Dealing With Offences and Unforginesness Pt 2

DEALING WITH OFFENSES & UNFORGIVENESS

PART 2

Hebrews 12:14-15

14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.

Paul points out the roots of bitterness springing up from offenses will trouble you and defile others. What does he mean when he says, “trouble you?” Quite simply, it means that bitterness will rob you of your ability to love. It will indeed stop the flow of love. To desire to love is innate; therefore, you will be uncomfortable not being able to love your brother or sister. You will have to entertain painful emotions every time that individual is mentioned or when the thought of the offense is brought to mind. This is not normal, and the stress placed on the emotions will cripple your will and darken your imagination.

Paul does not stop there though. He states that your bitterness will defile others. What others? Those who are involved in relationships with you; it will rob them of experiencing your love. It will also hinder them in their attempt to love you. When individuals in your relationships do not experience your love, they are victims of your iniquity.

It is erroneous to think that your hatred of some does not affect those whom you believe you love. Your loved ones have to live with the iniquity you have for others. They are often made weary by your disposition toward others. They can never look to you for spiritual support, because they know that your heart is not pure and free from iniquity.

Furthermore, it is erroneous to think that you can love only certain people. If you are one to hold offenses against those outside of your marriage or immediate family, you will do the same to those in the immediate family and to your spouse. A rattlesnake is a rattlesnake; it does not care who it bites. If you will not forgive your sister, you will not forgive your spouse, if he or she lays the right offense to test your love. Nevertheless, Jesus declares that Faith (the operation of the Holy Ghost) is capable of plucking up monumental iniquity by the roots.

BREAKING FREE OF OFFENSES

The term unforgiveness means to hold in the heart the sin and trespasses of another. It burdens that person with guilt and condemnation. It stops the flow of love and there is no possibility of reconciliation until unforgiveness is destroyed.

The root of unforgiveness is bitterness from what the fleshy mind and the emotions interpret as an offense. You can receive counsel, go to the altar, talk to God and still have unforgiveness lodged in your heart. Unforgiveness must be purged out of the heart. It must be pushed out; and this purging must be from the inside out. Just because you discuss an offense does not mean you are healed; you must overcome the offense. To overcome means to overtake the offense. In other words, you must surpass it with something more powerful than the offense itself. There is only one thing that is more powerful than offenses. The offense must be overtaken by LOVE.

OVERCOMING INIQUITY

Ephesians 4:26-27

26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

27 Neither give place to the devil.

Ephesians 4:29-32

29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

To carry an offense for even a day is an occasion to sin. It is space for iniquity to develop in the heart. When you disobey this commandment, you give the devil access to your heart and access to install his devices in your imagination. Consider also that the scripture admonishes you to go to your sister or brother if you have an ought with them.

St. Matthew 18:15

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.

If there is contention between you and someone else, do what the Word instructs you to do; go to them. This “going to” was designed to stop the development of iniquity; not to purge iniquity that has already developed. Your purpose in going must be to keep iniquity from forming. After iniquity is formed, going to your brother may not remove it. Remember the offense is in you. It has already taken root and formed iniquity in your heart.

Your spiritual location does not depend on how people treat you, but how you treat them. Sometimes going to an individual only makes the situation worse. The answer to removing iniquity has nothing to do with the other person.

INIQUITY WILL CHANGE YOUR PERSONALITY

When you do not deal righteously with offenses, iniquity grows and begins to consume you. The manifestation of this is in the shaping of your personality. The way you deal with people can be determined by how you have dealt with offenses of your past. If you were unsuccessful in dealing with those offenses, you will certainly handle present day circumstances and relationships in remembrance of the hurts and pain of yesterday. Others will suffer and be denied the beauty of real love from you, because of your nurtured pain.

The result of not having dealt righteously with past offenses is that the personality others experience is not the real you. The real you is buried in hurts and pain. The real you would like to love and trust again, but the risk seems to be too great. You are afraid of trusting and being hurt again; you are afraid of feeling the same pain. The truth is you are already hurting without trusting; you are already hurting without loving; you are miserable.

Whenever you fail to deal with something inside of righteousness, iniquity is bred. You can lose confidence in your own spirituality because you continue to fail to do the righteous thing. Your “will to do” can be broken. When your will to deal righteously is broken, you will experience spiritual depression, (the opposite of spiritual stress).

Spiritual stress comes as a result of forcing the fleshy mind and the body to do the righteous thing. Spiritual depression comes from not dealing righteously. The devil wants you to justify your position by saying it would not do you any good to do the righteous thing. Believing this lie strengthens the depression.

There is a way out of this prison, praise God! You can deliver yourself from the pain of the past. How? Deal righteously with offenses of today. Target a present situation; determine to change the way you deal internally with the offense. You can absorb the present offense by doing the righteous thing. You must deal with offenses the way the Word instructs you to.

Proverbs 16:6

By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil

When you do the righteous thing, old hatred and bitterness will come out. If you deal in righteousness with present offenses, it will purge you of old offenses. When you walk in love, you will see offenders differently. Your mind will be renewed and the iniquity that shaped your personality will be purged out of you. Your personality will change.

LOVE IS MORE POWERFUL THAN INIQUITY

Too often we hide behind religious things. What happens if the other person refuses to reconcile or continues to feel the same about you? The enemy will make you feel you are not delivered, because someone does not say what you want to hear. Bitterness is a spiritual flaw. Do not allow the devil to discourage you. Your deliverance is not based upon someone agreeing with you; it is the Word of God that delivers.

You must meet and overcome evil with good by purposing in your heart to love those who hurt you and despitefully use you. Your offender may or may not be someone who offended you in the past. You must deal with friends who are hurting you now. Allowing love to flow will purge you of past offenses.

You must understand that distrusting people, because of offenses, does not stop there; it filters over into your relationship with God. It is impossible for someone operating in this disposition to trust God. Your mind has been trained not to trust or believe in love. If you do not trust God, you will not trust the ability of His Word to perform in your life.

VULNERABILITY: A STEP TOWARD DELIVERANCE

How do you get to a place of trusting God? You must make yourself vulnerable. When you look at someone who hurts you look on them with pity and see them as a soul. The offense is then absorbed, and the most they can do is vex your spirit. When love flows, it opens the floodgates and the spiritual enemies of your past are drowned in the sea of forgetfulness.

Remember, once iniquity (that which stops the flow of love) has set in, evil has progressed. Talking will not change this spiritual disposition. Once iniquity is established, it must be purged by love. If you go to an offender with the wrong motive, you may end up worse than you were before you went. The offender may lay another offense in your life. What then? Regardless of how many times a person sins against us, we are responsible to deliver ourselves from the snare. We must make ourselves vulnerable by being willing to suffer wrong.

God did not give His children the option of not forgiving. His Word plainly says to forgive all offenses. This means that no consideration is to be given to the severity of the offense.

Whenever you have iniquity inside you, you can be used by the devil anytime he desires to use you; that will be his stronghold. When iniquity is already there, it does no good to fuel the fire.

The way to purge yourself of iniquity is to stop avoiding the offenders and start treating them with love. God is depending on you to show your offender godliness.

2 Timothy 2:24-26 (Amplified Bible)

24 And the servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome (fighting and contending). Instead, he must be kind to everyone and mild- tempered [preserving the bond of peace]; he must be a skilled and suitable teacher, patient and forbearing and willing to suffer wrong.

25 He must correct his opponents with courtesy and gentleness, in the hope that God may grant that they will repent and come to know the Truth [that they will perceive and recognize and become accurately acquainted with and acknowledge it],

26 And that they may come to their senses [and] escape out of the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him, [henceforth] to do His [God's] will.

The ministry of reconciliation, which every son of God has been given, does not lay the offense to the offender’s charge (2 Corinthians 5:18). You must deal with the offender without holding him or her responsible. Is it more profitable to continue holding on to the hatred or to get rid of it and be used by God, so that He might be glorified?