Thought for 18 September

 Thought for Wednesday 18 September 2024

Matthew 18:31-35

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’

 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

 

We do not have a choice about forgiveness. If we desire the forgiveness bought by the blood of Jesus, we have a duty to forgive those who have slighted or insulted us. But remember, God who sees all things knows when we are just paying lip service to this act of kindness, instigated by the word of God. In the verse above we are shown what will happen if we disregard the will of God.

It is often hard to find forgiveness for someone when they have hurt us. We think by forgiving them we are ‘letting them off lightly’. However, if we can find the way to forgiveness, we are the ones who get off lightly. We will be excused the imprisonment, which I think may somehow involve the ‘lake of fire’.

Even removing that dreadful eternity from the equation, we will doubtless spend many sleepless nights going over our hurt feelings and reminding ourselves how bad we felt at the time.

Let us, instead, thank Jesus that nobody can hurt us in the same way we hurt our precious Saviour. Yet He was the one who asked forgiveness for us. Jesus did this because He knew that we did not realise what we were doing. People who hurt us often, don’t realise how much their words hurt us. Speaking without thinking about our words can be devastating to others who may be in a vulnerable state of mind.

I know, from experience, how words can hurt when we are not able to deal with them. I sometimes wish I had the ability to ‘not remember’ and throw these memories into the ocean. Because the words still hurt, even after I have forgiven the ones ‘responsible’, I still have times when I go over conversations. Even God chooses ‘not to remember’ and will never think of our wrongdoings again. I always have to thank God for giving me the ability to pray myself back into the calm that only God can induce. Without Father, Son and Spirit in my life I would be a hopeless case. Good for nothing except feeling sorry for myself.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."

That’s a biblical perspective.

Being strong was not what I was looking for, I just wanted the peace of God, and I thank Him that I found it…... eventually.

Prayer is a great activity to have in our arsenal, no matter how big or small our problem is, prayer is the answer. Even if we do not get what we have actually asked for. We can always depend on the peace of God and the knowledge that whatever answer we get, will be the one we most need.

Prayer

Gracious Father, we bring our prayers to You in the knowledge that You will hear them and will answer even those things left unsaid. We all have different needs as far as forgiveness is concerned, and where we are struggling with this subject we ask for Your help. For those we need to forgive and those we need forgiveness from. We do not always know when we have hurt someone deeply, and we may never know because they may avoid us, because we may have hurt them carelessly, not thinking about the damage we might have done, innocently in our own eyes. Father, we ask you to heal the hurt we have caused and allow the people to move on, even if it means we have lost them as a friend. Let their peace of mind be of paramount importance. Lord God, Help us, in future, to keep our tongue in check in order to build our friends up instead of unwittingly knocking them down. May grace and peace attend all of our friends, wherever they are. We come in Jesus Name, through the holy Spirit. Amen.