Dear Father,

Teach me daily to deal with offenses, in a way that will cause growth in my life and also in a way that will be pleasing to You.

Dear Child,

Offenses will always be dealt with, one way or another. Whether you think they are left hanging and undealt with or not.

They will either be a trap and stunt growth

                           OR

They will be an opportunity to freedom and maturity.

Your response to the offense IS your dealing with the offense.

Even if you don’t respond outwardly, your response will have a powerful effect on the heart.

Whether stored in the heart!

                    OR

Set free and forgiven!

Offenses not forgiven will be stored in the heart and will hold you captive as chains that tighten with each unforgiven offense.

                                                   Thus saith Papa

Luke 17:1-4  Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

Mat 24:10  And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

Since we are warned that offenses will increase in the last days in the above chapter, we need to mature spiritually and learn to biblically respond to these offenses.

Down in the basement of our hearts, just like junk in our physical basement, is junk that is cluttering our emotional life. Experiences from the past that we’d rather shut away in our sub-conscience rather than bring them to the light and deal with them, because most of them are hoarded there because of our choice not to forgive. We are keeping ourselves prisoners to those experiences but a decluttered emotional life brings freedom. When we decide to declutter our hearts  and forgive we are saying “ I no longer give you the power to control who I am, how I think or how I’ll behave”.

An absence of forgiveness is equivalent to staying behind prison bars of buried hurt. 

 “FORGIVENESS is a MIGHTY SWORD that will cut you free”….Broadway Show- Jane Eyre

CHALLENGE: What cords of past hurts and offenses are entangled in your emotional being, robbing your spiritual life of the breathe of freedom? Set yourself free today from those cords of the past with the SWORD of FORGIVENESS. Name them one by one as you sever them from your being that you might be able to walk to freedom from the past!