Not Offended

A compilation

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You might be experiencing a little faith fatigue. You aren’t alone. All of us go through prayer slumps! Sometimes it’s the slow erosion of faith. But more often than not, the loss of a prayer life is traced to unanswered prayer. Death by disappointment. What do you do when God doesn’t answer how you want or when you want? Let me tell you what you don’t do: you don’t stop praying! It’s always too soon to quit. It’s always too soon to give up.

One promise has sustained [a couple of my friends] through the toughest times and deepest disappointments: Luke 7:23: Blessed is he who is not offended at me.

Here’s the context.

Jesus is doing miracles right and left. He is healing diseases, casting out demons, and restoring sight to the blind, but John the Baptist misses the miracle train. It seems like Jesus is rescuing everybody except His most faithful follower who is in prison. And John is His cousin, nonetheless. It seems like Jesus could have, and maybe should have, organized a rescue operation and busted him out before he was beheaded. Instead He sends a message via [John's] disciples. He tells them to tell John about all the miracles He is doing and then He asks them to relay this simple promise: Blessed is he who is not offended at me.

Have you ever felt like God was doing miracles for everyone and their brother, but you seem to be the odd man out? It seems like God is keeping His promises to everyone but you? I wonder if that’s how John the Baptist felt. What do you do when you feel like God is answering everyone’s prayers but yours?

In the words of my friends who have experienced their fair share of unanswered prayers: “We try to live our lives unoffended by God. Jesus promises that we will be blessed if we aren’t offended.” When God doesn’t answer how or when you want, you have a choice to make. You can give up or hang on. You can let go or pray through. You can get frustrated with God or choose to live unoffended.

My friends have chosen to live unoffended: “Jesus promises blessing if we are not offended when He does things for others. And if He does it for them, He might do it for us. I don’t know why God does what He does. I do know that 100% of the prayers I don’t pray won’t get answered.” I love that approach to prayer, that approach to life. 100% of the prayers you don’t pray won’t get answered.—Mark Batterson1

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The way the Lord works in our lives and the way He chooses to do things is often past our comprehension. It’s often mysterious, it’s sometimes humbling, and it usually takes faith and patience, because the Lord’s timetable is so often different from ours. Living for Jesus and following Him and doing His will and His work requires faith and trust and humility, because you’re not the one in control—Jesus is. We have to remind ourselves constantly that He knows best, that He does all things well, that His priorities are differentand so much more long term and “big picture” than ours are.

Even with all the Lord’s awesome promises, such as “Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He will give it you,”2 we have to remember that we can do our part, but we’re not the ones calling the shots. We’re not the ones with the bird’s-eye view of past, present, and future, and the master plan for eternity. We can harness all the spiritual tools He has put at our fingertips, we can claim His promises, we can do our part. But ultimately it is His will that must be done. The Lord is in control, and He knows best.

So it’s important to keep an attitude of humility and simple trust in the Lord. Otherwise you can struggle with so many questions when things don’t turn out the way you were hoping or even the way you really desperately prayed they would.—Maria Fontaine

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There are many beautiful, wonderful, satisfying, encouraging perspectives that you can take when you are faced with situations in which everything seems to be going wrong and you wonder why I’m not answering or intervening and it seems I’m not doing what I’ve promised in My Word, but in the end it all comes down to faith.

In order to have strong faith, it must be tested, refined, and purified. It’s the testing and refining and purifying that is hard—so hard to endure, so hard to understand, so hard to accept.

I am just. I keep My Word. I am faithful. But My ways are so much higher than your ways.3 My priorities are so different from your priorities. You want quick answers, visible results. I’m almost always after something deeper, even more precious and long-lasting—the kind of results that take time.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

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Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.

People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.

By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.

By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.

Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.—Hebrews 11, New International Version

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There’s no “secret answer” that I can give you that is going to see you through the tough times you’re experiencing now, or the ones you’re going to go through in the future. But what will see you through is faith—faith that never lets go, that never gives up.

You don’t have to feel like you have great faith. You don’t have to feel like a spiritual giant. All you have to do is stick it out, clinging to the anchor of My Word no matter what things look like around you, and eventually you will win the reward of the promise.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

Published on Anchor July 2012. Read by Amber Larriva. Music by Michael Dooley.


1 thecirclemaker.com.

2 John 15:16.

3 Isaiah 55:9.