The Phil Files

Jesus wasn’t kidding when he laid out this prayer for our “come to Jesus” meeting with the Father. He told me to pray this way if I am going to come before the abba Father and live in genuine relationship with my brothers and sisters in our family. He said to pray this way:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

For yours is the kingdom and the power
and the glory forever. Amen.

There is a hard reminder in this simplest of prayers. And for me, today, it is that hard word on forgiveness that is inescapable. I’d just as soon walk around this commitment today. I’d like to pretend it’s not here. But if I don’t forgive today, I won’t be forgiven tomorrow.

So I forgive and am in pretty good shape until I stumble across another set of entrenched deceptions placed where I have built my heart in sacred places — places with sweet memories — only to find those truths and those precious moments are stained by the big deception. Big things, little things, meaningless things, routinely appear that make the job of forgiveness the primary challenge for a day on which I never expected to have to face the challenge to forgive. So I have to forgive again, feeling the sting of the original hurt, but now with a new depth and pervasiveness to the original deception. Yet it is on me to forgive as Jesus forgave me. It’s hard, but holy work. And as I do it, I come face to face with the hard work God has to repeatedly do with me. I am reminded of the layers of deceit and half-heartedness that I woven into the fabric of my own life.

Father, forgive me … I want what you want here … I want my forgiveness to be clean and pure and whole and holy and redemptive … and given without equivocation.

But I also confess, I am ready for the need to forgive to not be there anymore. I long for the time that forgiveness reaches the place when I am free from all of this! Where I’m free and grace is given so easily that there is never a thought of the pain of past precious moments now soiled by clipped words, hedged truths, and lies to cover up what was not true.

Until then, Lord, I will keep stumbling across the place where my will and love meet my hurt and my pride. And I consciously try to forgive again, new, fresh, and comprehensive for their forgiveness is deserved much more than mine.

So tonight, forgive me my debts, as I also have forgiven my debtors.