---- — HAVE you ever gotten into a conversation and asked someone their opinion, and they’d respond, “Well no offense, but ...” and totally put down what you were doing? They tell you something that will quite possibly hurt your feelings, if you let it, but don’t want you to be offended.

Aren’t we easily offended? Don’t we get offended by the slightest thing? Someone unintentionally slights us, or maybe intentionally, and we get all up in arms and offended. You get passed over for a promotion and you get offended. You don’t get picked for the team, the play, the worship team, and you get offended.

As a Christian, how should you respond to an offense? Even if its intentional? Our first instinct is to run away, leave the church, end the friendship, whatever it takes so we don’t have to be “around those people.” Because we are offended.

It’s funny yet quite sad that people, Christians, don’t take their offense to the Lord. Instead they get angry and run away. And maybe they miss what God is trying to do in their life. David knew how to handle offenses.

2nd Samuel 16:5-14, tells of a man named Shimei, who was from the clan of Saul. David was very tired from running from Absalom his son, who was trying to kill him. Along this journey, Shimei threw stones at David and all his troops, called him names. David’s men said, “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut off his head?”

Tempting, isn’t it? This guy calling ME, the king, a scoundrel and a “man of blood.” Why not kill him, after all, even my men think I should? But David didn’t get offended with Shimei.

Instead, he responded, “Leave him alone; let him curse, for the Lord has told him to. It may be that the LORD will see my distress and repay me with good for the cursing I am receiving today.” (2 Sam. 16: 11,12). Then the scripture says in verse 13, “So David and his men continued along the road while Shimei was going along the hillside opposite him, cursing as he went and throwing stones at him and showering him with dirt. The king and all the people with him arrived at their destination exhausted.”

What did David know? David knew that the Lord permitted this to happen in his life to test him. To make him grow. David learned how not to get offended and he remained in control of his feelings and emotions and left the result of what Shimei did to him in the Lord’s hands.

Christians today are a bunch of cowards. They don’t want to face church discipline and as John Piper said, “Church discipline is always messy because people don’t want to grow up in the Lord.” People don’t ask God what the meaning of this situation was. They don’t have the attitude of Joseph, who after being falsely accused of rape and sold into slavery by his brothers, responded to his brothers, “but as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50: 19, 20).

Joseph knew that all that happened to him had been ordained of God. Even the false imprisonment, the betrayal of his brothers. Joseph, now in a position to execute his brothers for their betrayal, instead rejoiced in seeing them. He realized that God used them to bring him to a place of great authority. I wonder, how many of us miss out on God’s plan because we refuse to see Him in our affliction, but instead get offended?

People get offended with pastors and leave the church without dealing with the issues. Spouses get offended with their partners and leave without discussion. How many offenses do you run from that God placed there to help you grow and trust in Him?

I know people who are always “victims,” always believing that everyone is against them. Nobody ever gives them a chance. My kid never gets a fair chance. How sad that they’ll never grow in Christ, never achieve all God has for them. All because they choose to be offended.

There is such a false gospel being preached that bad things will never happen to Christians. That if you have “faith enough” you will always have money and never be sick. That’s crazy and nowhere is that promised. Bad things happen to Christians (Rich Mullins and Keith Green were killed in accidents in the prime of their lives and yet had served God through music their entire lives).

God is absolutely sovereign. God is bigger than any devil. God is the creator of us all. And God permits situations to come into our lives that cause us to make a choice. To get better or to grow bitter.