Do you still want to hold that grudge?

Zechariah 1; Zechariah 2; Zechariah 3; Luke 11
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Scripture

Luke 11

2 Jesus said, “This is how you should pray:

“Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
3 Give us each day the food we need,
4 and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation.

Observation

This is the big one:

If you are unwilling to forgive someone then you will really have a problem with verse four because Jesus is saying that we should ask God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others.

Do you still want to hold that grudge?

I think you should forgive that person right now. Call them up and tell them that you have forgiven them. Get that relationship patched up quickly.

Or maybe you just want to cut verse four out of your Bible and all the other verses in the Bible where God is commanding us to forgive people. Snip … snip … grudge … grudge … misery … misery!

Have you ever wondered as you are praying if you are praying the right way and praying for the right things or with the right motives? I guess all of our prayers tend to be self-centered but what should we be praying for? This model prayer doesn’t mention intercession or praying for others specifically but interceding for others will hasten God’s Kingdom. We are usually more concerned with our own little kingdoms than God’s Kingdom. Do we spend more time praying for others than we doing praying for ourselves? I hope we do.

This model prayer lets us know that we should pray for our daily needs – food. Our list is a lot longer than that but Jesus in this passage just mentioned “food”.

And finally we should pray asking God to keep us from yielding to temptation. Temptation is coming this week so we better pray for God to give us the strength we need so we don’t yield to it and fall into sin.

Application

I will try to pray this week using this prayer as a model of how I should pray.

Prayer

Father, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. Give me each day the food I need (and the self control not to eat too much), and forgive my sins, as I forgive those who sin against me. And don’t let me yield to temptation.

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