Abuse, any abuse, that brings a wound in our person, spirit should be viewed as serious. If we keep the offense, it will fester into a wound, hurt feelings.
Woundedness and hurt feelings, when not taken to the foot of the cross, will bring you to a place of overcompensation, which is arrogance. Arrogance when it is complete, mature and fulfilled leads to self-deception. Self-deception leads to heresy since the "glass" through which the truth is viewed is distorted. The result is mixture. Some of what we believe and release, say is the anointed truth of God but some comes from another source.
This is the trap that now ensnares the church, body of Christ, believers. Too few of us has the ability to discern between the truth and the junk. We are to enthralled with the personality, charisma and to lazy to find God for ourselves and study the Bible for ourselves. If you take everything a someone teaches, without weighing it against the witness in your own spirit, - which comes from your own personal relationship with God and study of the Bible - you will be deceived. We ought to search the scriptures to have enough of a deposit of the Word in us and have enough of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, that we can sieve what is taught to separate the anointed truth from the other "stuff."
So how do we avoid the seed of self-deceit? (If you are self-deceived you would not know it.) Deal with the offense. Learn to forgive and love(agape) your enemies. This DOES NOT mean staying in the abusive situation. Remove
yourself from the abuse but for you own sake, forgive. Run from the abuse but also deal with the residue of it in your heart and spirit. Unforgiveness is sin. Deal with the offense, unforgiveness as with any other temptation: War against it. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the scriptures to war and overcome. Eph 6 calls it the "sword of the spirit" for a reason. Jesus wielded this sword most effectively in Matthew 4.
