“When ye pray say . . . forgive us our sins for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us” (Lk. 11: 2-4).
If, like me, you are conscious of sins against God that need to be forgiven, you will pass through considerable exercise of heart before you actually say the words the Lord Jesus said you should say when you pray. It is difficult to deliberately lie to God. Can you say, “Lord, I have forgiven every one that is indebted to me, so now, Lord, forgive me”? This is what you should say. This is practically what your Lord says you are to say. “Everyone,” not some, but all. Have you forgiven every one that is indebted to you? It is easier to forgive some than it is to forgive others. Those, for instance, who are indebted to you because they owe you an apology and have never paid. Have you forgiven all these?
If you think this is easy, just try it once. Call up to your mind, one by one, all those persons whose memory is so distasteful to you, and say to God your Father in heaven, who knows all things, “I have forgiven every one that is indebted to me; now, O Father, forgive me.”
The words of Matthew 6 cut deeper still. “As we forgive our debtors.” This means: Forgive me in the same way that I forgive others. A Christian said, “Yes, I will forgive her, but I don’t want to have anything more to do with her.”
“My dear girl,” rejoined her friend, “is that the way you want your Father to forgive you?”
Another said, “I will forgive, but I cannot forget.” This remark is usually a justification of a malicious memory. Memory brings the bitter thing again and again to feed it to malice. It is like a serpent in the soul until nothing but poison exists in the heart when the hated person is spoken of. This is forgiving and not forgetting. It is feeding like the vultures on the dead carcass till even the breath of prayer smells of the putrid thing.
No, you are to pray to your Father in heaven to forgive you in the very same way that you forgive others. The standard of your forgiving is not the standard of God’s forgiveness. God as God has forgiven you fully, finally, and forever. This should be the standard of your forgiving others. “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” But the measure and the manner of your forgiving others is the measure and the manner of your heavenly Father forgiving you. “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt. 6:15; see also Mt. 18:35).
Let us face this solemn matter faithfully in the presence of God. Here lies the cause of much of our weakness. Here is the explanation of so much of our heaviness of heart over unanswered prayer. We have lost the consciousness of a Father’s interest in us. There is not even the deep desire to pray. The whole prayer life is disorganized and barren. The real trouble is “malice and guile and hypocrisy and envy and evil speaking,” a whole brood of Amalekites and Midianites robbing the threshing floors. While these pests live in the garden of the soul, all fruit of the Spirit will wither and die.
Pray, and when you pray say the words the Lord told you to say. Tell the Lord you cannot say it. He will help you to make it true. When you can truthfully say the words He told you to say, then again you will be able to pray with the consciousness that your Father is listening. Then He will grant the petitions you desired of Him.