Praying to Be Like Jesus, The One Who Forgives

 Prayer to Be Like Jesus, The One Who Forgives

Today in many churches people will pray the prayer that Jesus taught His friends when they asked Him to teach them to pray.  Let’s pray it first together and then we want to think about one line of it.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.  Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.  For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.  Amen

The line I think we need to focus on today is that tough one, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

We seem to live in a time where revenge and resentment are more valued than forgiveness.  We are more willing, it seems, to avoid people rather than do the hard work of dealing with things that have gone wrong.  And it’s not really any better is it, to continue to be around people we are holding unforgiveness against, but pretending things are fine.  That creates its own set of problems.

Jesus was so clear about how we need to forgive and put our own disappointments and hurts from others into perspective when he told the story of the guy who owed what was probably equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone and was going to be put into debtor’s prison until he paid up.  He begged to have the debt forgiven and it was. 

But then he went to someone who owed him about 100 bucks and when he couldn’t pay he had him thrown into that prison.  His unfair treatment was reported back to the original holder of the big debt and he got the punishment because he hadn’t given the same generosity to the small time debtor.

God has forgiven us so much and in the end we’ll end up paying for so much pain and ugliness that we’re responsible for if we don’t get on about forgiving folks for the daily small injustices we’ve experienced at their hand. 

And here’s the thing, when we forgive someone we have to truly let the thoughts and emotions connected with those wrongs go.  That’s what God does and that’s what we are to do. 

I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”  Hebrews 8:12

We need to replace memories of unfair treatment with other thoughts once we’ve forgiven and let God heal us and encourage us. 

Loving God, this is one of the toughest things You ask of us and yet at the same time when we think of all You’ve done for us we have to shake our own heads and say, “What are we thinking when we won’t forgive these small things in comparison to all God has forgiven us?”  Forgive us for being unwilling to forgive and forget.

Help us today to experience the joy of Your great forgiveness as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Amen