Forgive Us As We Forgive Others (Afternoon)
Download MP3Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Okay. Okay. It's good to see you all.
Jeffrey Heine:As, as Todd noted, we, we had baby dedications this morning. We do not have any this afternoon. They they don't let me near that. They're afraid that I'll baptize them, which is a fair point. I probably would.
Jeffrey Heine:But we we are going to be continuing our study of the Lord's Prayer together. And as we begin, let's take a minute to remember where we have been in this study and in this prayer, and and where we find ourselves tonight. We're in Matthew chapter 6. You see it printed in your worship guide there. And here we find Jesus is instructing His followers on how to pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus begins with the words of address, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven. He's conveying this relationship that we have, this access that we have to God as father. And then Jesus moves to 3 main petitions where he says, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so to summarize these three petitions that Jesus goes through, Jesus is saying that after we focus our attention on who God is as our heavenly Father, we focus our hearts on that which is most desired, the holiness of God, the kingdom of God, and the will of God. Everything else, everything flows from those three central petitions, desiring the holiness of God, the kingdom of God, and the will of God.
Jeffrey Heine:Everything else that we could ask for or imagine comes from those three realities coming into greater and greater manifestation in our world. God's holiness, God's kingdom, and God's will, those three expressions of of God's greatness and His graciousness make up the ultimate longings of the human soul, and everything else flows from those petitions. Jesus then shifts the focus and the petitions to the still necessary, but much more particular day to day needs. We looked at this last week, give us this day our daily bread. This petition expresses the category of our physical needs for sustenance, for life in the here and now.
Jeffrey Heine:We long for, or ultimately, is this desire of the fullness of God's holiness, his kingdom, and his will on earth as they are in heaven, and at the same time, we need sustenance to live another day. And Jesus' next line is our focus for this evening. He teaches his followers the next petition in the prayer, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. So let's take time. It's printed on the the front of your worship guide, where we will pray the Lord's prayer together.
Jeffrey Heine:So let's do that now as a family of faith. In the way that our Lord taught us to pray, our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Jeffrey Heine:For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Forgiveness is a problem. Now maybe you don't think of forgiveness as a problem. Maybe you don't think about forgiveness at all.
Jeffrey Heine:But if you do think about it, if you think about the situation or relationships in which you need to forgive someone else, or if you are are deeply longing for the forgiveness from someone, if those things are things that you think about in your own life, then I'd imagine that you probably recognized that forgiveness is a problem. It's a problem not only for every person, but it's a problem in every facet of life. Forgiveness is a spiritual problem, a cultural problem, an intellectual problem, a relational problem, a legal problem, a familial problem, a financial problem. Wherever the topic of forgiveness is found, there's always a problem. I'm sure most of you know from the news over the last year or so that the current US president announced a plan to forgive student loan debt.
Jeffrey Heine:And immediately, people loved it and hated it. And you don't have to be a political scientist to guess who hated it and who loved it. Right? By and large, and though not absolute, by and large, those who loved it had current student loan debt, and those who hated it did not. That's that's my distillation of the the whole issue.
Jeffrey Heine:But this situation easily illustrates the chief commanding problem with forgiveness, and that is the unfairness of forgiveness. Forgiveness, by nature, is not fair. And for the most part, we are great with that unfairness when it benefits us. But when it does not benefit us, or even worse, costs us, then the unfairness of forgiveness is unacceptable. And this is especially true in our culture today.
Jeffrey Heine:Because when the priority of self and personal freedom forcefully rules the day, meaning that when you live in a me first culture where individualism is the ruthless North Star for a society, then the unfairness of forgiveness drives us to become an increasingly unforgiving society. The unfairness of forgiveness says that you have to atone for your own sins. You must pay your own debt. No exceptions. And so in our increasingly unforgiving society, the biblical teaching on forgiveness appears more and more unfathomable.
Jeffrey Heine:The orthodox biblical doctrine of forgiveness today seems antiquated or even unjust and certainly unreasonable. And in this cultural view, Christianity is seen as an all too convenient escape, where anyone guilty of any transgression can claim forgiveness from God without any personal cost. Forgiveness in Christ is then seen as this antithesis of a culture that demands that you atone for your own sins. And that's part of what I mean by forgiveness being a problem. But lest we think that our current cultural moment is so unique, so special, forgiveness has always been problematic.
Jeffrey Heine:In fact, one of the most extensive lessons that Jesus offers on the topic of forgiveness is in response to a disciple bringing up a problem with forgiveness. In Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 18, the disciple Peter is talking with Jesus, and he asks Jesus a question. Peter walks over to Jesus and he asks, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as 7 times? Now, if you've spent much time reading the gospels in the New Testament, you've probably noticed that a lot of the time, Jesus' teaching comes in response to people asking him questions.
Jeffrey Heine:And every time someone asks Jesus a question, there's so much revealed behind their question. In Peter's question, we learn that he's conflicted about forgiveness. He knows he is supposed to forgive, but he wonders, how many times? Peter is demonstrating a common problem with forgiveness. For Peter, it's the problem of enough.
Jeffrey Heine:He asked Jesus, How many times must I forgive? He's concerned about what the limit is in forgiving his brother who has sinned against him. So, how much is enough? When can I stop forgiving? That's a pretty revealing question, not only about what Peter sees as the problem with forgiveness, but the question reveals the very framework that Peter is employing to think about forgiveness.
Jeffrey Heine:Peter's framework assumes that there must be a limit, a point when you no longer have to forgive someone. But Peter isn't finished. Even more is revealed because Peter offers up a possible answer. So I'd like to give a quick side note. If you're asking someone a question, especially the Son of God, Don't tag an answer at the end of your question.
Jeffrey Heine:It never goes like you think it will. Answering the question you are currently asking is a gutsy move. And by gutsy, I mean barreling down the thin line between ignorance and arrogance. But Peter, true to form, tosses out a guess. Peter's suggestion of an answer is revealing too, because the only way that Peter would possibly suggest this answer is because he believes it is both plausible and charitable.
Jeffrey Heine:Peter offers what he must think is a truly wise answer. And I'm not sure what he expected answering the question that he was asking. Perhaps he expected a high five from Jesus, that that Jesus would look at him and marvel at his brilliant wisdom and insight. And for Peter, in his framework for thinking about forgiveness, 7 times is what he offers. 7 times.
Jeffrey Heine:Seemed reasonable, seemed charitable, maybe even overly generous. The Talmud, the the the what the, oral law was at the time was that you had to forgive 3 times. That was your limit. And here, he's doubling it. He's going beyond.
Jeffrey Heine:How overly generous Peter must be. Seven times, I forgive my brother. Peter quickly finds out that his proposed answer is woefully off course. In verse 22, Jesus responds to the question by saying to Peter, I do not say to you 7 times, but 77 times. Some of your translations might say 70 times 7.
Jeffrey Heine:Peter's framework for thinking about forgiveness was a framework of law. Law is focused on what the rules and the limits are. And Jesus confronted the framework of law with his framework of grace. Because of God's grace, we are able to forgive beyond measure. We are not limited to the strength of our character or the wealth of our mercy.
Jeffrey Heine:God's grace empowers us to be forgiving. If your heart's objective in forgiveness is to cautiously measure out the mandatory amount with a close eye on a limit, then you're approaching forgiveness as law and not grace. And we will not address the numerous problems with forgiveness if we come with a framework of law. The only way to address the very real, very serious problems with forgiveness is with a framework of grace. Jesus confronts this issue of framework of how we think about forgiveness with a surprising and transformative reality of his grace.
Jeffrey Heine:Not 7 times, Jesus says, but 77 times. In other words, more times than you will keep track of. That's what he means by the number that he puts out there. Not that we would go to 490 times, or or that we would go to 77 times, but but that we we would be forgiving beyond counting. Paul will later say, to the early Christians that that true love does not keep a record of wrong.
Jeffrey Heine:That that's what he's talking about here. I mean, how often do we go back to that ledger of wrong? Yes. I've forgiven, but I've got this ledger of all the wrongs against me. And Jesus is saying, you will forgive more times than you will keep track of.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus answered Peter's question. He offers his disciple a parable. He tells his followers a story. And this is the story that Jesus tells. There once was a king, and like most kings, he had a kingdom and many servants.
Jeffrey Heine:And the king and his treasury functioned like a local bank, meaning that the king loaned money. And he loaned money to his servants. And one day, the king decided that it was time to settle those accounts with his servants. And when he began to settle, one servant was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. That means in today's terms that the king had loaned the servant about $6,000,000,000.
Jeffrey Heine:Now if you listened to the sermon this morning from Joel, he said it was $1,000,000,000,000. I'm sure it was just a rounding error. You guys can take a look at the numbers yourselves and in your home group. Duke it out. Is it 6,000,000,000, 400,000,000,000, or $1,000,000,000,000?
Jeffrey Heine:I don't know. But according to my Bible math, I I came up with $6,000,000,000 that would take the average worker who, today's terms earns $15 an hour, about 200000 years to pay off the debt. And the the reason that it's so outlandish is on purpose. The man's debt was unbelievable. That's the setting that Jesus is putting forward.
Jeffrey Heine:There was no way that he could pay the debt back. Even if he worked every minute of his life, he could never repay the debt. That's the point. And since he could not pay, his master, the king, ordered him to be sold, along with his wife and his children and all of his possessions. And the servant fell to his knees before the king, and he pleads with him.
Jeffrey Heine:He the servant begs him, saying, have patience with you with me. I will pay you back everything. And that's a wild plea from a desperate man. He didn't have enough lifetimes to really pay it back, but he's begging for his life, the life of his wife, the life of his children. The king heard his plea.
Jeffrey Heine:And out of the king's great mercy, he released the servant, and he forgave him the debt, all of it. Imagine the feeling of that man. He he would have long known that his debt was more than he could ever repay. And when confronted with his debt, he was told that his entire family would be sold as slaves and every possession sold off. And now, he walks the streets of the kingdom for the first time ever as a completely debt free and forgiven man.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus goes on, not long after that happened, the same forgiven servant was walking in the kingdom and saw a fellow servant who owed him money. Now this fellow servant owed the man about a 100 nari, about a $100. And there in the street, he grabs the man and begins to choke him. And as he's choking him, he is screaming, pay me what you owe. And the fellow servant collapses on the ground and pleads with him the familiar words, have patience with me.
Jeffrey Heine:I will pay you back everything. And once again, we hear this plea of a desperate man. But the man refused these cries for mercy. And he went and he put the fellow servant in prison until he could pay the debt. Now, as you would imagine, the news of what happened traveled fast.
Jeffrey Heine:The people in the kingdom had been dumbfounded by the news that the king had completely forgiven $6,000,000,000 in debt with this man. But now, now, Jesus says, the same people were greatly distressed when they heard that that same servant was imprisoning someone over a $100 debt. So they went and they reported to the king all that had taken place. And the king summoned that first servant to him and said, you wicked servant. I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
Jeffrey Heine:And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in his anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. Jesus closes out his story by saying this, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Forgiveness is made possible, not by our character, not by our strength, and certainly not by law. Forgiveness is made possible by Jesus alone.
Jeffrey Heine:We will not think about forgiveness rightly until our understanding of forgiveness is defined by and empowered by Jesus himself. We forgive because of Jesus. So operating out of this Jesus defined framework of grace, what I'd like for us to do with the remainder of our time together is to consider a few key problems we often face with forgiveness. And I want us to listen to what Jesus has to say about this essential aspect of the Christian life. So the 3 things that we will consider, the 3 problems we will consider together, first is the need for forgiveness.
Jeffrey Heine:2nd, the cost of forgiveness. And third, the cause of forgiveness. The need, the cost, and the cause. So the first problem with forgiveness, our need for forgiveness. Comparatively, it is easier to remember the debts of others and far more difficult to remember our own debts.
Jeffrey Heine:We can quickly roll through the list of how we have been wronged by others. We can recall in vivid detail the trespasses of others. But ourselves? That's more complicated. Right?
Jeffrey Heine:Those situations deserve explanation. We need to give context. They there are extenuating circumstances that need to be noted. Sure, I was wrong, but there's more to the story. The sins of others come quickly and clearly to our minds.
Jeffrey Heine:Our sins, however, somehow deserve context. When Jesus is teaching his followers how to pray, he is tying our plea to God with forgiveness for forgiveness with the practice of us forgiving others. Let's remember who Jesus is talking to face to face here on the Sermon on the Mount. By and large, these were not the powerful or elite people of the day. Those Israelites were an oppressed people, subjects to the rule of Rome.
Jeffrey Heine:The people Jesus is talking to and offering this instruction to on how to pray to God, Jesus is telling them not to forget to repent of their own sin daily, just like that plea for bread daily. There's this call to repentance daily. And he ties their personal pleas for forgiveness, their daily repentance, to the mandate to forgive others. A regular impediment to our forgiving others is our negligence in acknowledging our own sin. Our neglect of personal repentance will often show itself in our refusal to forgive others.
Jeffrey Heine:When we fail to understand our own debt and our own need for forgiveness from God, we often fail to see the possibility of forgiving others. And that is because when we are neglecting repentance, we are forgetting the grace lavished upon us. And when we forget the grace lavished upon us, we start thinking that forgiving others has to come from us, our strength, our mercy, our character, our ability to forgive. The servant of the king begged for mercy. And when the king forgave him his debts, he forgot what it was like to be a debtor.
Jeffrey Heine:He forgot the great debt that he owed himself. I think that's why Jesus chose such an outrageous debt. You could spend a $1,000,000 every day for 15 years and still have 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars left. That's how great this debt was. And he so quickly forgot it.
Jeffrey Heine:He forgot his unfathomable need for forgiveness. When we lose sight of our sin in the ways in which we have transgressed against God and trespassed against his righteousness, we will then belittle and minimize how desperate we are for forgiveness. And when we belittle and minimize how desperate we we are for forgiveness from God, we will withhold and refuse forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. For the man in Jesus's parable, the $100 from his fellow servant became more and more important to him, more important than anything else, including his own debt of being forgiven. We cannot mistake, we cannot miss that we are capable of this same thinking.
Jeffrey Heine:Our own debt and forgiveness, rightly kept in view, not for shame, not for fear, not for guilt, but rightly remembered as the debt that we have been forgiven in Christ, will transform our eagerness and our ability to forgive those who incur a debt against us. That's how we address the first problem. We remember our debt, that we have been forgiven much. 2nd problem with forgiveness, the cost The cost of forgiveness. For the servant to have been forgiven, the king had to take on his debt.
Jeffrey Heine:Debt doesn't disappear unless payment appears. The king took on the debt of the servant. He had to pay for it. And for the servant, the cost was enormous, essentially incalculable. The alternative for him was to to pay it off was with his entire life, in the life of his family, his home, his possessions.
Jeffrey Heine:His whole life was going to be sold. The cost of forgiveness was more than the servant could possibly pay. And the king's extraordinary work of forgiveness should have transformed the servant into a man of similar extraordinary mercy, but it didn't. Forgetting the cost of your forgiveness, forgetting the great payment for your sins is one of the greatest threats to your discipleship, your following Jesus. So how do we know if it's happening?
Jeffrey Heine:How do we know if we're beginning to forget the cost of our forgiveness? One way is that we find ourselves withholding forgiveness from others. If you find yourself seizing that fellow servant and demanding the $100, then you've probably forgotten the $6,000,000,000 forgiveness that you have received. There's a reason that Jesus presents this man in a fit of rage, the anger displayed as he chokes his fellow servant demanding the money. It reveals his forgetfulness of his own debt.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus is warning his followers what a terrible danger this is. Well, the greatest dangers in forgetting our debt is forgetting the cost of our forgiveness. In other words, we forget our debt being placed on Jesus and being paid for with his blood, the blood of God. The cost of our forgiveness was the sacrificial and atoning death of Jesus. And when we withhold forgiveness from others, we reveal our forgetfulness of the cost of our forgiveness.
Jeffrey Heine:It is in gratitude. It is the opposite of worship. We can sing, Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe, all day long. But if we are not forgiving our brothers and sisters, then we are like the man who was forgiven the $6,000,000,000 and choking someone to death for a $100.
Jeffrey Heine:So how do we address this second problem? We remember that Jesus has paid our debt and atoned for our sins with his life and his resurrection. And not only does this result in heartfelt worship and gratitude, it transforms us and enables us to forgive others. The third and final problem that we will consider is the the cause of forgiveness. When the king confronts the unforgiving servant, he says, You wicked servant.
Jeffrey Heine:I forgave you all the debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? The king ties these otherwise unrelated situations together. Shouldn't you have had mercy as I had mercy on you? The debt that the servant owed and the debt that the fellow servant owed him were not directly related.
Jeffrey Heine:They they were separate situations. But the king made them related. They are related through mercy. Now, we can see that these two forms of forgiveness are not the same. When Jesus teaches the Lord's prayer, the forgiveness that we are seeking from God is not the same thing that we are extending to others who have trans trespassed against us.
Jeffrey Heine:One way to distinguish this is by understanding that God forgives sin, We forgive people. We do not atone for the sins of others when we forgive them. We do not erase their sin or justify them before God with our forgiveness. Only God does that. That's why when Jesus forgives the sin of the man who cannot walk, his friends, you know, lower him through the roof.
Jeffrey Heine:They cut that hole in the roof. They lower him down. It's pretty obvious what his biggest need is, but Jesus addresses his greatest need, and he forgives him of his sin. And immediately, Jesus perceives that all the people in the room start grumbling in their hearts about what he just did. And maybe they're grumbling because they're like, Doesn't doesn't a guy need to walk?
Jeffrey Heine:Isn't that the thing that he needs most? Jesus says, Why do you grumble about this? Why do you marvel at this? Well, the reason that they're marveling is because only God forgives sins. They were wondering, who is this man who is exercising this kind of authority in front of us?
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus asked them, is it is it more challenging for me to say his sins are forgiven or to get up and walk? Well, Jesus does both. He tells the man to pick up his mat and to walk, and he does, but only as a symbol, only as a visual sign that Jesus has the authority to do what he did at the first, which is to forgive sin. Only God has the authority to forgive sin. And in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus is showing the connection between us living in the atoning work of God's forgiveness and us showing mercy and peace to those who trespass against us.
Jeffrey Heine:Because of Jesus and the forgiveness that he has purchased for you by paying your debt of sin, he has entwined his mercy to every fiber of your life. The servant could have just said, You know, King, this has nothing to do with you. We settled our debt. This is between me and this fellow servant. But that isn't true.
Jeffrey Heine:It isn't just between that man and the fellow servant. Why? Because it's the king's kingdom. It has everything to do with him. And the king has transformed the life of his servant so that now he is enabled to show the king's mercy to his fellow servant.
Jeffrey Heine:This isn't a problem of virtue. This isn't a deficiency in the character of the servant. It's a failure to extend the king's mercy that was so lavishly given to him. The mercy of God is the means by which the Christian is able to forgive his brothers and sisters. Consider the parable again.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus could have told a much simpler, much shorter parable about a servant who owed money, who was owed money by a fellow servant. Just kind of zero into that second half. The story could have been a brief parable about forgiveness, showing an unforgiving servant who is demanding a debt be paid and how that was unkind. But that's not the parable. The parable isn't just about the moral and ethical lesson to forgive others.
Jeffrey Heine:The parable is about how forgiven people forgive. The equation of forgiveness presented by Jesus is dependent upon the reality of God first forgiving the believer and how our actions of mercy flow from his great mercy. To think of forgiveness rightly, biblically, we must view forgiveness through the framework of grace and remember our desperate need, the divine cost of our forgiveness, and the great mercy lavished upon us in Christ. Only then will we approach others with the strength and the will to forgive them. If we take away the mercy shown to us by God, then the equation of forgiveness is is dependent upon our character, upon our rationale.
Jeffrey Heine:But forgiveness does not always make sense. Forgiving 77 times doesn't mean that 77 times it makes sense to forgive. Or the 77 times when the offender has shown sufficient remorse and sorrow. In fact, the repentance of the other person isn't even addressed as a prerequisite. The call is to forgive as we have been forgiven.
Jeffrey Heine:That does not mean that we are required to endure unhealthy or unsafe contexts. It it doesn't mean that we have to maintain unhealthy or unsafe relationships. And it certainly doesn't require us to pretend like we haven't been wronged or mistreated. What it does mean is that we no longer seek the full punishment for the wrongs that are done against us. That means that we can still seek justice, seek reconciliation, seek forms of restitution or even separation from the wrongs committed against us, but we do not seek vengeance.
Jeffrey Heine:All sin is ultimately not against us, but against the Lord. That means that whatever debt of sin someone might have against you, their offense against God is far greater, and God will not let any sin go unpunished. I've said this many times before. Every sin will be punished by God, either on the individual or on Christ on the cross. Which means that we can participate in the mercy of God, knowing that true, ultimate, and final judgment will occur no matter what.
Jeffrey Heine:Because God is just and he will not sweep any sin under any rug. That's why it's liberating to realize that the forgiveness that we pray for is not the same forgiveness that we extend to one another. We are not atoning for their sin when we forgive them. God will deal with that. God will address that with them.
Jeffrey Heine:And if God will not pretend that the sin against you is no big deal, then his call for you to extend forgiveness does not require you to pretend like it's insignificant either. But in forgiveness, we let go of trying to carry out that vengeance, that payment for sin on our own. And we trust in the just judgment of God. And we hope in the great mercy shown to us in Jesus. Jesus found it necessary, after teaching the disciples how to pray, to return to the issue of forgiving those who trespass against us.
Jeffrey Heine:None of the other lines in the Lord's Prayer get another kind of recap moment like this. But if you look in your worship guides, in Matthew 6, right after the conclusion of the prayer, Jesus says, For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Now, this is a tricky one. A few months ago, we we as a staff started looking at the Lord's Prayer together.
Jeffrey Heine:And we spent some time reflecting on it, privately on our own. And then we, kind of, brought different thoughts and questions together. And this was one that I highlighted of it. It seems problematic in and of itself. It seems like works.
Jeffrey Heine:It seems like conditional forgiveness. Again, Jesus is emphasizing here a connection between our forgiveness from God and our forgiving of others. Now, this connection can be confusing and easily misrepresented. But our forgiving of others does not cause our forgiveness from God. It isn't causative.
Jeffrey Heine:It doesn't make our forgiveness happen. Only Jesus makes our forgiveness happen, like we said at the start. But rather, the 2 are so connected that our forgiving others demonstrates that we have been forgiven by God. The only way that forgiveness is truly happening is because of the work of God in lavishing his mercy upon us. And from that place of forgiveness, we extend that mercy to those in our lives who likewise do not deserve it and who may never appreciate it.
Jeffrey Heine:But because of God's great mercy towards you, you will defy the myriad of problems that come with forgiveness and choose to forgive. And in doing so, when you choose to forgive the unforgivable, when you show mercy to the unmerciful, you welcome in the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. And you will declare the greatness and graciousness of our God as you forgive those who trespass against us. Let's pray. Father, I'm sure that as we've talked about forgiveness, faces and names have come to mind for many of us.
Jeffrey Heine:Are there people who forgave us well or those who withheld it or people that we have had to forgive or people that we have refused. Lord, each one of us, as we stand before your word and you kinda hold up the mirror, There are so many things that we see that maybe we don't want to see. And so we ask, we plead for your mercy, for your forgiveness, in all the ways that we have trespassed against you, oh lord, and that we would see and remember, we would know the great cost or great need, the great cause of our forgiveness in your mercy that you have so richly poured out upon us in Jesus. Lord, would you hold those things before us by your spirit? Transform us for those of us that might cling to that framework of law of what is enough and what's just required of me.
Jeffrey Heine:Would you help us to lay it down and take up that that grace that you have extended to us in Jesus? Lord, I pray that some of us who need to have conversations even tonight with friends or family or coworkers or neighbors or whomever they might be, lord, if we are holding back on the forgiveness that you are calling us into, lord, would you give us your mercy and strength to trust in your justice and to hope in the great mercy of Jesus. Lord, we pray these things in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
