Good afternoon everyone,

Mark 11:25-And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."

I believe we reveal the sincerity of the relationships we have with people by our willingness to make right any issue that could cause hurt to the relationship. This is a natural response from an unbeliever if they are married or with their children, or family at least for awhile. Yet with Christians, Jesus doesn’t allow us to have a "standard" or "limit" as to who we should forgive and how much. Because at the heart of perserving any genuine love in the relationship in our lives, we must forgive anyone who we have something against. This is can be a very tough command to handle, especially if that person is merely someone we know and not someone we have a relationship with.

The reason behind this command to forgive anyone we have something against is because at the root of unforgiveness is disobedience. As a result of our disobedience to God we are out of right relationship with Him. So as a result of that, we cannot give the genuine love we would want the people we cherish to have, because we are not right with Christ. So we then rob the people we cherish because we are too proud to forgive. Yet our unwillingness to forgive reveals that we may not cherish at least two relationships. First with Jesus, the second with whoever we are too proud to humbles ourselves to God for.

Jesus shows how radical His love is for His children by forgiving us, showing that His love would not be blocked by pride! We offended Him as God, and He forgave us of all of them. In this He shows us how precious we are to Him as His children. Because in ultimate humility He was willing to come to earth and die for us who offended Him. The hardest thing about forgiving someone when they cause us hurt, is the humility it takes to not take revenge through silence, manipulation, indebting them to do things for us, etc. To really show that we cherish Christ and love people as we are commanded to, is by willing to be humiliated for the love we have for Christ sake. This is how "love covers a multitude of sins" and builds us up as the church in love (1 Peter 4 v8).

In His Love, Ld