Years ago I became victim to a ‘spirit of offence’. I had forgotten about it until a few weeks ago when I sensed that one of my ministry friends had fallen victim to the same thing. I prayed for him and then wrote him an explanation.
I am sharing my letter to him with you, since it is just possible that you too have fallen prey to a Spirit of Offence.
What I Sensed
This is what I told my friend about what I sensed happening in his life.
There has been a ‘spirit of offence’ assigned against you, which has probably been at work for many years. I suspect that it traces back to your youth or childhood, in much the same way that a spirit of rejection works. You may be able to identify experiences you have had of feeling rejected, which cause you to feel emotionally vulnerable.
Anyway, the sense that came to me was that this offence issue is not a product of life experience, but a deliberate strategy of the enemy, to entangle your life in offences. It has a double edge in that it causes you to feel offended, rejected and unable to operate with welcomed acceptance, but it also causes people to feel some undefined sense of offence toward you.
My Past Experience
A spirit of offence was at work against my ministry in New Zealand, back in 1980, which an intercessor discerned and resisted. The first I knew of it was a phone call from a young mum in my congregation. She explained to me that she had suddenly felt a very strong feeling of offence toward me.
That feeling settled onto her one afternoon and she found herself feeling offended by me and angry toward me. However, being more spiritually sensitive than some, she stopped herself from indulging the feelings which had come upon her. She demanded to answer to herself why she was feeling that way.
As she prayed about what she was feeling she realised that there was no basis to her feelings. I had not done or said anything to her or anyone else that could possibly cause such a reaction. She sought the Lord for wisdom about what was going on and what she sensed was that a Spirit of Offence had rested onto her, to cause her to reject my ministry.
She prayed against that spirit for a long time before she felt the feelings of offence lift from her. Once those feelings dissolved it became all the more clear to her that this was a spiritual attack against my ministry and was completely baseless.
Then she realised with a shock that she needed to pray for me and the congregation. She had discerned what was going on and had resisted it. But others might become completely deceived by that spirit and rise up against the work of the Lord. As an intercessor she then began praying against the work of that evil spirit. She phoned me to tell me what was going on.
Evil At Work
That spirit of offence caused people to feel offended or to take up an offence against me, for no cause. Unsuspecting people would fall prey to the feelings of offence and assume there must be substance behind them; otherwise (they thought) they would not be feeling those things.
When the intercessor encountered those feelings she was initially caught up in them, but then stopped to discern what was going on. She realised that the feelings were baseless, just as waking in a good or bad mood is completely random, not based on real circumstances.
She then resisted the feelings, praying against the spirit of offence, and the feelings lifted from her. There was no way she could then feel offence toward me. The feelings of offence were not based on substance, but were spiritually generated.
My Concern For My Friend
I advised my ministry friend that there has been a similar strategy to entangle him, and probably his family, in experiences where relationships have become strained by offence. Once one person takes up an offence they are trapped with it in their arms and it spoils the relationships around them.
I explained… “I expect that you have felt offended by the way people have treated you and responded to you at times. They may well have treated you poorly at times, because they were under this same spirit of offence creating a feeling of offence when no offence existed at all. Once the offence is taken up further offences occur, and this creates substance on a non-existent foundation.
I believe you need to become free from the offences which others have put on you, for good reasons or no reasons at all. The enemy has made ‘offence’ an Achilles heel to your ministry. It has been his master plan to entangle you and to besmirch your reputation with a cloud of indefinite negative feeling.
Claiming Victory
The Lord wants you to wear a spirit of Joy, based on the fact that you are “accepted in the beloved” and that no matter who or what stands against you it cannot separate you from the love of God. No weapon formed against you will prosper. You don’t need to take up offence, even toward those who have taken up offence against you without cause. If you do that, you will be “overcome by evil” instead of overcoming evil with good.
You need to become a man of awesome grace, giving grace to people who feel or express offence toward you. This enemy strategy has been broken, but it may still have after-shocks or ripples for some time. During that process you need to triumph in your spirit against this evil assignment.
I suggest that you even make it a discipline to remember those who have offended you, taken up an offence, withstood you, ignored you, rejected you and the like, and those to whom you have felt barriers or taken up an offence. You then need to pray blessing on them.
Remember the command of Christ to “bless those who curse you, pray for those who despitefully use you”.
Grace Wins Out
Your ministry of grace, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, will neutralise the residue of offence. As you become abandoned in blessing others, laughing when they misunderstand or oppose you, blessing them while they are trying to curse you, the dam will burst. All the grace which is yours but which has been withheld from you will break free and pour over your life and ministry.
It will sweep you to the nations, to be welcomed and loved and appreciated. Those who have neglected you and dismissed you, withholding the honour that is your due, will have a change of heart and find themselves full hearted in appreciation for who you are and what God is doing in and through you.
Now, every word is to be confirmed by the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses, so I’m not imposing this on you as some final authority. I trust who you are in the Lord and your heart to walk closely with Him. So I simply submit this to you. I’m barracking for your ministry. I have seen in vision form what God is doing with you and I want it to come to full fruition. So I bless you in the name of the Lord and humbly submit what I have sensed, confident that you and the Lord make a great team and can sort out what to do from here, whether I’m right or wrong.
Tags: evil spirit, grace, intercessor, new zealand, offence, offended, spirit of offence, spirit of rejection
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