Exploring and Applying the Lord's Prayer by John Belham

Author:John Belham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GRACE & TRUTH PUBLICATIONS
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Forgive us our trespasses

. . . ongoing, day by day forgiveness

Having been made a child of God by his mercy, we will often need to return to confess and wash away the grime of real, everyday living in this world but never again to make that initial cry for forgiveness, ‘Lord, have mercy on me’, that first brings us into the household.

As adopted members of our Father’s family, we shall want to leave each day’s mud behind as we enter the house. Both the boot room and the washroom are rooms of repentance and confession, rooms of cleansing and forgiveness. They give us a moment to reflect on the day: ‘Father, these are the opportunities that I missed to serve you, to honour you, to speak for you, to love my neighbour. These are the things I have failed to do. These are the things that I did in haste, anger . . . or in foolishness, at home, at work, in society.’ Scripture urges us not to hide or cover them over, not to belittle them as being of very minor importance, but to come openly to our heavenly Father. Such prayers are no longer in terms of our acceptability before him, our place in the family, but rather in terms of our walking with our heavenly Father at ease and in the joy of a right relationship.

If we pray it aright, the wonder of the Lord’s Prayer - and, indeed, the wonder of all true Christian living - is that it will change us, it will reform the way in which we live and so we will grow as disciples.

Sadly, there is a lot of religious activity which does not change us at all. We go and do certain things in a compartment of our lives we call ‘worship’; it may be with colour and candles and beautiful, traditional music, or it may be with stirring, modern music, shining faces and uplifted arms. We enjoy it. It moves us at the time. But it does not change us; it does not touch the rest of our lives. We go on living exactly as we had done before.

However, if we really pray the Lord’s Prayer from the heart it will change us. We will find that as we bring our trespasses day by day before our heavenly Father, our conscience will be awakened and sharpened. We will be more aware of our Father giving us opportunities to serve him and also, increasingly, painfully aware of the opportunities we miss. We will begin to be aware of those things that do not bring honour to his name, even before we do them. We will begin to long not to do them. By the grace of God and the prompting of his Holy Spirit, we will be changed. This gradual changing is the purpose of God for each one of us; that we might be more Christ-like. Hence this prayer, ‘Forgive us our sins, our trespasses, our debts,’ will need to be often on our lips if we are to grow as disciples.

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