Written By Sheila Schuller Coleman
Today we are continuing in our series on "Spiritual Sustainability: Living The Lord's Prayer." You've been hearing the word sustainability, that new "go green" word that represents anything from fabric to architecture to foods to anything that can be renewed and continue to grow. Anything that is sustainable.
Don't we want that for our spirits, as well? To be spiritually sustained? And the secret to that is found in the Lord's Prayer. There are principles in the Lord's Prayer that will give you spiritual sustainability. And so today, we'll cover number four in a series of five. However, before we do, let's review the first three principles.
We begin the Lord's Prayer with praise: "Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name." Praise. Beginning your day with praise and continuing throughout the day by living and praying with a God who has a can-do-anything attitude. He's a loving Father, a powerful God, a protective Father, a heavenly Father.
The order of these principles align with the order of the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus gave to us when His disciples asked Him, "How, then, should we pray?" He only gave one answer to that question and it's the Lord's Prayer. And the order is very important. Number one, begin with praise. Why? We thank God, we worship Him, we focus on Him, and we remind ourselves it's to Him that we pray. And that's important because we tend to forget about how big God really is. So begin with praise.
Then move on to permission, giving God permission. He doesn't need our permission, but we give it to Him anyway. You may remember that I used a rope to illustrate our daily tug of war with my will and my will. Do I want to go to the gym or will I stay in bed? Will I eat healthy food or will I eat junk food? Me and me. My will versus my will.
And then there's also my will versus Thy will, meaning I have a tug of war between my will and my spouse's will, my will and my child's will, my will and my friend's will. Those tug of wars, those clashes of wills.
Ultimately we talk about Thy will be done, my will versus God's will. I can give God permission. I can say to Him, "Thy will be done with my life. You do with me as you want to do," because, remember, I've just praised Him. I've just focused on who He is and I can trust Him with my entire life. And so we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done," in my life "on earth as it is in heaven." And we say, "What are You up to today, Lord? I want to be a part of it."
So, praise, permission, and then we have petition. After we have praised Him, after we've given Him permission and submitted to Him, then we ask Him for what we need this day. Jesus said, "Give us this day our daily bread." It doesn't say give us this day our day old, moldy, stale bread, but give us this day our fresh-from-the-oven artisan bread. God says, "Ask and it will be given to you" (Matthew 7:7a).
So praise, permission, petition. Today we get to pardon. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
I've brought with me today, to help illustrate this Sunday's message, a restoration bucket, that's what I call it. I'll put it right here. And I have lots of little illustrations in there on how this verse works. There are two parts to this part of the Lord's Prayer. The first part is "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." Again, the order is really important. The first part is asking for forgiveness, and the second part is giving forgiveness.
I'll have you know, I abhor house cleaning. Anybody else here feel the same? I just don't like doing it. And the worst part is cleaning the shower and the bathtub, don't you think? Scrubbing that soap scum. Nonetheless, I buckled down and cleaned my house from top to bottom. I even cleaned the grout in the tile. The house was beautiful; it was sparkling. There was no dust anywhere in the entire house. That was ten years ago. I haven't done it since. NOT! Really truly, if I only cleaned my house once in my lifetime, is that enough? No. I wish it were, but it's not. We have to do perpetual housecleaning, don't we?
That's why I love the fact that you can pray the Lord's Prayer every day. Every day you praise God. Every day you give Him permission. Every day you ask Him for what you need today. And every day, you do your housecleaning in your soul and in your relationship with God and with other people. And you do it by asking for forgiveness, which is pardon.
One of our biggest fears is the fear of failure. I truly believe that. You've heard Dad and others talk about the fear of failure to live up to our potential, to do the right thing, to pay what we owe other people, to pay our debts. How we fear that we might fail our families, friends, God. How many of you have ever dealt with the fear of failure? I have. I do. Yet every single one of us has already failed. Every one of us will fail. Probably we fail a little bit every single day. So you say, "Sheila, that isn't the positive message." Oh yes it is because, what if I were to give to you the antidote for failure? What if I gave you the antidote for the fear of failure? Would you love to have that, the antidote to failure, to the fear of failure? Well it's right here in the Lord's Prayer. The antidote to failure is forgiveness. Forgiveness. Jesus gives us the antidote.
You may think, Oh I failed. Oh, I wasn't as successful as I wanted to be. And I want you to know, you're in good company if you feel that way. King David was known as one of the greatest kings, if not the greatest earthly king ever to walk this earth. Remember, he was the little shepherd boy who took on the big giant Goliath and he built this great big empire for God. David is revered; people talk about him as this wonderful, successful king. Oh, to be a David, right? Yet David failed. Let me tell you about David, how he failed.
As a king. He had multiple wives and he had multiple concubines, many beautiful women that were his. Back then, this was okay. Yet he saw this one woman, Bathsheba, and thought, wow, she's good looking. He desired her. But she was married to Uriah, another man, a soldier in David's army. When Uriah was away, David took her. He took her and she became pregnant. Now wouldn't this make headline news in the newspaper that the king took somebody else's wife while the husband was away and got her pregnant? Would you say that's a failure on David's part? Absolutely. He failed God, he failed his country, he failed Bathsheba, and he failed Uriah.
So what was his response? What do you think he did? He continued to fail because, when he found out that Bathsheba was pregnant, he decided to cover up his failure. Now have any of you ever tried to cover up your failure? Or do you know anybody else who's tried to cover up a failure? Absolutely yes.
What David did was to send Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, to the front lines where he knew he would be killed. In essence, he murdered Uriah to cover up his adultery. So here he is, this great King David, who has committed adultery and has covered it up with murder. A failure. And yet the Bible says that David was a man after God's own heart. When Nathan the prophet said David, "Look what you have done," David agreed he had failed. This is why David was a man after God's own heart.
David said, "Yes, I failed. Yes, I messed up. So, Father, forgive me." He then wrote a beautiful Psalm - Psalm 51. If you ever feel that you've failed, read David's Psalm because the antidote for failure is forgiveness. He wrote, "Have mercy on me, oh God. Have mercy on me. Because of Your unfailing love, because of Your compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sins and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow."
The next time you feel you've failed, or maybe today you feel like you've failed, I want you to know that it's just a sign that you're alive. It's a sign that you are a child of God and all you need to do, the antidote for failure and fear of failure, is ask for forgiveness. When we say, "God forgive me," He cleans our hearts. He's the great "Mr. Clean."
So, here in my restoration bucket is a Mr. Clean eraser. It's supposed to be able to erase any stain from your house. I also have in here a pink pearl eraser because, as a teacher, I love pink pearl erasers. If we make a mistake or if we have debt, wouldn't you love just to take this pink pearl eraser, erase that mistake or that debt once and for all, and get rid of it? I do hate debt, personal debt, especially. Most of us have debt of some sort or another, to either a credit card or a car loan or a mortgage loan or maybe a student loan for your child. This Bible verse says to forgive us our debts - to wipe us off, clean up that heart, make us whiter than snow. And God will do that. It's a gift. You don't have to pay for it, and when you accept it, there are no monthly payments. It's just a gift. No interest accrued. It's just a gift.
Well, you know that I don't like to clean my house. You may also like to know that I'm very dangerous when it comes to fixing anything that breaks in the house. So my husband doesn't like it when something breaks. He's always afraid that I'll try to fix it before he does, because this is my favorite tool. It's a table knife. It's always handy, and the handle works as a hammer. This part, at the blade, works like a screwdriver and it works as a wedge; you can pry out all kinds of things from the wall. Whenever anything breaks and I open the drawer, my husband says, "Put that table knife away!" So I put it away. Jim is Mr. Fix It. And he fixes things.
The first part of the Lord's Prayer is where we ask God to forgive us, to clean us up, to clean our hearts. The second part is where we ask God to help mend and fix our relationships with others. We take the forgiveness that we've been given from God, we accept that forgiveness that we've been given by God, and we pass it on to others who hurt us.
Jesus was asked, "How many times am I supposed to forgive my brother?" Most of you have heard this. "Am I supposed to forgive him seven times?"
Jesus said, "No, you're supposed to forgive him seventy times seven. That's how many times you're supposed to forgive him." And many, many more times. But beyond that, Jesus didn't stop there. In that passage, He shared this parable (Matthew 18:23-35, paraphrased):
There was a master who had a servant, and the servant owed his master ten thousand talents, a lot of money. And the master called the servant in and he said to him, "You owe me this money, and I want you to pay me. The servant didn't have the money. He couldn't pay his debt. The master said, "Where's the money?"
The servant said, "I don't have it."
The master said, "If you don't pay me back every penny, you, your wife, and your children will be my slaves. You will work off your debt. I don't care how long it takes you - probably the rest of your life. You will be my slaves for life. No longer will you be my servant where I pay you; you will be my slave."
The servant bowed before the master and he said, "Please, please, please have mercy on me. Forgive me my debt. Forgive me my debt."
The master showed him mercy and he forgave him completely. He said, "Because you've asked for mercy, I'm going to give you mercy. You may go. You're completely forgiven." So, off went the servant. Free.
He returned home and, when looking at his own financial records, realized that one of his sub servants, who worked for him, owed him a hundred denarii, not nearly as much as the ten thousand talents he had owed. So he called his sub servant in and he said, "You owe me money. I want it right now." In fact, it says in the Bible that he took his sub servant by the neck and choked him and said, "Give me my money. Pay me back immediately!"
The sub servant said, "I don't have it, I don't have the money."
So what do you think this servant - the one who had been graciously forgiven, his debt erased by his master - did? What kind of response do you think he had for this man who owed him money? He threw him in jail.
Well, Jesus let us know that God has forgiven us. He has completely forgiven us. He has erased our debt. We don't owe Him a thing. And all He asks for us in return is to take that forgiveness and give it to others who have hurt us and who will hurt us.
So we ask for forgiveness, and we give forgiveness. That is the antidote for all of our failures in life, and especially our failure in relationships. And, yes, there are many of us who have either strained or ruptured relationships, and the antidote for that is forgiveness.
I also have a trowel in my restoration bucket because it says in Hebrews 12, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God, and that no bitter root grows up to trouble and defile many." In other words, the "bitter root" is "bitterness." You may, like Dad likes to say, "Nurse and rehearse those hurts." You may think that you have every right - and you probably do - to feel mad, to feel angry, to feel resentful, and to be bitter. But be careful because that bitter root will just wrap its tentacles around your heart, and choke the love and the joy right out of you. Bitterness is a spiritual and an emotional cancer. And so we say, "God, take Your trowel and lovingly, carefully, tenderly dig out that bitter root from my heart."
I want you to think about how you would feel if the following was your experience. Imagine someone murdered your entire family. Imagine that someone broke into your home and, before your eyes, tortured your children, murdered your husband, and then raped you. Then later that murderer was captured, put in jail, and quickly released by the warden. He sets him free, gives him pardon, and says, "Go home." And, what if he moves in right next door to you? You see him walk his dog. You see him when you go to the grocery store. You see him when you wash your car. How would you feel? Wouldn't that be hard? Wouldn't that be excruciating? Forgiveness? Sheila, you say you want me to forgive him?
That is exactly what happened in Rwanda with the genocide in 1994. Nearly a million people were tortured and killed. Forty thousand murderers were thrown in jail, and then pardoned, and then released to live as neighbors beside those they had hurt. And do you know what the country of Rwanda is teaching the rest of the world? How to forgive. They're learning to forgive, and this is what the bishop of Rwanda has said: "A murderer able to accept forgiveness? Impossible! A victim of such atrocities able to give forgiveness? Impossible. But remember, men and women, that what is humanly impossible, with God all things are possible." He says there is no greater grace than the grace that is in Rwanda, and that grace comes from the cross of Jesus Christ.
I go through the day and, every now and then, somebody will say something that hurts my feelings. Any of you ever have that happen to you? And right away, you go ouch, oh, ah! And you harbor a little anger towards them. But I have trained myself to, most of the time, think of Jesus hanging on the cross with the people who put Him there standing down below Him. What did He do to deserve that? Did He deserve to have nails pounded into His hands? Pounded into His feet? Did He deserve that? No. And yet He looked down on these same people who did that to Him, and He said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).
And so when I get those little twinges and those little hurts, I think of that and I immediately say, "Father, I forgive them. They know not what they do."
So much of hurt is resentment. So many fractured relationships with our Heavenly Father and with others come from broken hearts. And so I want to ask you, what would you do? What would you use to mend a broken heart?
So, let's look in this restoration bucket - these are my husband's tools. So, would you use a hammer and a nail to mend a broken heart? Would you? Actually, that is exactly what God used to mend our broken hearts. He used a hammer and a nail. Hammers pounded nails into the hands of Jesus. A hammer pounded nails into the feet of Jesus because God wanted to mend your broken heart. He wants to mend your broken relationships. He loves you so much that He would send His Son to die so we can be mended, we can be pardoned, our debts can be paid when we pray, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
Please stand with me. Let us close in prayer. And we're going to do our hand motions as we've been doing so we remember. It helps us remember through the week. So we start with praise, right? Hands up, faces lifted up and, with Crystal Cathedral gusto, repeat after me: "Our Father, Who art in heaven (Our Father Who art in heaven)." A little more gusto. "Hallowed be Thy name (Hallowed be Thy name)." Now we're going to do permission. Take your hands down and open them up. "Thy kingdom come (Thy kingdom come), Thy will be done (Thy will be done), on earth as it is in heaven (on earth as it is in heaven)." Now we put them together in petition and we ask Him, "Give us this day our daily bread (give us this day our daily bread)." And, Lord, we ask not for day-old, moldy, stale bread, but for daily bread.
And now we're going to do the pardon and this is American sign language for Jesus; you just put a nail in the hand. Repeat after me: "Forgive us our debts (forgive us our debts) as we forgive our debtors (as we forgive our debtors)." Lord, I ask You, today, to forgive me (Lord, I ask You, today, to forgive me). Forgive me for thinking I don't need You (Forgive me for thinking I don't need You). Forgive me for holding grudges (Forgive me for holding grudges). Forgive me for hurting that person I really do love (Forgive me for hurting that person I really do love). Amen (Amen).
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