Matthew 6:12-15 (NLT) : “…forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. ‘If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.’”

Most of us are familiar with the Lord’s Prayer. But have you ever really thought about it? This one section is my focus today. Do we realize what these verses mean? I hate to admit it, but there are many times when someone does something and the last thing on my mind is grace and forgiveness. Driving down the road and someone cuts me off, at that moment I am often not thinking of forgiveness. I want to just lay on the horn, and make sure the other driver knows he was just plain wrong.

Fortunately, in those moments the Holy Spirit is always right there to remind me who I am, a child of the Most High God. And it certainly is not because of anything that I have done; simply because of God’s amazing grace and love.

But what if I hold on to the anger and the pain and refuse to forgive? When that happens I have allowed myself to become open to temptation. It is bad enough that satan attacks without our help. But when we open ourselves up to the temptation because of wrong, unforgiving attitudes, I think it becomes easier to rationalize whatever we may then be tempted to do. Not to mention, our refusing to forgive often doesn’t have any effect on the one we are angry with. But holding a grudge can have very serious consequences to our physical, as well as spiritual and mental health. Finally, Jesus makes it very plain that we must forgive others if we expect God to forgive us.

In 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 Paul chastises the Corinthian church for taking each other to court instead of finding some in the church who are wise enough to help settle their disputes. But he goes a bit further and says that they are wrong for even having these lawsuits. He asks them why they don’t just let themselves be cheated; instead they are actually cheating each other. In verses 9-10 Paul describes those who will have no part of God’s kingdom. And it is a pretty extensive list, covering everything from dishonesty to sexual immorality to those who are abusive and those who cheat others. He then reminds them that that is exactly what each one of them was at one time. To be sure, that is exactly what each one of US today was, before we were cleansed and made holy, and made right with God.  When we refuse to forgive others we are exactly like the wicked servant in Matthew 18:23-35 who was forgiven of a great debt, yet then turned around and demanded a much smaller debt owed him by a fellow servant, and could not spare even the smallest bit of grace, in spite of the vast grace and forgiveness he had just received.

So, instead of focusing on the wrongs that have been done to you this week, work on focusing on the abundance of grace and forgiveness that we all have received from God, and be prepared to let it flow from us to others. It is certainly NOT by the grudges that we hold that we are identified as Christ’s. It is the love that we show that the world knows who’s we truly are.