Lord’s Prayer
85
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,
saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My
ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:7-9
. God’s forgiveness is not merely a judicial act by which
He sets us free from condemnation. It is not only forgiveness for
sin, but reclaiming from sin. It is the outflow of redeeming love that
transforms the heart. David had the true conception of forgiveness
when he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right
spirit within me.”
Psalm 51:10
. And again he says, “As far as the east
is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12
.
God in Christ gave Himself for our sins. He suffered the cruel
death of the cross, bore for us the burden of guilt, “the just for the
unjust,” that He might reveal to us His love and draw us to Himself.
And He says, “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving
each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you.”
Ephesians 4:32
,
R.V. Let Christ, the divine Life, dwell in you and through you reveal
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the heaven-born love that will inspire hope in the hopeless and bring
heaven’s peace to the sin-stricken heart. As we come to God, this is
the condition which meets us at the threshold, that, receiving mercy
from Him, we yield ourselves to reveal His grace to others.
The one thing essential for us in order that we may receive and
impart the forgiving love of God is to know and believe the love that
He has to us.
1 John 4:16
. Satan is working by every deception he can
command, in order that we may not discern that love. He will lead us
to think that our mistakes and transgressions have been so grievous
that the Lord will not have respect unto our prayers and will not bless
and save us. In ourselves we can see nothing but weakness, nothing to
recommend us to God, and Satan tells us that it is of no use; we cannot
remedy our defects of character. When we try to come to God, the
enemy will whisper, It is of no use for you to pray; did not you do that
evil thing? Have you not sinned against God and violated your own
conscience? But we may tell the enemy that “the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
1 John 1:7
. When we feel that we
have sinned and cannot pray, it is then the time to pray. Ashamed we
may be and deeply humbled, but we must pray and believe. “This is a
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”
1 Timothy 1:15
.