Avodah Talk w/ Matt Walton

The Radical Power of Being Unoffendable in a Broken World

• Matt Walton

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Forgiveness and being unoffendable are powerful spiritual disciplines that Jesus modeled perfectly even after betrayal. This approach transforms relationships, business leadership, and personal peace by breaking the cycle of offense and anger that drives much of our society.

• Jesus demonstrated radical forgiveness in John 21:12 by inviting disciples who betrayed him to breakfast
• Our society uses anger and offense as primary motivations, but Jesus showed a different way
• Being unoffendable isn't about tolerating bad behavior but choosing a heart posture that releases anger
• When we hold unforgiveness, Jesus reminds us that hatred in our hearts is as serious as murder
• Motivation should come from the Lord rather than from anger or offense
• Book recommendation: "Unoffendable" by Brant Hansen provides biblical foundation for this concept
• Releasing unforgiveness and offense creates freedom rather than weakness

I encourage you to forgive, release that anger, and make a commitment to be unoffendable. Check out Brant Hansen's book for practical guidance rooted in scripture.


Speaker 1:

What's up, guys? This is Matt with the Vota Talk or the Real Matt Walton. This is your hub for all things Kingdom business business as ministry business strategy. My goal is to provide as much value, minute by minute, each podcast that you listen to. So let's get to it. What's up, guys? This is Matt with the Vota Talk, or at the Real Matt Walton, depending on how you found me.

Speaker 1:

And today I want to talk about being unoffendable and releasing that anger and forgiving maybe somebody that you have not forgiven yet. And one of my favorite scriptures about this is how Jesus modeled this perfectly when we see in John 21, verse 12,. This is after Jesus had been beaten, brutally murdered, and his disciples had sold him out, had denied him, and yet what did he do? It says in John 21, 12,. And Jesus said to them come and have breakfast. He did not say come and have breakfast, and then we read later where he chastised them. It was like you idiots, come on, let's eat breakfast, here's your eggs, but come on. Jesus never modeled that one time, and so he lived out this model of being just unoffendable at all times, and I really strive to do that. I do that well sometimes. I don't do that well other times. But God is taking me through this process right now of releasing any anger, forgiving every moment that I may have some unforgiveness in my heart and then again just being unoffendable. And so what this does a lot of times is we start to recognize that just how radical that Jesus was, because we look at it. A lot of times we look at somebody who has committed the act of murder and we're like but they actually murdered somebody and Jesus is like but if you have hate in your heart, you are no different. So Jesus has a way of leveling that playing field and I think if we really latch on to the truth that is found in the gospel and the truth of the words that came out of Jesus's mouth, then we start to find ourselves being very uncomfortable, but being freed from the way society says that we need to be angry about this. How are we supposed to be motivated? And what I strive to do is have my motivation come purely from the Lord, and this is where God has me right now. So are you angry? Have you not forgiven somebody about something? There's a book that's out. It's called Unaffendable, by Brant Hansen. I want to encourage everybody to read that book. It goes into a great detail of some stuff that I'm talking about here today.

Speaker 1:

But the question is that the Jesus that is living in and through you that says, come and have breakfast with me, I've made a feast for you Is that the Jesus Christ that lives inside of you. You're going to have people that will give up on you. You're going to have people that will doubt you. You're going to have people that speak bad about you. No-transcript, my heart posture is to always have that same heart posture of Jesus that says, hey, I've made a feast for you, come, let's have some breakfast. And I fail at times at that in a great deal, but again, god is really working on me for that, and so I wanted to share that with you guys.

Speaker 1:

We live in a world where anger and being offended are the driving factors behind every single thing that we do, just about If we're not listening to something. Think about social media, the things that we share or share the most. It was probably something that, like, maybe made you upset recently or that provoked some type of an emotion and I'm not necessarily talking about really good emotion about man. That was awesome to watch this person do this act of kindness.

Speaker 1:

I'm talking about the other side of things, but I find it just fascinating how Jesus did not just tolerate his people and their shortcomings.

Speaker 1:

He loved them through all of that and he knew what was coming. He knew that they would fail, that they would do things that would go against him. He knew that they would deny him, and yet we see later, after Peter denied him and Jesus welcoming him in for breakfast after making him a feast, we see Peter going and risking his life in acts for Jesus and for the finished work of the cross. So if you're struggling with that, I want to encourage you to forgive, release that anger and make a commitment to be unoffendable and go check out that book. It really gives you some good foundation on how you can become unoffendable and it'll tie. Everything is tied to scripture and so you're able to tie it to the true power that is only found in scripture, because we serve the living God, the one true living God, and we have the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us, and so how awesome is that? So hopefully this encourages you to forgive, release some of that anger and truly start the path of becoming unoffendable.