Skip to main content

The Lord's Prayer--Thy Victory


The Lord’s Prayer—Thy Name, Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

            I don’t know about you, but I don’t think very rigorously about the things I do wrong to others. After all, I know they are done out of a good heart. I have all kinds of rationalizations about them.

            But let me tell you. I can become very stern over a minor (in comparison to my sins) resentment.  I can let resentment crush my soul by rigorously detailing every wrong I endured.  I can be depleted of time, emotional energy and clear thinking when I put myself in a prison of resentment and throw away the key of forgiveness.  When I do this, I drink the poison of unforgiveness, rather than experience the supernatural experience of sincere, agape love for someone who has either carelessly or seriously offended me.

            This phrase of the powerful Lord’s Prayer if prayed sincerely can become the most transformational phrase we ever utter.  God our holy Abba-Father is so clever and wise when He asks us to consider our own forgiveness in light of our own sinful acts.

            When I hold on to resentments, it only tells me one reality about myself--I am not fully aware of what my sins have cost Jesus.  When I am so full of anger and resentment towards another human being, I am asked to consider my own sins against my Holy Hollowed God!  In His Kingdom, unforgiveness has no place!  Forgiveness is the magnet that draws us into the Kingdom of God.

            Our personal relationship with God is ignited by forgiveness.  When our hearts, hardened by sin, become soft enough to acknowledge that we are utterly unworthy before our Hollowed God andwe bow our heads and ask for mercy, our hearts are flooded with forgiveness.  We receive, through the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, the whole manner of heaven.  We become citizens of the Kingdom of God through God’s mercy and forgiveness opened by our repentance.

            Once you belong to God’s Kingdom, you have the power, the capacity and the responsibility to be forgiving as your heavenly Father is forgiving.  Colossians 3:13 says, Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  You came to Christ by the power of forgiveness; you bring others to Christ through the power of forgiveness.

            Having said all that, let me be bold to declare that some Christians believe they are forgiving when what they really are doing is putting a Band-Aid on an infectious wound which does nothing to build God’s kingdom, rather it helps the person repress their bad feelings against another person.   Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is not pretending it didn’t hurt, and it isn’t necessarily reconciliation, rather, forgiveness is a decision, it is a divine absurdity, and it might lead to reconciliation.  Forgiving others as we have been forgiven is one of the highest spiritual experiences you will ever enjoy on earth.  Forgiveness is alchemy for the soul.  It is a magical transformation.  

            I consider this phase of this prayer as the most victorious reality I enjoy in the Kingdom.  When I experience God’s transforming power through the power of forgiving those who sin against me, I am given a joy and intimacy and deeper appreciation for the forgiveness Jesus offers me.

Copyright © 2013.  Deborah R. Newman  www.teatimeforyousoul.com  All Rights Reserved.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fifth Monday in Lent through Palm Sunday

Fifth Monday in Lent: Righteousness Needed Jesus is all about bringing us righteousness yet we are too worldly focused to think we have much of a need for righteousness. Most of us think we need healing or exciting miracles. We might try to get a little righteousness by going to church on Sunday and giving some spare change to a beggar. God sees the bigger picture and knows that there is nothing which we are more bankrupt than righteousness. He sees that we are totally incapable of getting the righteousness we need through our own actions, so He sent Jesus to give us His righteousness through His sacrificial work on the cross. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for the Easter celebration. No matter how sacrificial your Lenten fast, it could never be enough to earn your righteousness. I have been practicing Lent for   years, and every year at the end of my fast I come face to face with how far I am from righteousness. Some of the first recorded words of Jesus in th
Post a Comment
Read more

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on
2 comments
Read more

The Missing Tribe of Dan

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that
2 comments
Read more