Powerful & Straight Forward!

Incredible & doctrinally sound, this book outlines a major area of defeat for many Christians: Offense. It serves as a major heart check & I was both thrilled and convicted. I have slight reservations about the section on losing your salvation, but that was a subtopic to the overall context of the book, and therefore did not take away from my reading experience.

This main message of this book was okay - try not to live in offense and forgive people because living in offense and lack of forgiveness is not the will of God. However, I felt in my opinion John baked some of his own biases into the text.

First, it seemed like John REALLY disliked church hoppers. He spent the first half of this book discouraging going from church to church… which of course I get that, there are Karens within the church who will leave if the pastor refuses to change the color of the carpet, but unfortunately he never gave any specifics in his stories as to why people were leaving the churches - what their actual experiences were… he just urged no matter what to never leave a church unless you feel God telling you to… because in John’s opinion if you don’t hear Him telling you to leave that just means you need to stay.

Here’s some quotes about church hoppers from him:

“Notice that God said Cain would become a fugitive and a vagabond as a result of his actions. There are numerous spiritual fugitives and vagabonds in our churches today. Their gifts, singing, preaching, prophesying, and so on are not received by the leadership in their previous church, so off they go. They are running aimlessly and carry an offense, looking for that perfect church that will receive their gift and heal their hurts.”

“I call a persecution complex: "Everyone is out to get me." They comfort themselves that they are just a persecuted saint of prophet of God. They are suspicious of everyone. This is exactly what happened to Cain.”

“Recently a woman told me about a friend of hers who left one church and began attending another. She invited the new pastor over for dinner. In the course of the conversation the pastor asked why she left the first church. The lady told him about all the problems in the leadership of her previous church. The pastor listened and attempted to comfort her. From experience, I know it would have been wise for that pastor to encourage the woman by the Word of God to deal with her hurt and critical attitude. If necessary, he should have suggested that she return to her former church until God released her in peace.”

He told a few stories

Story 1 Summarized:
John has someone who is spreading rumors in the church about him and almost gets him fired. He hears some dark secrets but the person but feels the Lord is telling him to keep it quiet. Later, even worse things were found out so the person was eventually fired.

Story 2 Summarized:
John loves his pastor and the pastor can do no wrong. He hangs out with some friends who share their concern about the pastor and John who has started to see issues shares his concerns as well. The friends convince him to start a new church together and he does but doesn’t feel right and eventually returns to his old church. John claims he was gossiping about his old pastor and he really needed to stay in his old church.

In neither of these stories was John actually specific about what the real issues were that were going on. Without knowing all the details we lose a lot of important context.

This leads me into my second point:
Nowhere in this text does John address what to do about toxic church leadership and situations involving abuse. Are we supposed to stay in the church and endure it because we shouldn’t live in offense?

This quote by John had my jaw on the floor:

“Even though David was rejected by the one who should have fathered him, he remained loyal even after Saul's death. It is easy to be loyal to a leader or father who loves you, but what about one who is out to destroy you? Will you be a man or woman after the heart of God, or will you seek to avenge yourself?”

Here’s some other quotes of how he describes people who were hurt by leaders of their church:

“They extol how wrong things are or how badly they and others were treated. They feel justified in their decisions. But their reasoning is only another layer of deception that keeps them from seeing the offense and their own character flaws.”

“You may have done nothing to provoke the wrong you incurred at the hand of another. But if you contrast what was done to you with what you've been forgiven of, there is no comparison. It would not even put a dent in the debt you owe! If you feel cheated, you have lost your concept of the mercy extended you.”

“What she wanted seemed small in comparison to all the pain he had brought to her and her children. But she was in bondage to human justice. She had set herself up as a judge, claiming her right to the debt and waiting for payment. His offense had hindered her relationship with her new husband. It had also affected her relationship with all male authorities because her former husband had been her pastor as well.”

“Assistants to leaders in a church often become offended by the person they serve. They soon become critical-experts at all that is wrong with their leader or those he or she appoints. They become offended. Their sight is distorted. They see from a totally different perspective than God's. They believe their mission in life is to deliver those around them from an unfair leader. They win the hearts of the disgruntled, discontent, and ignorant, and before they know it they end up splitting or dividing the church or ministry. Just like Absalom.”

There’s a few other things John said that were shocking. I’ll list them here:

-Ministers need to be more controlling of their congregation.
-If you’re unforgiving you’re going to hell.
-He decided not to do anything about his son being bullied and instead just allowed it to happen to grow him.

He often used scripture with the word offense in it, when in about half of those scriptures the word offense is better translated as “temptation,” or “stumbling block”.

Lastly, he uses the scriptures of David and Saul to justify not “getting revenge,” against those in authority over you. Unfortunately the books of the Bible that include the story of David and Saul are historical accounts. They talk about what happened, not necessarily how you should respond to a similar situation.

In the wrong hands, this book can be very toxic, and I have seen first hand how cult leaders manipulate the message in here to silence victims. Speaking up against abuse and sharing your story is not gossiping or living in offense. You can forgive someone while still calling out their wrongs publicly. If you feel hurt by the church in some way, your feelings are valid. You are allowed to leave a church if you are being abused, taken advantage of or wronged in some way. This type of situation was conveniently left out of John’s book. I wonder if some of the stories he told were actually stories of abuse in the church and not just “offenses.” Of course you should still forgive but unfortunately full reconciliation may not be possible. I would proceed with caution if you decide to read this book. Often older books like this are full of oppressive language that toxic leaders use to control people. I am thankful more conversations are happening within the church about spiritual abuse and that books like these can be reevaluated through that lens.

I plan on reading this book again and again.

What a well-supported book. I read this after hearing my boss's recommendation for years. It is as good as he said, full of biblical support for the idea that offense is indeed a trap. I've referenced this book multiple times in the past week and encouraged others to read it.

I think for me what was MOST applicable is these idea of getting offended at God. It led to a lot of soul- searching and repentance on my part. Very good.

The one issue I had is broader than offense - Bevere believes you can lose your salvation and I do not. Not worth ignoring the book, but I have given that caveat out as I've recommended it.

I finally finished! This book has blessed my heart and mind so much! I praise God for my sister recommending this book to me! The declarations have helped me to reference the word!