My brother called recently after a dissatisfying conversation with a customer service agent. Not only did he have to endure the wrong the company did and use his time and energy to try to fix it, but he also had to deal with an unhelpful, uncaring company representative. He was angry about the situation, and he was also angry about being angry! He didn’t want this situation to have the power to affect his heart.
He called me because he wanted help processing the experience; he wanted to feel peaceful again, and he thought if he talked about it long enough, he would. Processing is important, so I listened for a while, but I was more interested in helping him realize there’s a step beyond processing. I wanted to talk about how to prevent situations from getting into your heart.
Offenses will happen. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) When they do, they affect us mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, though we may not be fully aware of it. Mentally, there’s the “wrongness” of the offense. Because we know right from wrong, it’s offensive when wrong happens. We must take the time to process and deal with it, even if we choose to do nothing and let it go. Emotionally, we usually don’t live expecting offenses. So we may feel vulnerable, hurt, intruded upon, upset, frustrated, and even angry. Physically, every word we speak, thought we think, and emotion we feel has a chemical constituent. We may think it’s just a thought, but that thought affects our body. It affects our cells, our organs, and eventually our systems. And spiritually, an offense takes our focus off God.
Here is where we have a choice. The more we revisit the offense, without giving it to the Lord, the more deeply it embeds. Emotionally, we start building defenses against future offenses. Our walls of defense shut out not only the “bad” but also the good. The neuron pathways our thoughts create in our brains become mental ruts that get deeper and deeper the more they’re traveled. Soon situations where there is no offense are seen from the viewpoint of these ruts. As this way of viewing things becomes stronger and stronger, a mental stronghold is created. Physically, the same chemicals, and worse, are released every time we revisit the offense. The body tenses, and the organs and systems eventually become sick and unable to function at full capacity.
But the biggest problem is spiritual. Not only has this offense affected our body and our way of thinking, but now we see situations from our viewpoint and not God’s. Our focus is not on the Lord, but on defending ourselves. With that mindset, we can’t help but doubt God’s goodness and ultimate plan for us.
All this is what happens when we leave an offense unsurrendered. The Lord can heal the destructive influences! Completely! Totally! But if there is a way to prevent this from happening, isn’t that worth considering?
Surrendering an offense means giving it to God. But how many times do we give it to God and then find ourselves thinking about it again and getting worked up? Giving thanks is a step further that safeguards our hearts and helps prevent damage from occurring.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to “…give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” This may seem unrealistic. But when we give thanks, we are purposely changing our stance toward the offense. We stop fighting it internally. The challenge of being thankful for something we see as negative causes us to focus more on Christ. The energy and effort involved brings positive results to our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Plus, we open ourselves up to His grace.
Do we need to feel thankful to give thanks? I don’t think so. In many places, the Bible doesn’t treat thankfulness as a feeling. The Word tells us to “give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) and mentions the “sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Psalm 116:17). I think we can give thanks as an act of obedience.
If my brother had gone into that phone conversation thanking God, he’d have safeguarded his heart, and frustration and anger wouldn’t have found a place to lodge and have the power to affect his mood and his day. Plus, he may have actually gotten further in the solution to the problem. Thankfulness is hard to resist!
~ Deborah S. Bodnar, writer
~ photo by Tatiana Rodriguez, Unsplash
