The Bait of Satan Review

Hey all. At the beginning of our 50 days of Prayer we were challenged to read John Bevere's book, "The Bait of Satan". After several weeks of prayer and reading, I thought it may be helpful to put together an executive summary that might help condense the ideas that are relevant to understand and put into practice. Please know that the following summary is not original, it comes from the blog of a Nathan Bluedom. Why reinvent the wheel. Please read through it and know that we will be involved in this ongoing conversation.

"The Bait of Satan" is about learning to overcome bitterness. It is about learning to deal with offenses, and forgive the person who has offended you. An offended person is one who has “taken offense” when someone mistreated him or her in some way. This may also include offended people who believe they were mistreated when they were not.

These are the points that Bevere made which stood out to me:

Dealing with Difficult Situations

• If we are in a situation where someone is offending us, we are not necessarily called to leave that situation. We are not necessarily called to fix the situation either.
• If we become offended and leave a difficult situation, we often fail to learn the character lessons that God wanted to teach us.
• If we become offended and leave a situation angry, we can become spiritual vagabonds. For the rest of our lives we grow more and more offended and isolated, and develop a persecution complex. We blame everyone else for our unhappiness.
• Immature Christians often try to protect themselves in difficult situations. They do not see that God has brought them into this situation to help them acknowledge their own character flaws.
• The way we view the difficulties we have left behind will determine how we will react to our next difficulties. When we leave one situation bitter, we will carry that into other relationships. No one is able to develop a healthy relationship with someone who is running from bitterness.
• We should not leave a bad situation until we feel the Holy Spirit leading us out with peace. We should not react to the difficulties in the situation. Instead we should be moved by the Holy Spirit.
• If we leave a difficult situation without the Holy Spirit’s leading, it may take many years before we see the offense we have hidden in our heart. God will eventually make us face our problem, even though we may avoid it for many years. If God does not, we may never come to grips with our own character flaws.
• If we do leave a situation with the peace of the Holy Spirit, we won’t feel compelled to defend or explain our difficulties to others.
• We should not enter a situation or relationship, like a church, unless we really know God wants us to join. We will not be able to leave the situation until God releases us.

Reconciliation

• If we won’t forgive someone deep in our heart, then we are waiting for vengeance – even if we only want to see them do a small thing. We have made ourselves the judge and are demanding justice before we forgive. What if Christ did this?
• God wants us to make it our top priority to help a brother who has stumbled, and not try to prove ourselves correct in our judgment of him. Even if the offense was his fault, we should humble ourselves and try to be reconciled.
• When a brother offends us, sometimes we confront him with a wrong attitude. We want to tell him his sin more than we want to be humbly reconciled. The only way to pursue peace and true reconciliation is to maintain an attitude of humility at the expense of pride and our personal rights. Pride defends. Humility is willing to yield and tries to find agreement.
  When we are ready to forgive an offense, we are eager to find a way to make peace.

Other Points

• Listening to the Holy Spirit – It is important to stay tenderhearted to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. We need to be acutely sensitive to hear when the Holy Spirit is telling us that we have a small area of bitterness growing in our heart. We should not be afraid to examine our own heart. A sign that we are truly examining our heart is when we want to hear the insights that other people have about our attitude, and we are searching for what God wants, and not simply standing up for our rights.
• Selfish relationships – If we are easily offended, then our relationships are based on what others can do for us and not on respecting them the way they are.
• Faith – Offences is tied to our trust in God. If we succumb to offenses, it is because our faith is weak. God will need to shake our faith to strengthen it.
• Bitterness – The story of Absalom is a good example of how a person can become angry over a legitimate offense, but then allow bitterness to grow in his heart until it causes much evil. Absalom judged his father David, and then allowed his bitterness over his injustice to rule his life. This happens today when a leader’s faults make his followers angry and bitter, until they try to overthrow him.
• Offending for the truth – If we teach the truth, it is inevitable that we will offend people who do not love the truth. Jesus did this. If we compromise the truth to keep from offending people, then we will lose God’s anointing on our ministry. We have chosen our relationship with our friends over our relationship with God. Jesus left those who were offended by the truth behind and moved on.
• Offending for our rights – We should be careful not to offend someone by flaunting our more liberal understanding of an issue. We should not offend someone who has a weak conscience. Jesus did not owe the temple tax, but he chose to pay the tax in order not to offend those who would not understand his actions if he did not pay the tax. He did not stand up for His rights.

Steps to Overcome an Offense

Just as our body needs exercise, our anti-offense muscle needs exercise. Sometimes it is easy to keep from being offended, but other times it is hard to resist a strong temptation.
Bevere gave these steps for overcoming an offense:

• Admit you are hurt. Be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings about this.
• Forgive the person who has offended you and release him from your attention on his guilt.
• Practice and strengthen your ability to forgive others when they offend you. This will help you keep an injury from happening again. Stay free.
• Demonstrate a level of forgiveness and freedom by praying for the person who offended you. Pray like you would want Jesus to pray for you. Pray for the offender’s sake.
• Go to the person and communicate reconciliation, apology and forgiveness to him. Learn to love him again despite his faults. You are going for his sake, not yours. You’ve already forgiven him. Communicating reconciliation will seal your forgiveness of him.
• The Holy Spirit will lead us in this process at a pace that we can handle. It may seem at times that we are only getting worse. But we will come out of the situation a more mature Christian who is thankful for this experience.

Challenges for Me

• When I become bitter, I lose faith in God. I am really angry with God for letting this offense happen. I can always imagine a better world where my rights are always respected, and I become dissatisfied with the world that God created where people offend me. When I am angry with someone, my mind focuses on the wrong that person did to me, instead of focusing on the character lesson that God wants to teach me though this event.
  When someone sins and offends me, I feel I should put him into his place – I want to fix his sins. When I get angry, I prove that my relationship was a selfish one. I wouldn’t get angry if I accepted an offensive person just the way he is, and didn’t try to make him into someone who treated me better. My anger often exaggerates and distorts the situation in my mind so that I can’t clearly see the right solution.
  I know God wants me to overcome any cycles of anger and bitterness that I have in my family before I go into the wider world. If I carry bitterness into the rest of my life, I will be more prone to become bitter with new people in my life. Getting this block out of my life would free me to serve God more effectively.