Matthew 6:12-15

“12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. 14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

When we look at the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 we see Jesus disciples coming to Him and asking Him to teach them to pray. They saw Jesus not only communicating with God but communing with Him and they wanted what He had. They wanted to know how to pray so that God would listen to them like He did Jesus. They knew that there was power in prayer and they wanted to experience the same powerful prayer life that Jesus had. But when Jesus gave His disciples the words to the Lord’s Prayer He provided a pattern for prayer not a formula. Our problem is that we have turned the Lord’s Prayer into a formula for results when in reality it really provides a framework for relationship. The power is not in the words but in the One who hears them. Formulas can become fatal especially as they relate to relationship, because formulas can cause us to start manipulating and forcing God to get what we want. Instead of driving us deeper into relationship they reduce our conversation to a one-sided monologue where we direct God to a certain desired response. Now for many a formula may not look that different than a framework, but there is a definite difference. Where a prayer formula focuses on the words we say, a prayer framework focuses on the One we say them to. Where a formula for prayer focuses on what we do, a framework focuses on who God is. Instead of the focus being on our action it’s on the Almighty where His character becomes central not our effort. A formula fools us into acting as if it’s our actions that initiate God’s response, where a framework guides us to God’s already initiated love for us and provides a platform for us to receive His response. How do you know when you are treating the Lord’s Prayer like a formula, you start using it as a means to get something rather than get God. Getting something from God is not nearly as great as getting God. When we approach the Lord’s Prayer like a formula we will end up with a fuzzy focus and lose sight of the point of prayer, which is to grow in our relationship with God not to get. Today when it comes to the Lord’s Prayer we memorize it, sing songs about it and repeat it reverently but did Jesus intend for us to repeat His words in order to pray? No and He actually warned His disciples against “vain repetitions” when He said in Matthew 6:7 “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.” Some believe that saying the same thing over and over again somehow helps their prayers become more holy and reverent. But it’s not about repetition it’s about real conversation. When it comes to repetition there is only one part of the prayer that is repeated, that of forgiveness. This one concept was so important that Christ not only mentioned it in the Lord’s prayer he went back to comment on it, using three time more words to define what he said then he used to say it. When we come to the forgiveness piece of prayer we need to understand that just like prayer forgiveness is not a formula it’s a process. So how do we forgive, especially if those we are forgiving are unrepentant? We look to the Lord and His example. In Luke 23:34 as Jesus hung on the cross of Calvary He prayed: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing” Jesus forgave in the face of unrepentant hearts. Jesus understood why they were doing what they did and understanding why people do the things they do can help us as we take that big step towards forgiving them. The people that were bruising and abusing Jesus were broken, and just like us they suffering from the sickness of sin. When Jesus forgave His focus wasn’t on their faults it was on the Father. Instead of punishing people He prayed for and paid for them. How do we forgive, by focusing on the Father and His forgiveness. You see it’s when we seek His forgiveness and see the serious sickness of our own sin soaked hearts that we realize to withhold His forgiveness would be hypocritical. We forgive by and because of God’s grace. We may never forget and it might not be right to but over time the memories will, through forgiveness and the Fathers faithfulness lose their power over us. At first forgiveness may not seem to make sense, but we need to remember that it will make a difference. We have a choice, we can forgive or hold onto the hurt and harbor the hate, but when we refuse to forgive we need to remember that we also forgo the Fathers forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t easy but it’s not as hard as hating, because hating consumes the heart while forgiveness cures the heart. Are you going to put your energy into releasing or resenting? I have learned the hard way that when you have a hurt that needs to heal its best not to pick at it. Many of us carry more spiritual scars than we should because instead of prayer we turned to picking. Today the process our world presents us with for dealing with our disappointments and hurts revolves around revenge and retaliation. But hurting never brings healing, instead of bringing closure it brings chains. It not only adds fuel to the fire but pain to our prison. Seeking to right the wrongs with revenge is like trying to pacify the pain by drinking poison. What the world needs is the radical reconciling love of the Redeemer, and nothing represents our faith and points people to the Father as powerfully as forgiveness. The answer to the continual cultural conflict isn’t more money, education, or legislation it’s the Fathers forgiveness. We are a fallen people that first need to experience the Fathers forgiveness and then seek to extend it. 2000 years ago Jesus entered and ended the debate on which lives matter when he died for all. Our greatest witness to the world probably isn’t going to be our words but our walk of forgives. Today as you petition the Father for forgiveness who are the people you need to present with His forgiveness? Because the practice of forgiveness is the most powerful and precious present that we can present to the world.

Matthew 6:12-15

“12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. 14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Her name was 66730, or at least that was the name she went by. Her father had died in a German Concentration camp as did her sister. Her freedom, her dignity, her humanity had been stripped away by those who imprisoned her and yet she survived. They had robbed her of everything she ever possessed but they couldn’t rob her of the one who possessed her, Jesus. She saw every day in Ravensbruck as a chance to minister to someone more needy then herself, and then one day she was released. As suddenly as she had become a prisoner she was freed, and her solitary aim was to minister to others. When the war was over she began traveling and speaking sharing her Savior and the vision that He had given her. And then one day, something happened, something that shook her to the very center of her being. Now you probably wouldn’t know her as 66730, you would be more apt to know her as Corrie ten Boom: “It was in a church in Munich that I saw him—a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. “It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. …’ “The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room. “And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were! Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. “Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’ “And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women? “But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze. “ ‘You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying, ‘I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me. “ ‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein,’ again the hand came out—’will you forgive me?’ “And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again been forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? “It could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. “For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.’ “I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that. “And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’ “And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “ ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’ “For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then” And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that this worlds healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

One of the scariest and most somber parts of the Lord ’s Prayer is found toward the end of the prayer, where we are called to not only experience the Father’s forgiveness but also choose to extend His forgiveness: “12 and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. 13 And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. 14 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” For those who pray this prayer they are proclaiming that they are not only seeking forgiveness but seeking to share it. In reality we are asking God to forgive us in exactly the same way that we forgive those who have wrong us. Many come to God seeking His forgiveness because they know they have wronged Him yet they are unwilling to forgive those who have wronged them. We expect forgiveness but do we extend it? When it comes to forgiveness saints often set a double standard, where we seek it but don’t share it. But forgiveness doesn’t have a check valve, it’s not a one way flow. Just as we receive His forgiveness we should relinquish it. When we try to dam up forgiveness it creates a blockage which shuts of the Father’s flow of forgiveness in our lives. Everything ends up drying up down steam creating a drought and we end up living in the dry desert. The truth is that you will never truly get forgiveness until you give it. So today who do you need to forgive? Just like Corrie ten Boom we are called to not only preached forgiveness but to practiced it.