clean of offense.
written by charissa mrowka
Offense is one of the easiest things to acquire
and one of the most difficult things to rightly deal with and rid your heart of.
We must be intentional to uproot bitterness and offense when we notice it has made its home in our hearts.
You must fight to keep your heart clean.
Determine within yourself to continually have a clean heart before the Lord.
Meaning, live before the Lord with fear and trembling.
Be clean in your interior life,
knowing your interior life is what continually sits before the eyes of the Lord.
The true state of your heart,
not just the outward expression and appearance,
is of utmost importance.
The heart is what He looks at
and the heart is where He lives.
Don’t be apathetic towards the cares of this world
and let the ways of this world having any foothold in your heart.
There will be much opportunity for things to take up residency in your heart-
things that won’t necessarily be so easily detected or discerned from the outside.
There will be things you can conceal and keep secret before man.
You may be able to put on a smile in public or say the right things in front of people,
but we all know that there’s an interior life that no one else besides you and the Lord know about.
Don’t be content with playing nice on the outside…
fight to truly keep your heart clean and free and in all purity.
There’s a war going on for your heart.
& you must wage war back.
We are not unaware of the enemy’s schemes. (2 Corinthians 2:5-11)
& so this is the call:
Strive for all purity in your heart posture towards others.
How your interior life and heart towards others is,
is directly connected to how your interior life and heart is towards the Lord.
If you have hatred, unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, pride, a quarrelsome attitude,
self righteousness, self justification, and a hard heart towards your brother…
you actually have a hard heart towards -and stand opposed to - the Lord Himself.
The Lord has been speaking to me lately about rightly handling the blood.
We don’t realize the ways in which we handle one another are actually the ways in which we handle the blood.
How we regard one another speaks of how we regard the blood.
Handling the blood rightly is not just about how we regard Christ,
but how we regard one another.
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh,
we regard him thus no longer.”2 Corinthians 5:16 | ESV
Do not receive the blood in vain.
Do not receive mercy for yourself and withhold it from your brother.
Do not receive forgiveness for yourself and withhold it from your brother.
Do not receive a conscience sprinkled clean by the blood for yourself and defile the conscience of your brother.
Do not rejoice in your trespasses not being counted against you if you insist to keep a record of wrong against your brother.
Do not receive the grace of God in vain…
lest fault be found in your ministry.
He has entrusted to us a ministry; its a ministry of reconciliation and we must learn to be controlled by it.
We must learn to labor for it. We must learn to die with Christ that we might live to Him in the ways in which we handle one another.
If you won’t let Him touch your heart and your posture towards a brother,
your heart is not just hard toward your brother but also, and actually first and foremost, toward the Lord.
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.”
You have already heard His voice concerning these things,
if indeed you have received His grace and His gospel.
He who has shown you mercy; He who has forgiven you much.
He who came to us in all humility and self emptying - bearing our burdens and our griefs, exchanging His life for the reconciliation of His enemies -
becoming sin that we might become righteousness - enduring death that we might have life- He whose grace is truly outrageous and scandalous.
Have you not already heard the word concerning Him?
Have you not heard the word concerning you in Him and Him in you?
Will you let Him be formed in you?
Will you let your flesh be crucified that His life may be resurrected in and through you?
Have you died or have you not?
Does another get to live through you now or not?
Have you agreed to give up your rights to belong fully to Him?
Does His life get to be magnified in you?
Does His love control you now or does your bitterness?
Offense and bitterness is a killer and a thief.
It cannot be tolerated.
It cannot go unchecked.
It will eat up and possess in you all that the Lord desires to possess
- all that He purchased.
Don’t fool yourself.
Remaining in offense, bitterness and pride
while coming before the Lord to receive His mercy in your time of need is an abuse of grace.
Don’t receive it in vain.
War to have a truly clean heart before him.
“Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 corinthians 5:11-21 | esv
“Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
2 corinthians 6:1-10 | esv
