It’s Monday night and onward we go with Don’s great study on the Sermon on the Mount with Part 5 of The Disciple’s Prayer. Blessings and enjoy!

Sitting at the Feet of Yeshua

We continue in our exploration of the Disciple’s prayer, but we will take the petitions out of order to concentrate on the issue of forgiveness.

“Forgive us what we have done wrong, as we too have forgiven those who have wronged us.” Yeshua goes on to say, “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will not forgive yours.”  (Matthew 6:12,14-15) [We’ll come back to verse 13 in my next post.]

God wants us to have a forgiving attitude toward others.  Yeshua often emphasized the importance of forgiveness in His parables (see Matthew 18:21-35).  Verse 12 is a petition for the needs of our souls.

Before we can honestly pray this petition of the Disciple’s Prayer, we must realize that we need to pray it.  Before we can pray this petition, we must have a sense of our own sin.

When we see the reality of sin, we come to see that it is a universal disease in which every person is involved.  This is a petition of the Disciple’s Prayer, which every one of us needs to pray.

Not only do we need to realize that we need to pray this petition of the Disciple’s Prayer; we also need to realize what we are doing when we pray it.  Of all petitions of the Disciple’s Prayer, this is the most frightening.

“Forgive us what we have done wrong, as we too have forgiven those who have wronged us.” The literal meaning is: “Forgive us our sins in proportion to those sins we have forgiven that were committed against us.”  In Matthew 6:14-15, Yeshua says in the plainest possible language that if we forgive others, God will forgive us; but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us.  It’s quite clear that if we pray this petition with an unhealed heart or an unsettled quarrel in our lives, we are asking God not to forgive us…….Read the rest of the post here: The Disciple’s Prayer ~ Part 5

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