Grow in your practice of love and become not easily offended. Learn to forgive even as you have been forgiven. This is the path of maturity and life.
Hurt feelings are a regular part of our life and relationships. But we still get a choice in how we respond. We can be easily offended and respond in kind. Or we can practice love and learn to forgive.Often out of ignorance, and occasionally intentional, people will say and do things that get under our skin. And naturally we feel hurt and wounded and our first response is often not one of love.
In our pain, we want others to feel what we feel. Or, at the very least, remind them time and again just how much they’ve hurt us. This keeps them in our debt and allows us to maintain a one-up position over them.
But we simply become angrier and life more and more miserable when we hold on to every offense.
Of course, there’s a time to address issues. But we address them in a spirit of friendship – ready to make amends and put the offense behind us.
This allows us to restore broken relationships and live in freedom without turning a blind eye to sin and those areas in which more love is needed.
At other times, we simply let the offense go. There’s no need to defend ourselves on every issue when we know who we are.
Whether intentional or not, someone else’s opinion of us doesn’t change the truth of who we are in God. And life is too short to try to correct everyone’s opinion.
We simply live in the truth and let our life speak for us.
This gives us the freedom to focus on the more important matters of life and not let every offense trip us up and take us out.
Grow in your practice of love and become not easily offended. Learn to forgive even as you have been forgiven. This is the path of maturity and life.
Photo by Antonio Scant on Unsplash
