Proverbs 27:5-6 NLT Open rebuke is better Than love carefully concealed. 6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

You have to metabolize the hurt before it can begin to heal.

• Communicate truth without causing offense:

Ephesians 4:15 NLT Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.

Colossians 4:6 NIV Let your conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

- Is my communication kind and Christlike?
- Is my communication clear and Christlike?
- Is this necessary and needed?
- Is this based on assumption or fact?
- Is this out of anger or because I care?

Knowing what NOT to say can be as important as knowing what to say.

• The danger of allowing offense:

Proverbs 18:19 NLT An offended friend is harder to win back than a fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with bars.

2 Chronicles 10:13-14 NIV The king answered them harshly. Rejecting the advice of the elders, 14 he followed the advice of the young men and said, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”

Offense will:
- Produce DIE-vision
- Steal your peace
- Fracture friendships
- Builds walls, not bridges
- Cause hardness of heart

Proverbs 18:17 NLT The first to speak in court sounds right— until the cross-examination begins.

• How to become unoffendable:

- Take inventory

- Humility and teachability

Correction can actually be protection.

• Give grace and show compassion:
- H - Hungry
- A - Angry
- L - Lonely
- T - Tired

Luke 17:1 NKJV Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses [stumbling blocks] should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!

Psalm 119:165 KJV Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.