Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (16 page)

Whenever we are affronted, we have an opportunity to choose between staying offended or extending forgiveness and maturing spiritually and emotionally.

In the following account, a man named Paul describes how he was freed from an offended heart. He writes, “I was a young man in search of the pleasures of this world, and I ended up spending a year and a half in prison. During that time, I met Jesus but did not surrender my life to Him. I also had some supernatural experiences that demonstrated the reality of the spiritual world—the reality of God as well as of demons.

“When I completed my sentence, I was released from prison, but it was difficult to find a job. Consequently, I returned to my old habits. At the time, my grandfather was very ill. We prayed for him, but he still died. I felt horrible for all the suffering that my behavior had caused him, but I continued to take drugs and to be involved with witchcraft and fortune-telling because I wanted to understand my grandfather’s death. At one point, I cursed God for my life, saying, ‘A God who loves would never have allowed this to happen. Why should I continue to trust Him?’

“Meanwhile, my relationship with my wife slowly deteriorated. I tried going to church again, and I found a job; however, on the same day I was hired, someone called to tell me that my mother had cancer. I traveled to see her and prayed for her. I told her that everything would be all right, but she died that same day. That was a very hard experience for me. I felt pain and anger, and I wanted to abandon everything.

“My wife and children told me about King Jesus church and asked me to attend. I was lost and had no place to go, so I agreed. I needed something that would change me forever. There, the Lord touched me. I opened my heart to Him, and He healed it. Now, I am a changed man, and I serve Him by telling people of the great things that He has done for me.”

The Root of Holding On to Offenses Is Immaturity

Being easily offended and remaining offended are prime characteristics of a person who is spiritually and emotionally immature. Some people choose to live in perpetual immaturity because they will not let go of an offense. As a result, they bind themselves to that offense, and it controls their lives. We must realize—for our own sake and for the sake of others—that immature people are easily deceived and are inclined to fall prey to false doctrine. Paul wrote,
“We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting”
(Ephesians 4:14).

The following characteristics are evident in those who are spiritually and emotionally immature. Immature people…

• are easily offended by others.
  

• are easily deceived by others.
  

• are insecure.
  

• are dominated by their emotions.
  

• fail to exercise self-control.
  

• become offended when they are corrected.
  

• become offended when they are held accountable for their responsibilities and their wrongs.
  

• are double-minded.
  

• are unable to exercise effective leadership because they reproduce their immaturity in others.
  

In contrast, we develop maturity when we learn how to deal well with offenses, addressing them in a biblical manner. If we fail to do this, we will suffer some or all of the costs of maintaining an offended heart outlined below.

As we mature, the trap of offense loses its power over us.

Costs of Maintaining an Offended Heart

1. Offended People Will Often Withdraw from Others, Sometimes Becoming Recluses

Holding on to an offense hinders people’s spiritual growth because they revert to being controlled by the sinful nature—to the way they conducted themselves before they knew Christ. They find refuge in old behaviors because they have stopped advancing in maturity and have withdrawn their heart from God and other people. They close themselves off and hide in their pain. Therefore, they no longer show much emotion or open up to other people, and they are afraid to develop new relationships. This is a dangerous place to be in because when Satan finds someone isolated from the rest of the body of Christ, he implements a plan of attack to push him into a spiritual decline that is sometimes difficult to reverse, so that it ends in spiritual death. Please, don’t fall for the trap of offense!

2. Offended People Exclude Themselves from the Flow
of Life

People who are withdrawn from others, as described above, experience a loss of freedom by excluding themselves from the normal flow of life and its activities—whether the life of a family, a church, a business, or another organization. If this happens to someone who is a member of a church, he may no longer feel that he is a part of the body of believers or that he shares the church’s vision. He may still give tithes and/or offerings to the church, but he does not participate in its life. He may have a gift or talent that would be beneficial to share with other believers, but he does not feel at liberty to do so. He will likely experience a cooling in his relationships with others, because he doesn’t support the activities they are interested in or participate in them. In addition, he may find it difficult to pray and to worship God in a corporate setting.

Consequently, the following pattern may develop in his life: He may continually refuse to be integrated into the body of believers, even when invited to do so. He may choose to sit in the farthest seat at the back of the church so that he can observe everything that goes on without being noticed by very many people, internally criticizing anything negative that occurs. He may continue to construct a thick wall between himself and others—a barrier of offenses, errors, misunderstandings, and so forth. He may still attend church for years to come out of a sense of obligation, but he will have isolated himself from the flow of God’s Spirit and the joys of human fellowship.

3. Offended People Employ Defense Mechanisms

In accordance with his self-imposed isolation, an offended person will enter any new relationship with a barricade around his heart. Because he has never worked through past offenses, he places himself on constant guard to repel any attack (real or perceived) from other people against his self-esteem, personal rights, and integrity as a human being. To protect himself, he has developed defense mechanisms, such as mistrust, prejudice, negativity, and a judgmental attitude.

Those who employ emotional defense mechanisms inevitably hinder their personal relationships. For example, when a couple is preparing to marry, it is important for each one to be transparent with the other and to discuss the hurts and disappointments he or she has experienced in the past, because many people carry around burdens of pain or guilt from which they need to be healed. These issues can be addressed in premarital counseling sessions with a mature pastor or other church leader or by a Christian counselor. If the pain or guilt is not dealt with, sooner or later, it will surface in the life of that person through negative words or behavior, often directed toward the spouse. In some way or another, the spouse will inevitably be affected, and the relationship may become damaged or broken.

In another example, suppose a pastor desires to develop leaders for his church from among the members of his fellowship. That pastor will be significantly impeded from fulfilling his purpose if he has constructed a barricade around his heart as a reaction to prior offenses. Because those who have unresolved offenses often mistrust other people, the pastor may find it difficult to mentor potential leaders because of a deep-seated fear that other people will fail him or betray him. As a result, he won’t be able to nurture potential leaders, delegate tasks to other people, or otherwise give others authority to act in his place.

Over the years, I have raised up many leaders, a number of whom eventually betrayed me in some way. Their behavior deeply offended me because I didn’t expect that of them. However, I had to forgive them. Otherwise, I never would have been able to mentor additional leaders. Each time, God healed my heart, so that I have been able to raise up thousands of leaders from around the world to build the body of Christ and to expand the kingdom of God.

4. Offended People Conform to Their Hurt, Creating a Lifestyle of Pain

Often, an affronted person will unconsciously begin to transform the feelings of offense that caused him to become spiritually and emotionally damaged into a lifestyle of pain. As he constructs his wall of separation from others and equips himself with defense mechanisms, he gets used to his new isolated lifestyle. After a while, he “embodies” his feelings of offense—he becomes a “city” of pain fortified by high defensive walls, so that everything he thinks or does from that point forward is generated from that place—that identity—of pain. He refuses to trust others or to open up his heart to them. He may also decline to invest his time and money in worthy purposes because he is unwilling to risk new disappointments or hurts in relation to them. He has become conditioned to, and remade by, his negative experience, so that now he is always subject to pain, unable to attain real happiness.

A person with an offended heart may allow the emotional pain of an affront to become an excuse for refusing to function in certain areas of his life.

The story of a young woman named María who attends our church is a vivid example of how a person can build a lifestyle of pain due to offenses—but then be set free in Jesus! She writes, “I was born in Cuba. My life was in danger even before I was born because my mother wanted to abort me. Moreover, while she was still pregnant with me, she had an accident in which she fell down three flights of stairs but did not lose me. Because I survived, after I was born, she offered my life to the service of the saints in a religion called Santería.

“Years later, my father found a way to bring us to the United States to live. When I was nine years old, I was introduced to the world of the streets. I was exposed to gangs, parties, alcohol, sexual activity, drugs, robbery of homes, abuse, police persecution, and more. During my childhood, my experience at school was horrible. Other children mocked me, causing me to feel anger and hate in my heart and to want vengeance.

“When I was fourteen, my mother moved us away to take me out of that environment, not knowing that things were only going to get worse in the new place. I joined a gang, went to nightclubs, ran away from home, drank alcohol without restraint, used hard drugs, and never attended classes. I tried to commit suicide three times. I suffered two drug overdoses, was involved in major sexual activity with young men and women alike, and practiced Wicca. I thought I had the world under my feet, but the truth was that I was a slave to sin and of the one who produces it.

“By age seventeen, I had met the ‘perfect’ man. He told me that he was twenty-one years old and that he had fallen in love with me at first sight. His personality was captivating. He was a smooth talker, and his understanding manner made me fall in love with him, so I gave him my innocence. In time, I realized that it was all a lie—he was thirty years old and had three children. Even then, I wanted to marry him. But because our relationship was a lie, it led me to feel great hatred toward men. I felt that my life made no sense.

“However, in the midst of that dark night, I had two parents who prayed for me, for they had turned to Christ a few years earlier. One day, I attended a miracle crusade of evangelist Benny Hinn, and I said to God, ‘If I am Yours, do something before I leave.’ At that moment, my bones began to tremble. I started to cry uncontrollably, and, even though I didn’t understand what was happening, I felt so good! The Holy Spirit had descended upon my life. Later that night, I was set free and transformed. I let go of my old lifestyle and became a new creation.

“Almost six years have passed, and I am blessed. I have identity and purpose. Above all, I am very in love with Jesus. Never in my life would I have believed that this was going to happen to me. I am living the best days of my life. If God did it for me, He can certainly do it for you.”

If you, too, have conformed your life to past hurts and have created a lifestyle of pain, you can be set free though the power of God’s Holy Spirit as you give up your offenses, forgive others, and receive God’s forgiveness and grace through Christ.

5. Offended People Cannot Receive the Anointing of God

I have experienced the manifest presence of God and have ministered under that presence, and there have been times when I have laid hands on people and felt the anointing return to me as if it had collided against a wall. That is a sign of a heart that has been closed due to offenses and is therefore unable to receive God’s anointing or experience the transformation that the anointing works in the inner being.

Likewise, I have preached messages in the power of the Holy Spirit that have transformed the lives of thousands of people in attendance, while others who were present in the same place and under the same anointing continued to have problems in their finances, family, health, or another area. I believe they experienced no change because, when the anointing fell and the Word was preached, they couldn’t enter into that anointing or remain in it due to an offense (or offenses) that had contaminated their heart. Similarly, if a person holds on to an offense against a leader who is his God-given authority, he shouldn’t expect to inherit the anointing of that leader someday, because no one can carry the anointing of a vessel of God that he did not honor and has perhaps even rejected.