God Speaking

“Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

(Matthew 6:12)

The current Bible study that I am attending at my church is doing an in-depth study on prayer. We have begun with the Lord’s prayer. We are spending a lot of time on each sentence, such that we realize the importance of each word. We are grasping why Jesus composed this prayer to teach his disciples, and us, how to pray. We realize that each time we pray this prayer we are praying his words back to him. 

The one section that spoke to me so deeply was forgiveness and our discussion on how important it was firstly to ask for it, but to then make sure we forgave others, was very enlightening. 

God forgave the children of Israel many times and I love the verse in Numbers that tells us that forgiveness is an act of love. 

“In accordance with your great love, forgive the sins of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time, they left Egypt until now.” (Numbers 14: 19)

Jesus tells a parable about asking for forgiveness and then also the importance of forgiving others (Matthew 18: 23) The story is about a King who decides to settle his debts and finds one man who owes him a great deal of money but when confronted he begs the king to forgive his debt so instead of being thrown into jail he is forgiven, but that same man is owed a small amount from a poor man and he demands his money taking no pity on the man.   

We owe the Lord Jesus a huge debt as he paid our debt with his life to save us, when we remember this our hearts are touched, and we can then forgive others. 

Sometimes we can hurt others and not be aware that we have done so, when we are confronted by them, we may react in anger instead of gracefully asking for forgiveness I love what David admits about himself. 

“Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.” (Psalm 19: 12)

Later in the same Psalm he says…

“Keep your servant also from wilful sins may they not rule over me.” (Psalm 19: 13)

Peter, always the outspoken one, questions Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness and asks Jesus this. 

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked. “How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18: 21)

Jesus multiplies it by a huge number, not meaning there is a limit, but he means we don’t count how often we forgive. Sometimes that can be hard but asking the Lord to soften our hearts is a good way to start. 

The other message about forgiveness is to accept God’s forgiveness. Sometimes we hang on a certain sin and berate ourselves, hanging on to it instead of releasing it to the Lord and to know that he has forgiven us, we can let go the self condemnation 

So let us let forgiveness for others to flow from our hearts.