DAY 12.
FORGIVE AND BE FORGIVEN
“…FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS,
AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS…”
When we approach this part of the Lords Prayer thinking about our family, its hard to deny, it hits different. In one of my favorite Christmas movies, Four Christmases, Robert Duvall’s character says one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard: “You can’t spell families without lies, am I right?” That is a joke, but it is also true for a lot of us too.
We typically are hurt the most often and the deepest by families. Its because we’re so close and the relationships are so important. On the other side of the coin, the people that you may have hurt most are the people in your family.
Ouch! So, today theres a lot of room to explore, during our prayer time, where we might be hurt or where we have hurt others. Ask God to show you those places of hurt, so that He can heal them.
Ask God to show you the places where you have been the offender. For those you need to forgive, release them and ask God to free you so that bitterness can’t get in you. For those you have hurt, ask God to forgive you first for hurting his precious child and ask Him for an opportunity to ask them for forgiveness and to be a part of their healing. Remember, if we confess our sins He is faithful to forgive us and to purify us from the things in us that drive us to do those hurtful things.
‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’
1 John 1:9
Some of the hardest people to love are in your family. One of the things that keeps us from loving well is loving in a way that is transactional. Transactional love says “I’ll do this, as long as you do this.” That kind of love is limited by what other people do or don’t do. But God’s love is bigger and better than that. Thats the kind of love we’re going to need if we’re going to love our family well and walk in forgiveness too. John tells how to access that love: to dwell on how He loves us.
‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ‘
1 John 4:7-12 NIV
PRAY THIS:
God, I thank you for my family. You put me in the family I am in. I trust your wisdom and that your ways are higher than my ways, even when I don’t understand. I ask that you would show me where I need healing and I need to forgive. God, show me where I need to ask for forgiveness and change my ways. Holy Spirit, fill me to overflowing with your love for my family. Make me into a person that is healthy and that heals in your name Jesus. Amen.
WORSHIP: