to my dearest friends,
thank you for your prayers and support; it means the world to me.
- now before you get offended, acknowledge that i am preachin’ to myself 😉
the Lord has laid it heavily upon my heart to write about offense. it certainly is not my first choice and is rather uncomfortable to write about, but i’ll give it a go. as humans, we get offended by the littlest of remarks or actions, and we tend to continue grasping onto those things for a very long time. these offenses pile up, allowing bitterness to take root and grow; must i remind you that bitterness is very dangerous and toxic.
i once heard an analogy: we build fences to attempt to keep strangers or weird creatures out of our yards, or to instill some privacy, right? in the same way we build fences out of offenses that create a wall between you and your loved one, eventually making that person a stranger. now, the cure is quite easily said, but highly difficult to enact: D R O P I T !
by holding onto offenses you are allowing more chains to be put on your hands and feet. you are immobilizing your heart and creating a resistance towards love and relationships. YOU ARE HINDERING THE FREEDOM YOU ARE CALLED TO WALK IN. think of it this way: Jesus was gruesomely beat and nailed to a cross in order to bear and diminish our sins, guilt, and shame; He was the one who had EVERY right to hold onto offense. We turn our backs on Him, deny His name, blatantly sin against Him, and WE CHASE AFTER OTHER PURSUITS THINKING THAT MAYBE HE ISN’T ENOUGH. We break His heart, yet we have the nerve to hold an offense that is even often times against Him.
i want to passionately encourage and challenge you to let the offenses go and kick down the fence you built between you and whoever is on the other side. reflect on the beautiful, undeserved sacrifice the Lord bestowed upon you and remind yourself as often as you can that Jesus dropped the greatest of offenses, yet picked up the cross bearing the weight of all our impurities. i encourage you to walk in the freedom Jesus bought for you with His blood and with great perseverance, try not to take it for granted. live without fences and drop your offenses.
sincerely,
zoe e bunch
