My wife and I have become friends with one of the la- dies in our neighborhood. She is quite outgoing and gregarious. While she was at the grocery store, she saw a woman whom she concluded was pregnant. She went up to the woman, put her hands on the woman’s stomach literally, then asked, “When is your baby due sister?” In disgust, this lady told our neighbor, “Excuse me. I’m not pregnant!” This neighbor told us, “Talk about putting my foot in my mouth, there was absolutely no way to get out of that situation gracefully.”

In the context of realizing he represented the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul gave his testimony about how he sought to live each day. He wrote, “Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience…by pureness…by longsuffering, by kindness…by love unfeigned, by the Word of truth, by the power of God…(II Corinthians 6:3-7). Since every believer is an ambassador of Christ, we too should adopt these same goals for how we live before others. If we are to be effective in our spiritual influence, near the top of our list must be to seek to give “no offence in any thing.” Most of us have probably heard someone say, “If that is what being a Christian is like, then I don’t want anything to do with it.” Like Paul, we need to be consciously careful not to offend others. He said, “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Romans 14:21). Since this is to be our standard in how we conduct ourselves before other believers, our conduct before the lost must rise to an even higher level of carefulness. I Corinthians 10:32-33 confirms this: “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they might be saved.”

Right now would be a good time to pause to consider if there is currently anything in your life that could offend others, and push lost souls away from the Lord Jesus. If the Holy Spirit convicts you about anything, through His power, change that conduct immediately.