The Anatomy of Falling {or, “...how to go from hot to lukewarm in a very short time...”}

If only there were a “red alert” attached to offenses. A serious fall begins precisely at the point where we no longer love as we did at the first. And I don’t mean our love for God. Many scholars will tell you that the warnings contained in Revelation about the lukewarm condition involve our love for the brethren.

You become offended, and at that very point, you begin seeing people you used to care about through a distorted filter. You should have rejected the offense instantly, but you didn’t. Now, it will always get more difficult to reject. And then more difficult. Yet more difficult, each and every time you or I entertain our right to be offended.

Once you fall from a first-love state, you are at the mercy of your own opinions and emotions. Think about it: you left off your obedience to the Holy Spirit, who is continually telling you the truth - the truth that involves the command to let the offense go. You grieve Him, deeply.

The first thing to go is your clarity.

Cue the spiral into the lukewarm state. Next, you manifest darkness. How? By acting on your distortions and involving the heart and mind of others by “sharing how you feel” - all those feelings flowing from your space of non-clarity. There is no going back from here.

There is forgiveness. Always. But there is no putting that stink back in the bottle. There is no unspilling that milk. You will - from this point forward - have more to do to fix it than you ever would have by keeping your offense to yourself.

You have set in motion a series of events in which you both lock yourself in a position of perpetually justifying your opinions, and contaminating others. You have activated a negative confirmation bias that will never leave you until you send it away. You will find what you look for, you will see what you believe. You are manifesting darkness, not light.

Yet you won’t see your understanding as darkened - because if the light that is in you be darkness, behold how great the darkness. The disturbance of love and the disorientation of unrepented offense has stolen your clarity. You have dumped your stuff into the material world, projecting your bile. Now, your spouse, friends, all in your near-orbit must relate to you correspondingly.

That should break your heart, but you’ll be too busy arranging your alliances.

You are affecting your future. The results can and do last a lifetime. Almost no one ever recovers, because almost no one is willing to do the work it would take to restore relationships and forge a change of perspective. Christ, in Revelation, says it this way, “Repent, and do the acts of love you did at the first.”

Walk in love at all times. Let the fear of the Lord grip your heart in this. Put healthy distance between yourself and those who walk in willful woundedness. Never allow your own mind to entertain an offense. The bigger the reason to be offended, the bigger the reward for refusing it, and the worse the consequences if you hold on to it.

I have seen this play out, again and again. Offense is a thief and will alter destiny and it can alter generations that come after you. You can say you are not offended till eternity rolls, but if you aren’t doing the works you did at the first -

you’ve fallen, and you can’t get up.

Unless you change your mind.