Not Offendable
Truly humble and grounded people are immune to rejection, criticism and humiliation. In this state of enlightenment the truly humble person has nothing to defend and will not experience critical attacks from others. When you are in humility you will see critical statements as verbalization by the other persons inner conflict and you will seldom take situations personally.-Jeffrey Combs
How many of my readers believe or have been taught that love is a feeling? How many of us at this present time believe that peace, joy, and love are influenced by our circumstances? Today, I challenge these beliefs as if any of you answered yes, then you are wrong. Love, peace, joy are all states of being not feelings. The good news is that your circumstances do NOT change these states…YOU do when you bring emotions to the table which change your state of being.
There are different types of love for sure. The way I love my husband and my children involves feelings and these feelings are different from how I love others in my life. However, the love I want to reference is agape love. The love that God and Christ have for us and the love that we should all be displayiong when we were commanded in the Bible to love our enemies.
There is a quote and I am not sure who said it, it says “If only the eyes saw souls”. I found this phrase so simple, yet so profound. This is the path to developing agape love. "Agape love is emotionless” as stated by Dan Jenkins. Agape love has a mission; a mission to protect and save souls. It is not offended; agape love recognizes that hateful spewed words are coming from a hurting soul. Agape love allows to live in the solution.
In the last 5 years, I have adopted the attitude that if people’s words or actions do not effect my bank account or my personal reationship with God, then I do not give it my energy. It is harder with family…let me honest. Not being offended by family members continues to be my weakness. When those you love the most intentionally act as stumbling block toward you it is hard to not react, retaliate and it is easy to revert back to ineffective behavior you learned as a child. My solution is pray even harder for them and pray before you engage with them, and love them from a distance if necessary.
The reality is that if we would focus more on improving ourselves and working to become unoffendable then when people say and do things that are hateful, then you have the emotional capability to ignore it. It does not matter how intelligent/educated you are if you do not have the emotional fortitude to act in a way that will allow you to succeed. EQ will always trump IQ. I leave you with this quote by Bryant H McGill, "The feeling of being ‘offended' is a warning indicator that is showing you where to LOOK within yourself for unresolved issues."
