Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 199). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Now that is what I want.   What about you?   But that doesn’t really make sense, does it? Brant says, “Choosing to be unoffendable means choosing to be humble. Not only that, the practice teaches humility. Once you’ve decided you can’t control other people; once you’ve reconciled yourself to the fact that the world, and its people, are broken; once you’ve realized your own moral failure before God; once you’ve abandoned the idea that your significance comes from anything other than God, you’re growing in humility, and that’s exactly where God wants us all. It’s contrary to seemingly everything in our culture, but the more we divest ourselves of ourselves, the better our lives get . Jesus told us as much. He said if we’d give up our lives, for...

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 194). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) So what does self-forgiveness mean?   Brant says, “Self-forgetfulness is not about mystically wishing myself into nonexistence or pretending I’m meaningless. It’s just the opposite. Self-forgetfulness is what happens when we’re emotionally healthy. It’s remembering that God is my defender, His opinion is what matters, and whatever my offenders are doing to me, I’ve done to others as well. And God has forgiven me. I simply must forgive in return and forfeit my right to anger.” He then says, “So it’s not about ‘clearing the mind’ or embracing nothingness. On the contrary; rather than clearing my mind, I have to remind myself of those larger truths. I have to consider others better than myself, consider how the lilies of the field don’t worry about t...

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 190). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) There are some character qualities that we want and others we don’t.   The problem with humility is we probably don’t understand what it really is.   Brant says, “When we choose, ahead of time— before conversations, before meetings, before our day begins— to be unoffendable, we’re simply choosing humility.” He goes on, “You’ll become difficult to offend simply because there’s so much less of you to defend. When you are headed into a stressful social situation, with difficult, offensive people, and you decide in advance, ‘I’m not going to let these people offend me; I’m forgiving them in advance,’ you are dying to yourself. You are sacrificing yourself on their behalf. You are making yourself less. You’re willingly giving up your own inter...