Offense: The Trap Between You + Your Inheritance | Jasmine Weiler | Mercy Culture Church

Luke 15 verses 25 through 31. It says this, "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. Your brother has come," he replied, "and your father has killed the fat and calf because he has him back safe and sound. The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look, all these years, I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me-- you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when the son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fat and calf for him, my son, the father, said, 'You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.' But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and he is found. I came here to tell you this morning, Mercy Culture, that offense is the demonic trap between you and your inheritance. The title of today's message is offense, the trap between you and your inheritance. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We just thank you for everything that you're doing in this house.

We thank you for everything you've already done this morning. Holy Spirit, we want you to know that you are welcome here. You're the most welcome person in this room. You are the most important person in this room, Holy Spirit. I pray that as I preached this morning, that you would have your own personal conversations with every single person in this room. I pray that chains will be broken off of people. I pray that truth would be illuminated. Spirit of Revelation, we invite you to come and reveal the truth to us. I pray for eyes to see. I pray for ears to hear. I pray for minds to comprehend what you're saying and hearts that are tender to respond to your word this morning. And so, Father, we say, come and have your way in this room. Speak, Lord, your servants are listening. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen? Amen. All right. Well, we've been stewarding a prophetic word as a church this year that this is the year of encounters and visitations, that this is an Exodus five, Exodus three, five year, where we will find ourselves on Holy ground, where you choose your daily encounter and God chooses your Holy visitation. We're in the middle of a spiritual warfare series

right now, and I want to remind you of the scripture Ephesians 612. It says, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places." We've been teaching you how to recognize spiritual warfare, how to understand what the enemy is attempting to do, and then we've been trying to give you tools for you to use in your everyday life against the warfare, but more importantly, to know what God is doing in the midst of it. So this morning, we're talking about offense, and this is one of my favorite things to talk about because it's probably one of the things that I've seen the most believers be taken out by. I've seen it over and over and over again. I believe it's one of the enemy's most common weapons of warfare against the body of Christ. So it's super important that we talk about it, and we're gonna grow today, but I wanna challenge you with something before we jump in. A lot of you, as soon as you heard the title, the message, as soon as you heard we were talking about offense, you're like in your soul, you're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." I know offense, 'cause you've heard messages about it, and maybe you read a day to Satan like 30 years ago, and I'm saying, "Hey," you're like,

"This young whippersnapper is gonna try "to teach me something new." Like, maybe you're wrestling right now. I wanna challenge you. If God brought you into the room this morning, it means that he has something for you. It means he wants you to grow. It means that there's something today that maybe you've never heard before that's for the season that you're in right now. And so I wanna encourage you. I wanna challenge you. Don't let spiritual pride. Are we gonna lean in today? Don't let spiritual pride keep you from growing in the house of God today. Amen? Yeah, you guys okay? Are you already offended at me? We're gonna be all right. The Greek word for offense is scandalon, which means a trap, snare, obstacle, stumbling block or enticement that causes someone to fall into sin or unbelief. The simple definition would be offense is a demonic trap that turns a stumbling block into disobedience. And we see offense all throughout scripture. Offense made Cain murder the brother that you should have celebrated. Offense made Saul persecute David

who he should have been promoting. Offense made Joseph's brother to betray the brother they should have protected. Offense made Cora rebel against the authority. that carried his healing. A fence made the Pharisees reject the truth that exposed their hearts. And a fence made the disciples, many disciples abandoned the Jesus that they had once chosen to follow. Now some of those passages in the scripture, they don't explicitly use the language of offense. But if you learn about offense and you read through these passages, the signs are there. Like you can see that what they are operating in is offense. It's a herd or unmet expectations, comparison or correction, becoming a stumbling block to their obedience to God. And so I want you to remember this, a fence is a demonic trap that turns pain into disobedience. And it keeps you from your inheritance. In Luke 17, verse one, Jesus promises us that offenses will come. He says that it is impossible that no offenses should come. In other words, we're all at risk. Right? So that means you don't have to be sitting in the house of the Lord like a shame to say that you're struggling with offense. I've noticed that a lot in the body of Christ for some reason, if people can confess anything else,

but if you say, "Hey, are you struggling with offense?" they're like, "No, no way, no, I would never know." Right? There's like this weird like shame about struggling with offense. But Jesus said, "It's going to come for all of us." He says, "It's going to come." It's impossible that offenses are not going to come to you. And so there's going to be offenses, opportunity for offense everywhere because you're here. Right? Is that okay to say? Yeah, it is because you're here because humans aren't here. Right? As long as humans are involved in this whole equation, there's going to be an opportunity for offense. Somebody's going to bother you. Somebody's going to make you mad. Somebody's going to take your seat. Somebody's going to steal your parking spot. The unnamed reserved parking spot that nobody knows about except for you. Like, somebody's, that's going to happen. Stuff like that is going to happen, right? So there's always going to be opportunities for offense. The thing is, sometimes people will see your offense before you know you're offended. Or they'll see it before you're willing to admit that you're offended.

So I want you to remember this, like, if somebody comes up to you and they're like, "Hey, are you offended? "Like, are you struggling with offense?" Don't say no, I'm not. Like, that's a very immature thing to do. A very mature thing to do is to say, "Let me bring it before the Lord. "Let me ask." I remember one time I got called into a pastor's land into office and he was like, "Hey, I feel like you're offended about this thing." He was asking me about a specific situation with another person. And I was like, in my head, I'm like, "I don't think I am offended." But I'm like, "I probably should just ask God." So I went and brought it before the Lord and just began to search. Said, "Lord, show me what I've hidden for myself." So I want to encourage you to do the same thing, but odds are people are going to know you're offended before you know, because the signs are going to be there. There's always going to be signs of offense, right? In the same way, like, if I end up rich for some reason, like, just super wealthy, like, I'm not going to tell you guys. Like, I'm not going to announce it to you, won't know, but like, you'll be able to see the signs. (congregation laughing)

Like, there's for sure going to be signs that something changed in my life, okay? In the same way, you have to know there are signs. We can see your offense, right? Here's some of the signs that you need to be aware of. It's when you start distancing yourself from somebody or, like, a whole community, right? All of a sudden, like, you used to love being there, and then all of a sudden you're like, "Yeah, I think I'm going to take a break," right? You start distancing yourself from people, or here's another sign. You stop laughing at that person's jokes, right? Like, you used to think they were so funny, and now you're like, "Hmm." Like, some of you are struggling with my jokes right now. It's fine. You're offended from a few minutes ago. I get it, I know, I know what's happening, right? Or wives, when you're offended with your husband, you turn in, you stop being passenger princess, and you turn in a hulk Hogan. Y'all know what I'm talking about? Like, when you're at home, you need help for everything, but then you get offended, and you're like, "I got it!" Like, right? Husband, y'all know what I'm talking about, right? That's one of the signs. We give signs when we're offended, and some of the signs are more spiritual.

You know, have you ever been struggling with offense, and you realize, all of a sudden, it's just hard to connect with God? All of a sudden, you're in your daily personal encounter, and you should be talking to God about a bunch of other stuff, but you can't stop talking about that one moment with that one person, and it consumes every moment, It begins to distract you. Or the sign of like you stop answering altar calls here at Mercy Culture because Pastor Landon didn't speak to you in MC Central that one day. Y'all don't talk about, I'm stepping on just toes. Just toes are just going today, right? That's for somebody in the room. Here's what you need to know. Pastor Landon, he just wears a Batman face 'cause he's focused, okay? For those of you who struggle with that, it's just the Batman face. He's happy out there, but you don't know it 'cause he's focused. Okay, so don't be offended in those moments, right? But we have all of these things that before we know it, they're keeping us from obeying God, it's keeping us from connecting with God. They're the signs that are very spiritual because offense is spiritual. Offense is a spiritual thing. And the enemy, I believe it's one of the enemy's greatest weapons of warfare against us.

And he loves to use offense as a weapon, he loves it. And I believe the first reason he loves seeing you offended is because when you're offended, you're stuck. You get stuck. Because offense is a demonic trap. Remember I told you the definition earlier, that Greek word for offense is scandalon. It literally means a trap or a snare. And I wanna give you an illustration. It's a modern example of how a trigger piece in a snare or a trap works or would have worked. Because that word, scandalon, doesn't just mean a trap, it's actually talking about the trigger piece in a trap, right? And so here's the picture of it. You got a little thing set up right here. And if you're a hunter and say you wanna catch a squirrel, right, there's a specific type of bait that you would use to catch a squirrel. Just like there's a specific type of bait that we use to catch a coyote or you would use to catch a rabbit or something else, right? Everything has a different appetite. And so as a hunter, you put the bait under that rock that you wanna use to catch whatever thing you wanna catch, right? And so the thing, little squirrel or whatever, scurries in there, goes under the rock. And on its way in, it trips that stick. And the moment it trips the stick, it gets smashed by that giant rock or by the trap, right? Gets caught up in that trap.

And you have to understand this imagery helps us see why offense is so deceptive. It's because the enemy sees the bait but it doesn't see the mechanism attached to it. The bait is effective because it appears to satisfy and appetite while hiding the consequence that's connected to it. And that's what the enemy does, right? And so offense has many different types of bait. That's the reason why your friend was offended by that post on Instagram, but you weren't, right? It's why your husband was offended by that person not texting them back but you could care less about it, right? Because the enemy knows that there's a different type of bait for every single person in the room. He knows the bait that he needs to use for you to get you offended. And so the bait that the enemy uses to trap you and offense, it could be rejection, it could be disrespect, it could be comparison, being overlooked, feeling misunderstood, injustice, some expectations, and then here's the thing, some people aren't offended because they've been mistreated, some people are offended because they haven't been treated as importantly as they think they deserve to be treated. Right, that's a different type of bait but the enemy knows the bait that is needed to get you into offense. And so there's bait for offense everywhere

in the world right now, especially right now. Right now we're in election season. Have you noticed heightened offense in culture and in the world right now? Right, have you noticed that? Because there is a higher opportunity for offense anytime we're in election season and you need to be aware of that, right? Another thing to consider is mercy culture is doing, like I'm so blown away by what God is doing through this house, all the beautiful things. God is, his kingdom is being advanced through this house and we're not the only ones, there's so much beauty happening in the body of Christ but I'm so thankful for everything he's doing in this house. You have to understand when the kingdom is being advanced through a house, the enemy is big mad at it. He doesn't like it, right? And so if you're a part of a church that God is doing a lot of awesome things through, you have to understand that there will be great opportunity for you to get offended at your church, right? 'Cause he doesn't want you to be a part of it. Okay, so like, maybe I'm the only one but like every, I don't know what it is, every time I go on Facebook, it's only Facebook, every time I go on Facebook, I'll be scrolling and I'll just randomly see like five posts about mercy culture but from people

Like you don't even know what's happening, you know? But it'll be opportunities watch for a fence. I had a vision on Tuesday morning where I was in my daily encounter and I saw somebody pull out their phone and arrows start flying out of their phone. And I heard the Lord say they're arrows of a fence. And I felt like I was supposed to warn you that there are arrows of a fence coming for you through your phone, through your Instagram, through your Facebook. And if you are unaware of the arrows, if you're unaware of the enemy's scheme, then you will get hit by the arrows of the fence. You will end up trapped in the stair. You will end up trapped by the enemy. And so what bait does the enemy use to lure you into a fence? That's a question that you need to process. Some of you know everybody else has bait, but you don't know yours. You can tell what everybody else could defend it by, but you can tell me what is the enemy using for you. You need to figure that out. You should know what bait the enemy uses to lure you into a fence. And I need you to remember this. You're being lured in for the kill. Nobody is using that trap to catch a pet. They're not using that trap and be like, "Oh, this cute bunny, I'm just gonna name him

and take him home with me." No, that animal is getting killed by that trap, right? And so you have to understand the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy. That's why a fence is in the spiritual warfare series because it's serious. The enemy desires to take you out through a fence. It's not a cute thing to be played with. It's a very serious thing that you need to be on guard of. And the good news is, I love this, you don't have to take the bait, right? I'm teaching you about the bait and the way the enemy works, but you literally do not have to take the bait. I remember a few years ago, I used to live in Philadelphia, Pastor Evelyn and I were roommates back in the day, and we were living there and we had a mouse problem randomly come up while in the house we were living. Anybody ever had a mouse problem? Yeah, some of y'all judging us. We're cleaning people, I don't know what happened. We just had a mouse problem. So we're trying to figure out what to do with these mice. And I never dealt with mice before, but here's what I know, this is what I really learned, is that Philly mice are different. Philly mice are built different, okay? They're just different ball game. And so this is how it would go.

We would put the traps out all around the house and just never catch a mouse. And I was like, what is going on? Like, how come we're not catching anything? And so one day I was like, I'm gonna catch, I'm gonna catch the mouse, like I'm gonna do it. Eve was out at work, I'm at home. And so I jump on the couch, I get my snow shovel and I had put all the traps around the edge of this specific room. I'm like, it's game time. These mice are coming down today, right? So I'm standing up there, I'm waiting for him to come out and I see a little Philly mouse come out. And he goes up to the trap, he smells the bait, kind of like moves around it a little bit. And then he just jumps over it. And then he jump over the next one and he just start jumping over all the traps and then just leaps. And I'm like, how in the world did this mouse just beat me? Well, how did he defeat us? Like, he literally avoided every single trap. And listen, I'm not saying that you need to be like a mouse, that would be really awkward. But what I am saying is, you need to get some Philly in you. Okay, you need the ability to see the bait, to see the thing that the enemy has set up for you. And to be able to look at it and smell it and be like, no, that's not for me.

I can't get stuck by that. So I'm just gonna jump over and go to the next thing. You need to be able to do that. You should be able to see the comment and say, no, no, no, I'm gonna keep strolling. It's a trap. I heard what you said, but I'm gonna keep moving. It's a trap. You need to get a little Philly in you. Amen? Some of you are like, I don't want Philly in me, but you need it, you do. You need some Philly. Proverbs 1911 says this, it says, it is his glory to overlooking offense. To overlooking offense. What happens when you get caught in offense? The same thing that happens when you get caught in a trap. You get stuck. You get stuck. And a lot of you guys are stuck. You're stuck in the past. You're stuck in what happened. You're stuck in what they did. You're stuck in what should have happened. You're stuck in what was taken. Stuck in what was never acknowledged. I'm wondering why you keep a, every time you hang out with people, you talk about the same thing that happened three years ago.

What's wrong? You're stuck. You're stuck. As a son, as a daughter, you're not supposed to be stuck. You're supposed to be advancing, right? You're supposed to be building the house of God. You should be doing that, but you're stuck. You should be opening up supply lines in the kingdom, but you're stuck. You should be building your marriage, but you're stuck. You should be stewarding friendships in your life, but you're stuck. You should be building. You should be a minister of reconciliation, but you're stuck. Hebrews 12, 1 through 2 says, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which cleans so closely and let us run, run with endurance. That race is set-- the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. If the enemy can get used stuck in a fence, you won't advance the kingdom. He knows that. The enemy tried to use a fence to keep Jesus from advancing the kingdom as well, so you're in good good company. Let's look at it-- Matthew 16. In Matthew 16, Jesus tells the disciples everything that's about to happen. He says he's going to suffer.

He's going to be crucified, and he's going to be raised after three days. And so you know the story. Peter shouts something that reveals that he's aligned himself with what I would call a demonic assignment. In that moment, he says in Matthew 16, 22, he says, far being from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. And if you're just listening to it at face value, it sounds really compassionate and very loyal. It's like, yeah, Peter is standing up for his friend. He's like, you don't want his friend to leave. We got you. You're not going to do this. We're not going to let them take you out, right? It sounds right. The problem is sometimes the people closest to you will say the right thing that may not be the God thing. It may not be what God is saying, even though it feels good to your flesh. Warning, beware of people who are trying to protect you, who are aligned with demonic assignments to get you to disobey God. Beware of those relationships in your life. So I want you to listen to what Jesus says back to Peter here. Matthew 16, 23, he says, but he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance or scandaline to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God,

but on the things of man. So catch this. Jesus put up with a ton of attacks against his reputation up until this point. All these moments of people saying things about him that weren't true, attacking his character, attacking who he was, just attacking his reputation. He put up with all of those things. But the thing that he refused to put up with was Peter being a stumbling block that would keep him from obeying God. Some of you are more passionate about protecting your reputation than you are with dealing with offense in your life. You don't have the same value for offense that Jesus has. Jesus sees offense and he says, uh-uh, absolutely not. Immediately, quickly addresses and says, get behind me. I have to go forward. You will entertain offense. You'll let it live in your life and just kind of let it hang out. You don't have a problem with it. But that's not how Jesus responded to it. So maybe Jesus knows something about offense that you don't know yet, right? If you're entertaining in your life, it means that you don't put the same value on it, the same weight on it, then Jesus puts on it. Just very important. And so Peter wasn't just disagreeing with Jesus.

It's not that he just had a different perspective than Jesus. Peter had become a scandaline. That's what Jesus said. He had literally become a stumbling block between him and obedience to God. That is a major issue. And so Jesus wasn't calling him saying in the flesh when he said, get behind me, saying he was saying, this is a spiritual thing. And you have partnered with the enemy in trying to keep me from the cross. That's what he's saying in this moment. And so notice how quickly Jesus addressed it. Notice how he refused to get stuck. Notice how Jesus refused to let offense have him. He told offense to get behind him. In other words, he says, I'm moving forward. You can't have my obedience. You can have my advance. You cannot have my growth. You cannot have my future. You cannot have my destiny. Some of you need to keep the same energy that Jesus kept about offense in your life. You need to have the same energy about it. Sometimes offense starts with somebody hurting your feelings. And a lot of times that's the stuff that we focus on. Somebody hurt your feelings. But it's so important that you know that offenses more than hurt feelings.

It is about what's standing between you and your obedience to God. That's what offense is about. And so if you're wondering if you're offended, here's a few questions that you can ask making me consider being disobedient to God? Is this making me consider being disobedient to the word of God? Is this making me consider being disobedient to something the Lord taught me to do? And it's exactly what Satan attempted to do in this passage, but Jesus showed us how to move through it. And so I want to give you a spiritual warfare strategy that has really helped me work through offense quickly. Can I give you one of those tools? You guys good? You guys still mad at me? Okay, let's look at it. This is holy processing offense edition. Pastor Lanan gave us a holy processing model a few weeks ago, but this one is specifically catered to offense. So the first thing, I'll just read the scripture that it's built around, but 2 Corinthians 10, verses three through five. It says, for though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God

and take every thought captive to obey Christ. So this is what it looks like. Number one, you expose the enemy. Usually it's something that hurt my feelings or something that made me reconsider obedience to God, but this is the moment where I'm looking at a scenario and I'm able to say, I think that offended me. I think that hurt my feelings. You have to say it, you have to expose it, you have to be aware of it, you have to acknowledge it, right? You have to be able to say, oh, I see you enemy, I'm offended right now. That is what's happening, right? So you expose the enemy and then you take the thought captive. And so what I mean by that is you have to ask the question, what am I believing because of what happened to me? What am I believing right now because of the situation that offended me? And a lot of times it sounds something like God is withholding from me. It sounds like nobody honors me. I can't trust anybody anymore. All these people are against me, they're not for me. I have the right to withdraw and to separate myself. I need some space or because I was hurt, I don't have to obey God or I don't have to submit, right? Those are some of the things, the thoughts that come up that will, you have to take those thoughts and say why, what am I believing because of what happened? A lot of times those are the types of things

that you'll hear, the types of things that'll come up. So then you take those thoughts and I would say, this is my favorite part, you take it to the interrogation room. That verse says to take those thoughts captive. The way I see it is when you capture somebody or in battle you find the enemy, right? You take them and you say, who sent you here and what is your assignment? Where'd you come from and what are you doing here? Those are the questions that you should be asking regarding these thoughts that come up, right? And so these thoughts, either it came from God, the enemy, or you just hangry, right? It's from the Lord, it's from the enemy or it's your flesh. It's a misunderstanding, you're just hungry, you're just tired, there's just something going on, right? Like I said, I'm pregnant right now, so the hangry thing hits very close to home for me. I get hangry quickly in this trimester. And so like, you have to find out where it came from. After you find out where it came from, then it's really important that you find out what's your assignment? Why are you here? When I find myself offended at my husband in moments, like there are these moments where I'm like, oh, the enemy wants us to be out of unity. The enemy wants me to dishonor him, right? If he's offended at me, the enemy wants him to not love me

because that is what he's supposed to do, biblically, right? That is what God has spoken, that's obedience to Christ. So you have to figure out what is the assignment of this offense? For some of you, the assignment of the offense is to get you out of your church. For others you, the assignment of your offense is to get you to leave the job that God brought you to, that he said this is for you in this season, right? There's all these different assignments that the enemy has assigned to the offense that he's brought to you. So you ask those two questions, and then the third thing is make it obedient. And this is where you go into the Word of God, and you find out what does the Word of God say about this thing. You find out what the Word of God says, and then you make it obedient to what the Word of God says. Sometimes making it obedient looks like forgiving. It looks like you need to go and forgive somebody. Sometimes making it obedient looks like you get back into obedience. Sometimes it looks like you receiving his truth, and there's something he wants to speak to in your identity. And you make it obedient to what God says about your identity and his Word, right? Sometimes it looks like going and having a hard conversation because that's what he says to do in his Word, and Matthew, right?

Sometimes it looks like moving forward or maybe it's just honoring your spouse. But you have to figure out what it looks like to make that assignment of offense obedient to Christ. the enemy wants you offended is because offense is the breeding ground for deception. It's the breeding ground for deception. In Matthew 11, we see John the Baptist. John the Baptist has spent his life preparing the way of the Lord. In this moment, he's the first to recognize Jesus. In John 1 29, he says, "Behold, the Lamb of God "who takes away the sin of the world." He gets to baptize Jesus. And I'm sure he's so excited about all that is to come now that Jesus is here. But then like right after that, he ends up in prison. And it's like kind of a weird story, right? You kind of like, "Well, that's awkward." Like if I'm John the Baptist, I'd probably be a little thrown off by the series of events. After I think Jesus is here, everything is gonna change. And then you end up in prison, right? And so he does something very interesting. He sends his disciples while he's in prison. He sends his disciples to go to Jesus and ask Jesus, "Are you the one we've been waiting for? "Is there somebody else coming?"

Now this is interesting because a second ago, he looked at Jesus and he said, "Behold, the Lamb of God." He was able to clearly recognize, identify who Jesus was. A few moments later, he's saying, "Are you the one?" And so Jesus' response, he says it's a series of things. The deaf here, the blind see, the lame walk, he goes on this line of things that are happening that are signs that he really is who he says he is. And at the very end, he says something really interesting. He says, "And blessed are those who are not offended by me." Now I'm reading this and I'm like, "Why did he say that to John?" That's kind of a strange thing to say to John unless he's discerning offense, right? And if I'm looking at the situation, I can kind of understand John is probably offended at God. Nothing is looking the way that he thought it was going to look. So watch, offense causes him to question something that a few minutes ago he had a revelation of. It leads him into deception, right? It's the moments where we believe God and we believe something is true and all of a sudden you get offended and you can't decide if that's really true anymore, right? This happened to me. A lot of you know my testimony of God delivering me out of homosexuality. I was in college and I ended up in a homosexual relationship

and God literally miraculously delivered me pull me out of that relationship, set me free. Absolutely insane story. My favorite testimony of my life, of God's faithfulness. But I don't talk a ton about how I ended up there. And what happened was I tore my ACL, my senior year of college. I was on scholarship playing basketball for a D1 college and I tore my ACL at the beginning of the season of my senior year. And I was like, God, like I'm so excited about the senior year, excited about this. So I began to pray for healing. And I grew up my whole life seeing people get healed. Even on my college camp, but I saw person get healed after person just back to back healings all the time. So I'm like, surely this is easy. God was gonna heal my ACL. In the midst of me believing for God to heal my ACL, my community who was about an hour away from where my school was, everybody was just busy or something happened. I don't know what happened, but nobody showed up. Nobody came for the surgery, nobody came to check on me, nobody came during my recovery time. Nobody showed up. And I remember being so ascended by them. I got so offended at my church, so offended at my community. And then I wasn't getting healed,

so I got offended at God. And before I knew it, in the midst of that offense, I started questioning, well, like this relationship with this girl can't be so bad. Maybe if God's not, if what he said about healing isn't true, then maybe what he said about homosexuality isn't what I thought it was either. Watch, I have walked multiple people through the word of God to show them what God said about homosexuality. I'd done it multiple times. I can tell you what the Lord said about homosexuality. I knew that it was something that God cares about. And all of a sudden, because of the offense in my heart, I began to question what I already had a revelation of. That is the way offense works. The enemy wants your offense to lead you into deception about who he is, about what he said, about what he does. That is one of the number one ways that the enemy loves to use offense against you. It's so important that you're aware of that strategy. Offense is a thing that causes you to question, when God told you that you're supposed to be at this church and then all of a sudden, things don't go the way you want. You're just like, well, maybe God didn't say that. I'm not supposed to be here anymore, right? It's the moment where you knew you were supposed to marry that person and you get married Right? That's how it happens. Or you knew that job was from God until the boss offended you.

You knew you were supposed to go into business with that guy, but then his wife made you mad. Right, you start questioning things that the Lord is doing, questioning what He said, stuff that you already know He said to do. Or how about this? Have you ever been offended with God? When the job fell through? When the thing didn't happen the way you thought it was going to happen? Right? When you prayed for the person and they didn't make it? Like, that's what was happening to me. Those types of offenses, those types of thoughts led me straight into deception. And they actually caused me to become offended at God, like I said. And that's the third reason Satan loves seeing us offended, because he knows if he can get us to take the bait of the fence with people, he can get us to take the bait of the fence with God. And if he can get you to stay offended with God, he can get you to walk away from him. And so I want you to remember this, your fence with man is conditioning you to be offended with God. Your fence, when you entertain a fence with people, it's conditioning you to be offended at God. If you don't hear anything else today, when you entertain a fence with people,

when you don't deal with them, when you're not violent about it, you are being conditioned to end up offended with God. And maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but let me read Matthew 24 to you. Matthew 24 says, it's Jesus describing what the signs of the end of the age and his second coming will be. He lists the number of crazy things. He says there's gonna be rumors, wars and rumors of war. He says there's gonna be nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, famines, earthquakes. It says these are the things, these things are just the beginning of the sorrows, we will experience, right? It's gonna get crazy, there's a lot of stuff. And then it says then many will be offended. In some translations it says many will fall away. Many will fall away. Like if that doesn't put the fear of the Lord in you, I don't know what else will. That there's gonna come in a time where the climate of the world, that things are gonna get crazy and then many are going to walk away from Jesus, many. It doesn't say that people will be offended because of all of these things, but it can be inferred. So my question to you is this, if you're offended by someone taking your seat in church now, what are you gonna do then?

If you're offended by God now due to the shaking in your personal life, how in the world are you gonna make it when all of that is happening in the earth? I mean, I'm just thinking about 2020. You guys remember 2020? Such a fun time in the world, right? It was crazy. There was a lot of shaking happening. And I watched a lot of people walk away from Jesus on the other side of 2020 because they ended up offended by God in the midst of all of the things that were happening in the world. Y'all know what I'm talking about? In fact, there was a deconstruction movement that was birthed during that time. And I wanna be careful with this one, 'cause there can be a lot of confusion that comes here, but I would say, for those of you who are unfamiliar, I would say deconstruction or that movement is typically when a series of undel with offenses are used as evidence to build a case against your faith. That's how I would define it. Hard questions are not the trap. Like it's okay to ask God hard questions. It's okay to go to the hard places and process the hard things. That's necessary in our faith. But I've had seasons of asking God hard questions.

I've had seasons of processing why I believe what I believe. That is a healthy thing to do. I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is when you allow your pain or your church hurt to become the authority that decides what is true. That's the trap of the deconstruction journey. Your pain cannot be the author or the editor of your theology. Some people begin by deconstructing unhealthy, abusive systems and then by the end of it, they're deconstructing Jesus. It's different. I've watched this exact journey happen with many of my friends who went on a deconstruction journey. The common denominator between all of them, and with my friends, the common denominator, was that all of them were offended by the Lord. They were all offended. They were offended by things that happened in the church. They ended up offended at God. But offense is a clear on-ramp to deconstruction. And again, I just wanna say this, like most of us have stories of church hurt. Most of us have, I know some of you in this room, I've talked to you, there's crazy stories of abuse and disappointment and crazy things like that. Like I understand we've seen some crazy things. But like pain matters. Sin must be confronted.

Leaders must be held accountable. All of that stuff is true. But typically the deconstruction journey does not lead people into forgiveness. I've not seen it lead a bunch of people into forgiveness. Like I've seen it lead many people to stop walking with Jesus. I've watched many fall away as they enter into that journey and into that process. And I don't see forgiveness as a fruit of the process. And so I wanna give you this. One of the spiritual warfare strategies that I wanna give you today that you need in church hurt, you need instead of deconstruction journey, you need in this space is to forgive often and quickly. Forgive often and forgive quickly. You're not going to make it in your faith. If you don't learn to forgive often and quickly, you will not, you won't, you will not. Matthew 18, 21 says, then Peter came up to Jesus and he said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Like how much do I have to do this forgiveness thing? And he says as many as seven times? And Jesus said, I did not say to you seven times but 77 times. Or in other words, you're gonna have to do this forgiveness thing a lot. You're gonna have to forgive over and over and over again. And you're gonna forgive somebody

and then you're gonna see them the next day and they gonna do something else that's gonna make you mad, you're gonna have to forgive them again. Right? It's a part of who we are as Christians. We have been forgiven much, which means we forgive much. That's a part of who we are as believers. That doesn't mean you excuse abuse, that it's not excusing hard things, but you are responsible in your relationship with the Lord to forgive and release people up into the hands of God. A lot of times what I will do is I will go into my daily encounter, I'll pull up that connect with God app, which if you haven't used it already, it's amazing, please use it. But I'll pull up that app and in the app, it'll begin to take me through the Lord's prayer. And then I'll come to the part where it talks about forgiveness and right there in that part, I'll say, Lord, is there anybody that I need to forgive? And one of two things happens, one of three things happens. Number one, I knew the person before I even asked the question. Then I'm like, all right, I knew that was easy. Here we go, Lord, you know? I already knew. Second thing that could happen is I didn't know, but when I asked the question that face came up before me. And I realized, oh yeah, that thing did happen this week. I need to forgive that. Or the third thing, which is awesome,

sometimes there's nobody that comes up. But if you don't ask the question, then you don't forgive, right? And so you have to bring it before the Lord, bring it into your daily encounter and ask Him to show you who you need to forgive. But I don't want the enemy to weaponize your pain and to use it against you. That's really important. That's what He loves to do. I want you to know your pain is important. Like I'm not saying the stuff that's happening to you is not important. Your pain is important, like we want you to get healed. We want justice. We want all of those things. But like, the enemy does not care about you. He does not care about you. He wants to weaponize your pain and use it against you. Like I played basketball. I just told you guys that earlier in my whole life. And what we would do is when we know a girl can't dribble with their left hand, we would defend them to make them have to dribble with their left hand. Why? We're weaponizing their pain. We want to beat them. And so we're doing the thing. We're exploiting their weakness

so that we can win the game, right? If somebody, we find out somebody hurt their ankle, then we play to that injury. And we make them have to use that ankle a bunch so that we can win the game. And like, that's just basketball. The problem is that's silly and it doesn't matter. What I'm talking about is about your soul. The enemy does the same thing because he wants to take you out. He takes the pain that you want people to coddle and to help and to do all these things. And he doesn't care about it. He says, I'm going to use that to take them out of their faith. I'm going to use that to make them never walk with Jesus again. That is the goal. That is why offense is in this series. It's because you have to understand the weight of offense and the assignment behind the offense. but as I was preparing to lead worship last week, the Lord brought me to the scripture Psalm 16, verse five and six, and it didn't make sense with Pastor Landon was preaching, so I'm like, Lord, why are you bringing me to this passage? And I believe it's for today. It says, the Lord is my chosen portion in my cup. You hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen from me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance. The Lord showed me that this is one of the top strategies at the end of me to get the people of God offended by God.

And it's this, some of you are offended by God's boundary lines in your life. You've become entitled to the things that God has never promised you. Boundary lines are God's established limits and allotted portion in your life. Literally the Hebrew word for it is a measured territory in a lot of district or an assigned portion. So during that time, when a boundary line was laid, it defined what belonged to a family. It defined what they were responsible to cultivate, what they were permitted to possess. It let them know where their stewardship ended. That line wasn't meant to restrict people. That line was meant to give the recipient of the land they defined, protected inheritance. And we see a picture of this in Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve. You know the story, but it was a serpent's strategy. And he wanted to make Adam and Eve believe that God's boundary lines weren't pleasant places for them. Adam and Eve possessed an entire garden, but the enemy focused their attention on the one tree that was outside of the boundary lines that were established for them, right? This one tree was the only thing that God said, don't eat this. He put boundary lines against it or around it. And everything else was theirs. They could enjoy everything else, but he drew boundary lines around that one thing.

And the enemy was like, how dare he draw boundary lines there? Your boundary lines haven't fallen in pleasant places. He's not good, right? The accusation sounded like God is withholding something good from you. The boundary proves that he can't be trusted by you. You need what he has forbidden from you. You must cross the line to become who you're really meant to be in the world, right? That's what it sounded like. And the enemy uses the same strategy today that he used with them. Here's what it looks like. Your offense at God will always reveal or expose what you feel entitled to. You feel entitled to a relationship that God never promised. You demand a timeline that God never guaranteed you. You resent another person's assignment. You interpret moral boundaries as deprivation or you resist authority because you just want to do what you want to do, right? It's another picture where he's given us all of these things. There's all these boundary lines that God has placed in your life where he said, this is for you. This is what I have for you. And then we see the boundary lines just like Adam and Eve saw.

And we see these boundaries. We see that boundary right there. And for some reason, we live in a way where we'll start looking outside of the thing that God says all this is yours. And we'll say, no, but I really feel like I should be able to have that. I really feel like this would really help me if I had this. I remember when I was bound by homosexuality in that season, I looked outside the boundary lines of marriages between one woman and one man. I looked outside of those boundary lines and thought, but God, love is love. How come I can't be with this girl, right? I was reaching outside of his boundary lines. I believe that his boundary lines had not fallen in pleasant places for me. And it made me offended at God because of the boundary lines. And I want to caution you of this today. Many of you are sitting in the room and a lot of the other stuff that I talked about, you're not struggling with today. But you've been offended at God because you don't like what he chose for your boundary lines. Your fences will either cause you to walk away from God, you'll walk away into those crazy places, or it'll cause you to live in less than what God gave you as an inheritance. You'll be in the house of God offended, not living in the fullness of what he has for you, right?

And we see this in our main story. And I want to say this before we go to our main story. A spiritual warfare strategy that is so important that I want you to remember is that it's gratitude. Psalm 16, five through six, says the Lord is my chosen portion in my cup. You hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen from me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance. David is recognizing and celebrating what the Lord has done for him. He's able to recognize, oh God, look at what you've done. Look at how much you've given me. Look at how much you've provided for me. Look at how much I have because of you. And then even beyond that, he's saying, and I have you. You are my portion. I have everything that I need because of you. He was thankful. He was grateful. He was walking in gratitude. And some of you need to ask God to give you the eyes to see what he has done for you, because in a lack of gratitude, you will find yourself offended at God, offended at what you don't have, instead of seeing what you do have from the Lord. So let's go back to the main text.

Worship team, you guys can come on up. You guys know this story very well. It's the story of the prodigal son. And Jesus is using this parable. It's in Luke 15. He's using this parable to deal with the Pharisees and the scribes who are grumbling, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. And so we often focus on the younger prodigal son in the story, but many times we'll totally miss everything that was happening with the older son. And that's what I want to show you today is what was going on with the older son. And so in the story, the younger son went and he demanded his inheritance. And it says that the father drew boundary lines for them both. And he divided the property between them. And then it says that the younger son takes everything he's given, he leaves the father's house and then he begins to squander all of his inheritance. He begins to squander everything that God had, everything the father had given him. After hitting rock bottom, he realizes what he'd done. And he comes back home and it says that the father runs out and meets him, gives him a ring and a robe and then brings him in and has a party for him to celebrate his return, right? In the midst of all of that that's happening. If you look at this older son,

you'll see that this older son, the older brother, he's living in the father's house, he's legally in air, he has an inheritance, he's morally obedient in his own estimation, he's doing pretty good. It sounds like a lot of you. Like he's doing a pretty good job. But it says in Luke 15 that he has an interesting response to what's happening with his brother. Let's look at it. The older brother it says became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father saying look, all these gears I've been slaving for you and never disobeys your orders. Yeah, you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when the son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you killed the fat and calf for him. So it doesn't explicitly say that he's offended. But if you just read that text, the signs are there. You see all the signs? All of a sudden he's distant, he's accusing the father, he's comparing his portion to his brother's portion, he's jealous of the celebration that his brother's getting. He even refuses to call the younger son his brother. He says this son of yours. And then this part is the craziest part. He's living like a slave while he's a son. And he says it.

He says that, where is it? He says, all these gears I've been slaving for you, right? You know offenses there when you're serving but really in your heart, I'm slaving, right? He's offended, he's offended with his father. He's offended with the situation that's in front of him. And his offense with the father quickly revealed his entitlement issues, right? He says, you never gave me a young ghost so I could celebrate with my friends, right? He felt entitled to something that the father never promised him. He was entitled. He didn't believe that his boundary lines had fallen in pleasant places. He wasn't convinced by that. And so, the offense kept him from enjoying and participating in what was already his. Notice that the older brother stayed in the house in his offense. Some of you think the greatest sign of offense is when you leave a church. I came to tell you, according to this story, you could be offended to sit right in the house of God. Enemy could be tearing you up and you stay in your church. It's not just the offended people that leave. Sometimes it's the ones that stay and serve but they feel like they're slaving, right? And so, the older brothers in the house of God, he's offended and then the father's response

was to invite both sons back in the house. I love this just like the father his response to your offense. It's always gonna be to pursue you and pull you closer He's not afraid of your offense at him. He's not afraid of you of you being mad about the boundary lines He said no no come here come here. Let me talk to you Let me show you let me have a moment with you. He's pleading with him to come in the house Right, and so he pleads with him to come into the house, and then he says this He told it tells the older son. He says you are always with me and Everything I have is yours Everything I have is yours. They've said it perfectly in Psalm 16b. He said the Lord is my choice portion Here's what you need to know the enemy can't make you question your boundary lines when your portion is the father It's hard for you to get offended at God when you already know you have everything you have in him You have him. He says you're already with me and everything I have belongs to you So what are you mad about? What are you offended about you have me? I am your portion Crazy part is that the parable ends here. We never get to see what decision the son makes We never get to see if he goes in if he we don't we don't see we don't know what happens But I would suggest That what should have happened right there Is that this older son it should have turned his heart to gratitude? That should have been a moment where he says oh my gosh You're right Thank you father Thank you for what you've given me. Thank you for what I have. I'm sorry that I couldn't see it But like you have given me everything. I'm living in the house and not eating from the fridge because I think I'm a slave But I'm like you gave me everything you gave me access to everything that you have Right his response should have been gratitude And so I want to I want to invite you this morning I want you to stand on your feet and I want to invite you to Just begin to thank God. I want to invite you into a place of gratitude today Whether you're offended with God or you're not the Bible also said it's the way we enter into his gates We just lift your hands and begin to thank God for everything you can think of

Everything you can think of thank him for your family. Thank him for your marriage. Thank him for your wife Thank him for your husband. Thank him for your kids. Thank you for the home that he's giving you Thank you for the church that that he's put you in. Thank you for the community that he's surrounded you with come on Just open your mouth and begin to thank God Father, we thank you. Thank you for delivering us. Thank you for setting us free Thank you for every door that you close. Thank you for every door that you open Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for seeing me when I didn't see you Thank you for being faithful to me when I wasn't faithful to you Thank you for finding me in the valley. Thank you for finding me in the pit Thank you for inviting me in the fellowship with you. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for the blood Thank you for jesus. Thank you for the holy spirit. Come on. Open your mouth mercy culture and just begin to thank him Thank him. Thank him. Thank him. Come on. Come on. Thank him. Thank him. Thank you. Lord. We thank you We thank you. Jesus We thank you for the cross. We thank you for that precious blood Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Come on. Keep thanking him Thank him. Thank him. Thank him Father remind us of things that thank you for Remind us of what you've given us Remind us of the portion that you've given us Remind us of what you've done for us Thank you for being provider. Thank you for being delivered. Thank you for being healer Oh, Jehovah, we thank you for healing us Thank you for for victory. Thank you for winning the victory for us on the cross Thank you for fighting battles on our behalf. Thank you jesus We thank you. We thank you. We thank you Your faith for your faith for your faith. You're good to us. Thank you jesus. Thank you jesus. Thank you Lord Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for leading us Thank you for being so gentle with us. Thank you for being patient with us. We just thank you Lord We thank you. We thank you. We thank you Ah, that we thank you

This morning I saw two things That we were supposed to do I felt like I was supposed to give you an opportunity to forgive people in your life And I was supposed to give you an opportunity to forgive god Or not to forgive god, but to bring your offenses to god before him. You can't forgive god He forgives us But you can bring your offenses to him and ask him for help you can ask him and begin to thank him So I want to give you an opportunity to bring both Just close your eyes and put your hands out before you. I just want you to ask him. Say, "Lord, is there anybody I need to forgive?" From a place of thankfulness, knowing that we've been forgiven much, and we forgive much. Is there anybody that I need to forgive? He may bring a face before you, he may bring a name before you. It may be a situation from 30 years ago, and it may be something from last year, maybe something from this morning. But whoever he showed you, I want you to just take a moment. I want you to, let me help you. I want you to physically open your mouth and begin to forgive the person that he just showed you. Like actually say it, don't just think it in your head. Actually say out loud that you forgive that person, that you release that person. For some of you, this moment may be really hard, and so let me teach you something.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Say, "Holy Spirit, help me forgive." This is a hard one, help me. Just take a moment, it's just between you and the Lord. Is there anybody I need to forgive? Is there anybody else that I need to forgive, Lord? (soft piano music) The second thing that I want to invite you into is just close your eyes again, just stay in that posture. Just ask the Lord, am I offended at you? Some of you already know the answer to it, and some of you need the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what you've hidden from yourself. Just say, am I offended by you? Is there anything that I'm offended by, that I'm stuck by with you? Just ask them. Some of you are maybe a family member that passed away prematurely, maybe offended at God for that. For others of you, maybe it's something that didn't happen the way you thought it was gonna happen. You thought you were getting the job, but you didn't get the job. Is there anything that you're offended by God about? Just ask him to show you. And I want you to do this, if he shows you something, I want to invite you to come down to this altar and begin to just lay it at his feet, to begin to just give it to him.

It's a deep moment, some of you have been carrying a fence towards the Lord for years of your life. I keep seeing it in the spirit for some of you, it's been decades of a fence at God. You've been in the house of God, you've still been coming to church, but there's just one thing that you've just been mad at God about for a really long time. And today is a day of freedom, today is a day of salvation, today is a day of deliverance. He's not afraid of your offense. He's not scared of this moment, of your disappointment towards him. He's not afraid of this. But I want you to take a moment in the case you haven't done it, I want you to get authentic with God and tell him what the thing is. Tell him what it was, tell him why it hurt. Tell him what you believe to be true about him. Get authentic with the Father right now. As ugly as that moment was of the older son saying all those things, what I love about it is that he was authentic with the Father. He told him what he saw, what he believed, what hurt him. Tell the Lord what you've been needing to tell him, what you've been wanting to tell him in this. And if you're in the room, if you're not down here, will you begin to pray in the spirit?

We're not prophesying, we're edifying ourselves in the spirit right now, just use your heavenly language in the room right now. (singing in foreign language) If you don't have your heavenly language, just begin to tell the Lord that he's holy. Just begin to tell him that he's worthy. (singing in foreign language) Come on, come on, tell him. Tell him, be authentic before the Father. Tell him what hurts you, tell him what happened. (singing in foreign language) If you're a leader or a pastor of Mercy Culture in the room, will you come down and just begin to pray with people at the altar? (singing in foreign language) Be authentic, be real with the Father today. (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) - Now a lot of times we stop right here. We say the hard thing. We begin to process the hard thing and we don't do the next part. And I'm gonna help you today. Now just lift your hands before the Father. And you can't forgive God, but what you can do is receive His truth. But you can do is receive His truth. And so just ask God, open your mouth and say,

"God, what do you want to say to me about this?" And I say, "What do you want to say to me about this?" What do you want to say? Say, "Speak, Lord, I'm listening." Speak, Lord, I'm listening. Let the Lord begin to minister to you. Let them tell you things. Let them give you visions of what He wants to say, what He's saying, like let them speak to you right now. Say, "Lord, what are you saying? What do you have to say about this?" Speak to me, Father, speak to me, Father. The Father's response to the older Son in the midst of His authenticity. He says, "Son, you're always with me." And He says, "Everything that I have is yours. Everything that I have is yours." I don't know who that's for today, but it's for somebody in the room. There's things that different things the Lord will speak to you guys, but somebody needs to hear. He says, "You're always with me. Everything I have is yours. Everything I have is yours." All across this room, if you're standing in the room when you just stretch your hands down to this altar right now. Father, I pray that you do what only you can do even right now in this moment. (speaking in foreign language) We pray for the healing bomb of Gilead

to come and rest on your people right now. Come on, pray with me, saints. Holy Spirit, come and do what only you can do. Father, come and reveal yourself. Come and speak your true Spirit of truth. Come and minister to your people right now. Father, come speak to your children. Come speak to your sons. Come speak to your daughter. We just declare that today is deliverance day, that years of offense with you would fall off of sons and daughters right now in the name of Jesus. We pray for years of confusion to follow up with your kids right now in the name of Jesus. (speaking in foreign language) Father, I pray for the revelation of everything I have is yours. So rest on them right now. The revelation of you are always with me. So follow up right now in the name of Jesus. Oh, come and minister to your kids. Come speak to your kids. Come along on your kids. I pray for your reckless love to come in this room right now. Come on in, Father, come on in. Come on in, waves. Waves of the love of the Father, coming in the room right now. (speaking in foreign language)

The last thing we're gonna do this morning is I said it earlier, but there are many of you in this room that maybe you haven't been offended by people, you don't offend it by God. Yep, you don't feel like you're offended by God. But I felt like this word was more than an opportunity today. An invitation today and to get free from offense. I felt like this word is actually a warning for what is to come in the earth. But what is coming in America. That scripture in Matthew that we were reading earlier is says that all of these crazy things that there's shaking that is coming. And it says that many are gonna be offended, many are gonna fall away. And I wanna plead with you today in the same way that the Father pleaded with the older son that you cannot afford to be taken out by offense. That you're being conditioned now for the offense that is to come later, the offense that's gonna knock later on when things are crazier than they are right now. And so, here's what I wanna ask you to do. Will you lift your hands? And I just want you to begin to ask God for His help, begin to ask Him to help you. Begin to ask him, Lord, would you keep me in the midst of the shaking? Ask him, I want you to authentically ask the Lord, Lord, would you keep me? I don't want to be offended. I don't want to be offended when everything's being shaken.

I don't want to be offended when everything is happening, Lord, I pray that you can help me to stay in alignment with you, that you help me to stay abiding in you, Lord, I pray that you help me to stay in love with you. Psalm 119, 165 says, it says, "Great peace hath they which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them. Father, I pray that you will help us to fall in love with your law, help us to fall in love with your ways, help us to fall in love with your desires, help us to fall in love with your word. Father, we don't want to be offended when it's all coming down. We don't want to be offended when everything's being shaken. Father, I pray that you help us, Holy Spirit, we need your help, come on, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. I don't want to be offended when it's all coming down. I don't want to be offended when it's all coming down. Last thing, and then I'm going to get out of here, the last thing, the whole time I've been working through this message we were praying in the back, I've had all these moments where the Lord keeps reminding me of people that I personally know, that have been offended with God and have walked away from the Lord. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, will you just raise your hand if you know anybody who got offended with God, who left the house of God, who left their walk with the Lord, they walked away from God because of offense. Can we enter into a quick moment of intercession for those people? Can we pray for them together real quick? Is that okay? Come on, just begin to pray in the Spirit, come on, mercy culture, let's intercede for the older brother, for the younger brother, let's intercede for the offended one to come back home. We call them home, we call them home, we call them home, we call them home, we call them home.

We call them home, we call them back into the Kingdom, we call them back into the Kingdom. I just pray, let's do a little fit fall over your sons, let us fit fall over your daughters. I pray that they wouldn't get caught in the chirp any longer, I declare, let that chirp release your sons, let that chirp release your daughters, in the name of Jesus. Father, we pray with the lost ones, we pray for the ones that have been hurt by real things, by church heard, by a fist by people, and we pray for them, let the offense fall over them. I pray that you would open their eyes to see the schemes of the enemy, that they would come on home after they could see what the enemy did. I pray for revelation, to come to them, let the spirit of liberation grow to back. Let the spirit of revelation grow to back home, come home, come home, come home, come home, come home. Come home, come home, come home, come home, come home, come home, come home, come home. When I ask you to do this, I just felt this in my spirit, just for this whole week, will you commit to praying for whoever you just prayed for, whoever the face is that you saw, whoever the offended person that you can remember? I can think of a bunch of people who have left this church offended, will you commit with me to pray for them this week. I feel like it's an assignment that we need Declare that the spirit of truth will reveal to them the strategy and the schemes of the enemy. They'll be able to see clearly that they'll come to their senses and see God's plan for them, see what God has for them. Pray with me for them this week. Can I pray for you real quick to put your hands out in front of you, Father? I thank you for this house. I thank you for every person here. I just declare your word great peace. Have those who love your law. It will not be offended. Lord, I pray help us to fall in love with your law. Help this house to fall in love with your ways. Help us to fall in love with what you want, Lord, what you say, what you're doing. Help us. I pray that you will make us undefendable, that even as the offenses come, Father, that we wouldn't stumble, that we wouldn't walk away from you amidst the offenses, Lord. I pray for grace, the supernatural empowerment that only comes by your spirit,

that this house will not be taken out by the wave of offense in the culture. I declare that this house will not be taken out by the wave of offense in the nation. I declare that this house will not be taken out by the wave of offense in the nations. Father, I pray that you give us eyes to see. Help us to discern the schemes and the strategies at the enemy. Help us to fall more in love with you than we are in love with the pain. Teach us Holy Spirit. We love you. We love you. We thank you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. As I was over on the side, as she was praying, the Lord brought me back to a moment where I was on a walk with the Lord and had sandals on. And the Lord said, "Take your sandals off." And the moment that I did, and I touched the ground, the Lord said, "Now you're sensitive." And with a picture that I saw is that the enemy is trying to get us to put on the shoes of offense so that we can't be sensitive to what God has for us. So I would tell you this week in your daily encounter, just as a prophetic act, I saw a picture of me taking my shoes off and removing what separates me from the ground of Holy Ground. And I felt like the scheme of the enemy is that offense would steal holy ground moments. Don't allow offense to get between you and being sensitive to the Holy Spirit.