Forgiveness Sets the Prisoner Free

As refreshment for your spirit read the following from Psalm 86. Then go back and pray them as you reread them.

“Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name.
For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, And abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You.
But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, Longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.
I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And I will glorify Your name forevermore.
In the day of my trouble I will call upon You, For You will answer me.”

This Psalm is known as the “Prayer of David.” It is notable because David uses the Hebrew word Adonai (“Master”) seven times when referring to God. To ask for the supply David needed and ask for, you need to submit to the Lord as Master. This is an expression of loyalty and devotion. Dare we call Him Master and not obey Him? It is not a title to be taken lightly.

Our holy God is “ready to forgive”. Sin blinds some people to sin leaving them to His readiness to forgive. Failure to call on Him for forgiveness leaves one captive to guilt. Resultantly some think that they must induce Him to forgive, by tears, promises of amendment, religious observances.

You may have fallen a hundred times, and are ashamed to come to God again; it seems too much to expect that He will receive you again. But He will, for He is ready to forgive. Don’t impose on God’s readiness to forgive, neither forget that He is ready to forgive.

We should rejoice in that like David we can say, “In the day of my trouble I will call upon You, for You will answer me….” The day of “trouble” is descriptive of days like we all have. In such days we can call on the Lord and He will hear us.

You will find He is attentive and responsive. He may not answer in the way desired, but He will respond out of His abundant love and unbound knowledge which exceeds ours. It is out of the reservoir of love and knowledge He provides for us.

Because we are forgiven we should be willing to forgive others. In the Lord’s Model Prayer is this maxim: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6: 12).

We are instructed to “…be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4: 32).

The process of forgiving out of gratitude is this. In effect we pray: “Dear Father, I forgive this person as a demonstration of my gratitude for you having forgiven me.”

To forgive means the person you forgive means more to you than the wrong they did to you.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free only to discover the prisoner is you.