thru this extremely painful time. I needed to get so close to Him that I was actually “living” inside the “joy”. It would take persistence on my part.
Persistence. Why, persistence? Because as you work and drive and cook and sleep and talk and . . . go about your life – the “joy” will begin to weaken from the constant bombardment of the darkness around us in this world. Therefore, I would have to “purpose” in myself to go back into His “joy”, His presence.
I found it to be a bit of a challenge. We tend to “wallow” in sadness. We actually feel very “special” when we are hurt, or damaged, or wounded, or broken. And we hold it up to our own view and turn it all around while we gaze at it in amazement . . . and cry . . . and feel . . . so pure . . . because the “damager” is so evil. It is the one time in our life that we feel this much purity in ourselves. But it’s a lie. We aren’t pure from it. We have even less value than before. We accomplish nothing. We focus on ourselves.
The truth of the whole thing is choice and darkness vs. light.
So, as I would feel the sadness seeping up into my soul and heart, and I began hearing it in my voice as my luster and enthusiasm would fade; the longer I let this progress the deeper I would sink; until finally, I would be in horrible pain.
I had asked God to help me and remind me because I was so very aware that I could not do this alone. And He did. As I'd sink, I'd reach a point that I would cry out to Him “Help me!” And immediately He would tell me what direction to look. I had to take the step; but He supplied the remedy. Each time the remedy was different. Sometimes it was a song, sometimes an article, sometimes a friend (an uplifting one), sometimes . . . well, you know what I mean. But each time, almost instantly, the darkness would retreat quickly; and moments later I would recall that it had been there, but now I was smiling – feeling no pain.
I also found early in this process, that I had to give myself permission to “let it go”. Sometimes we hold on to the pain because we “believe” that we can do nothing else. We have been mortally wounded, now we must suffer deeply and devastatingly. And miraculously I found that also to be an utter lie.
Now to the best of the best; living in the Joy after being hurt, makes Power come alive. Things change. Wonderful things change! Amazing miraculous things that don’t happen at any other time; happen now. And this is what makes learning this process – worth it all.