perhaps this is a good place to talk about offense versus advice. people often take offense when they get the advice they ask for (not saying this applies to you Goodbook; but it does apply to many people who ask for advice here).
on soapbox:
many of the requests for advice in the advice forum are from people who have taken offense (yes, you must take offense - offense can't be forced on you against your will). either they feel that they've been disrespected, or not treated fairly, or aren't getting something they think they deserve from someone else - all self-focused. wives and husbands ask for advice on how to make their spouse treat them better; people ask for advice on how to make God treat them better; kids ask for advice on how to make their parents treat them better. the Truth is that offense can only result from judgment - judgment that someone else (even God) isn't doing what they need to do for the individual asking for advice.
offense is a faith-stopper, and a milestone on the road to rejecting God - it doesn't matter what the excuse for offense is because offense always assumes that the performance of the one offended is above reproach; but again, the Truth is that none of us meet the core qualification of perfect performance in any area, so to be offended is to be deceived - offense is always focused on promoting or defending self rather than on selflessly helping others.
no Christian would claim that their performance is so perfect that they have earned blessings from God, yet i see this attitude frequently in requests for advice from people who are blind to what judgment really is. people tend to compartmentalize their thinking in this area; they think that if they could sit down with God and the person who has offended them, that God would surely see things their way and correct the offender - but when you ask God to judge between yourself and another person, you're asking Him to judge each of you against HIS standard of perfection instead of yours - and no one can meet His standard of perfection in their performance - 'to offend in one point is to be guilty of all' - in order to be offended, you must lose sight of that core Truth.
so when advice is given to someone that has taken some offense that points out the root cause of their offense as self-centered pride, often they will take even more offense; seldom does a person asking for advice come back and say 'i see; the real reason i'm offended is because i'm not walking in selfless love - my focus is on my self rather than the other person'. there is never any excuse for taking offense - nor is there ever any offense that isn't taken - offense is something we do to ourselves - it is never the result of how others treat us.
if any of us truly got what we deserve, then on the occasion of our first transgression of any of God's laws, we would die immediately and go straight to hell for eternity - none of us would live ling enough to take offense. to ask for judgment of someone else's words or actions that cause us to take offense is to ask for righteous judgment of our own offensive words and actions toward God - no one in their right mind wants this.
it's easy to recognize offense in a request for advice - just look at the focus of the request - is the focus on the promotion of the person asking for advice, or on the promotion of someone else? we all fail at this at times (me too) - if only we could remember that as Jesus hung on the cross, He forgave the people who put Him there; then we would never take offense for lesser trasngressions of the law of Love
off soapbox
