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What do you do when someone mistreats you?

I didn’t ask what you want to do. I didn’t ask what your automatic fleshly reaction is. I already know that.

Your natural, knee-jerk response is the same as mine. You want to strike back. You want to do something or say something that will even the score. If you can’t manage that, you might settle for a few hours (or days or years) of feeling sorry for yourself. You might try to ease your wounded feelings by telling someone how wrongly you’ve been treated.

On a purely natural, human level that’s how we all want to react when someone does us wrong. But I want to tell you something today. If you’re a born-again child of the living God, you have no business just reacting to things on a natural, human level.

God has called and equipped you to live on a higher level. He’s given you the power to respond in a supernatural way when someone does you wrong. He’s given you the power to respond in love.

“Oh, Brother Copeland, that’s too hard. I don’t want to do that!”

Yes, you do – and here’s why. If you will train yourself to respond God’s way, you can take mistreatment and transform it from the curse the devil intends it to be into a seed of tremendous blessing in your life.

When you learn to obey God in the face of persecution, you can literally get rich – in the areas of finances, favor and opportunity – off the very persecution the devil sent to keep you down.

Serious Business
Make no mistake, that is the devil’s intention. He sends people across your path to offend you and mistreat you for the express purpose of stealing the Word of God – and the anointing that goes with it – out of your life. Mark 4:17 says, “…persecution ariseth for the word’s sake.”

The devil knows how powerful you are when you are anointed. He knows because he once was anointed himself. The Bible says before evil was found in him, he was the “anointed cherub.” So it is his one ambition to trick you into cutting yourself off from that anointing.

That’s why he sends bigots to insult you and thieves to steal from you. That’s why, whenever he can, he goads people around you into being insensitive and unappreciative. He wants you to get offended and cut off your supernatural power supply.

Most believers don’t realize it, but that’s what offenses do. You can see that in Matthew 11:4-6. There, the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus and asked if He was truly the Anointed One. Jesus answered and said to them:
Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.
We need to realize, my friend, that offenses are serious business. They are sent by the devil to rob us of the anointing and block the flow of the blessings of God. That fact alone should be enough to make us decide never, ever, to be offended again.

I know I’ve made that decision. I’ve determined that no matter how someone may insult my intelligence, my beliefs or even my race, I’m not willing to lose my anointing over it.

No matter how they treat me, or what they might call me, I will not take offense.

Now I realize someone may be reading this and thinking, Yeah, that’s easy for you to say! Nobody says and does the things to you like they do to me!

That may be true. Although I am an Indian, and have had ample opportunity for offense, where race is concerned, I know there are many people who have suffered much more mistreatment than I have. But I can say this: No matter what color you are, you are welcome in more churches than I am. I’ve had entire books written for the express purpose of criticizing me. How many books have they written about you?

I only bring those things to your attention because I want you to know that dealing with offenses isn’t any easier for me than it is for anyone else. I’ve come up against some hard people and some hard situations in my life. So I know if God can see me through, He can do the same for you.

Rejoice!…No Kidding
Once we decide we will take a devil-sent opportunity for offense and turn it into a harvest of blessing, the first thing we need to know is what God wants us to do in that situation. If we’re not supposed to strike back, if we’re not supposed to get our feelings hurt and go off in a huff, what are we supposed to do? First Peter 4 answers that question:
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you…(verses 12-14).
God doesn’t want us to cry and complain when someone does us wrong. He doesn’t want us to sue them. He wants us to REJOICE!

I can just hear your old flesh groan: “Man, you have to be kidding! I’m supposed to rejoice when someone does me wrong? What do I have to rejoice about?”

Plenty!

According to Jesus, persecution sets you up for blessing. It opens you up for great rewards! Jesus made that very clear in Luke 6. He said:
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven…(verses 22-23).

Excerpt permission granted by Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Author Biography

Kenneth Copeland
Web site: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
 
For the last 50 years Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been passionately teaching Christians all over the world how to apply the principles of faith found in God’s WORD to their lives.
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