SA Ep73 - Becoming a Prayer Warrior (Part 7)

Forgive Us Our Debts (The Cleansing of the Soul)

In this episode we focus on the phrase “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” where Jesus teaches the necessity of ongoing spiritual cleansing in the life of the believer. While salvation secures our standing before God, daily confession restores fellowship when sin disrupts that relationship.

This episode emphasizes that sin cannot be ignored without consequence. Unconfessed sin affects the heart, hinders prayer, and weakens spiritual life. Through passages like 1 John 1:9, listeners are reminded that God is faithful to forgive and cleanse when sin is confessed.

The episode also highlights the connection between receiving forgiveness and extending it to others. A forgiven heart should be a forgiving heart. Holding onto bitterness creates spiritual blockage and prevents healthy fellowship with God.

Ultimately, this episode calls believers to live with humility and honesty before God, regularly dealing with sin and maintaining a clean heart. Forgiveness is not just a request. It is a necessary part of walking closely with the Father.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelser from Iliad Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. There are some things in life that we can ignore for a while. Maybe it's a messy room or the messy junk drawer that everybody has. We can ignore maybe some problems in relationships and overlook them. Maybe it's the check engine light on your dashboard that we can ignore for a little while. But eventually it must be dealt with. Eventually you're going to have to come back to that thing, whatever it is, that drawer, that room, that flashing light. And you're going to have to deal with it. And the longer you put it off, sometimes the worse it's going to get. When we should have just dealt with it when it happened. We could cover it. We could take a sharpie and color out the light. We can make excuses for it. Even push it aside sometimes. Not open the drawer. Don't look in that room. But if it's something that's not dealt with effectively and oftentimes immediately, it will only grow. Give us this day our daily bread, and now today forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, or forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespassed against us. What does this mean? What was Christ telling his disciples when he's saying to forgive us our debts? Are we talking about a financial thing? No. No, I heard an interesting thing the other day. It was completely AI, but I clicked on I knew it was a I knew it was an AI deal, but I wanted to see what they were saying. That it was saying that the Gronk system or GROK, sorry, system, which is uh Elon Musk's uh ex uh AI did a uh search of all the gospels. Now when it says all the gospels, it's not the four that we have in our canon. There are other gospels that they have uncovered, but they're not uh in line with anything else. Very kind of uh one-off type of things. Anyway, um so the apparently they did an analysis of all this and that Jesus talked more about uh finances and governmental issues than he did about our spiritual life. Don't don't know that's the case, but this is what they were doing. Basically, what this was was this was someone who was making a push for socialism because it was saying that Jesus uh said that we shouldn't own land, we shouldn't have our own personal accounts, that everything should be given uh to the government or to the uh local body to control so that we could all live on the land together and have no debts and have no bills and all this stuff. It was it was completely um uh insane. But uh anyway, when we're talking about debts, we're not talking about the financial Jesus. We should keep short debts, but um, he's talking about our sin, our wrongdoing, our trespasses, our iniquity against other people. There's a couple of big words in this portion that says forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. And you can hear the repetition in two of the words forgive. Forgive, forgive. We're asking God to do something that we ourselves are doing. There is a twofold portion to this part of the prayer. One, we are asking God to forgive us, but number two, we are asking to forgive us as we forgive our debtors, saying that we have forgiven our debtors. We have forgiven those who have sinned or trespassed against us, God, and we would ask that you would forgive us the same way. People, I don't think, like this portion of the prayer. Or maybe they would like it better if we said, God, if you'll forgive me of my sin, I will forgive others of theirs. God, I would like you to forgive me of my sin, and then I will choose which ones I want to forgive who have sinned against me. Um but that's not what he said. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So we must be willing to forgive our debtors even before Christ forgives us. Now we know that we've forgiven of our sin at Calvary, but it's that act of forgiveness. Now the Bible does command us to forgive. We are told to forgive one another. Uh there's there's no question in that. Uh as a Christian man or a Christian woman, we must live in a uh in a almost a perpetual state of forgiveness. Whether we are forgiving others or we're asking others to forgive us or we're asking God to forgive us. We should live in a perpetual state of forgiveness, uh, holding grudges against other people. And I let me tell you, it's hard. I understand 100%. Um I've I've had you know, my life has been in the in the public spotlight for years, and I've had some egregious things said and done towards me or my family, mostly towards me. Um and it and it's very hard sometimes to not hold that grudge, to not hang on to it longer than we ought to, uh, take it more personal than we should. And I know the the longer that we go with this, the more callous we will become, and some of those things don't bother us as bad anymore. There's a lot of things that uh, to be honest with you, it doesn't bother me anymore. Um but we can hold those grudges deep down in our soul. And if there's anything that will keep us from experiencing the full blessings of God, if there's anything that will alter our prayer life, I mean, we talked about it last time that you know sometimes we are in dire situation, and the only thing we can get out is God, I need this. And that's all we, I mean, that's all our mind can concentrate on, that we're just in that situation at that moment. God even hears those prayers. But there's one thing that will stop our prayers at the ceiling, and they won't go any farther. And that is when we hold that iniquity, when we hold those unconfessed sins in our heart. Uh 1 John 1.9 says, if we confess our sins, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all righteousness. It's not, it doesn't say that if we confess our sins, he might. He'll think about it. He'll put it into the you know, uh random uh lottery drawing of if your sins are going to be no, he'll he'll forgive us, but the the question is not on him. The question is of if we will confess our sins. David wrote in Psalm 32, he said, When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. What is he talking about? He's talking about unconfessed sins. Unconfessed sin, unconfessed debt or trespass or transgression or iniquity, holding grudges, all those things will weigh heavily on our soul. And that's what David was saying. When I kept silence, when I didn't confess these things, my bones waxed old and they were roaring at me all day long. It began to affect him physically, emotionally, spiritually. We're a trichotomy. We're three parts made into one. But if we would confess, and when David ended up confessing, restoration began. So there's there's portions to this. And you can go back and look at uh we I did a series on uh forgiveness and reconciliation and all that, and I don't want to repeat that series. I'm looking at this in our prayer life, in the sense of our prayer life, and that we when we hold this iniquity in our heart, when we have our uh unconfessed sins against God and against others, when we hold those in, um that heaviness, that waxing old, uh will continue daily. When we confess, when we ask God to forgive us, but not only that, we must forgive others. And when that happens, restoration begins in our life. So you have forgiveness that leads to restoration. Restoration then, now here's where it gets tricky, can lead to reconciliation. Okay, so forgiveness will lead to restoration. Bible tells us that. He is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, what is that? That is restoration. You are being restored back. He told Peter that whenever Peter was going to deny. And uh, you know, when Christ told him, He said, No, I'm not. He said, Yeah, you are, Peter, you're gonna deny. But when you've when you've come back to yourself, when you've you know realized, when you've been restored, Peter, use that experience to restore others. Use that experience to help others who are living in sin to get back to where they need to be. And so there is a guarantee of restoration if there is forgiveness, if we confess our sins. Now, what is not guaranteed is the reconciliation. What does that mean? All right. If you have a uh a strained relationship with someone, whoever it might be, I don't know who it is, but let's just say there's someone out there you have a strained relationship with, uh, a parent, a child, whoever. Maybe they've wronged you. Maybe you've wronged them. Maybe it's one of those uh chicken and egg things, you don't know who you know sinned first. You know, the Hatfield McCoy is one of the most famous, you know, feuds between families, and uh you ask one group and they can trace it back to this point, you ask another group and they trace it back to the other point. You don't know which one started, but they're all still upset at each other. So you don't maybe not know who started it, but you know that they sinned against you at this moment. And maybe that whatever sin it was against you is legitimate. Maybe it was something that that really was. I'm I'm not trying to cast stones on saying that you were the one that wronged first. Maybe it was them. Maybe they they've said things they shouldn't, or whatever it is. But the fact is, is that's not what Jesus said. He didn't say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, uh, but only those that uh you know we sinned against and they sinned against us. But if they sinned against me first, God, I don't want forg I don't want to forgive them. That's not what he said. We're supposed to forgive them, which will lead to our restoration. Now the reconciliation is not always a guarantee. That bringing that relationship back um to a point where it used to be is not um not going to be guaranteed in the Bible. Sometimes we just can't move forward with people in the same way that we used to. Because of events, because of personalities, because of of whatever it might be, there may not be a reconciliation back to a point. There there that there should be an effort to, especially in in marriage. You know, husband and wife having issues. There should be an effort to reconcile, but you can't reconcile without restoration, you can't restore without forgiveness. If we're holding grudges, there's you're never going to get to reconciliation because there'll never be restoration. So we must forgive. And we must ask for forgiveness. And we must be sincere in doing that. I can I can think of people right now that I know of that are so bitter at other people. Christian, these are Christian people too. I'm not talking about somebody that I met down at the you know local bar, don't go to the local bar or anywhere like that. I mean, these are Christian people who, I mean, to the point almost hate other people for something that happened years ago and are holding on to that in their heart, and then want to talk about how blessed they are of God, how God is just so wonderfully blessing them. And my thought is can you imagine if you got rid of all that hatred in your heart? If God is this good to you now, just think how good it could be. But reconciliation is not guaranteed, and that's given to us by Paul in Romans 12.18. He said, if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. He said, if it be possible, it may not, it may not be possible for for everybody. And in doing it, and when he was talking about this, he's talking about forgiveness. He said, let me just read this little portion to you from 14, uh Romans 12, 14. It says, Bless them which persecute you. Bless and not curse. He like he had to go back and explain it, like almost like you could, the the people's faces were in shock as he's writing this letter to the Christians in Rome. He said, Bless them that persecute you. More than likely, talking about the Romans, but I mean there's there's other uh we can use this in other in uh contents of the context as well. Bless them that persecute you, bless and not curse. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but uh uh but uh conden uh condescend to men of low state. Go down to where they're at. Be not wise in your own conceits, recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men, if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give pla give but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink, for in doing so thou shalt heap coals of fire up on his head, be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. It's not going to be possible that we can live peaceably with all people. It's not going to be possible that that everybody is going to get along all the time. So reconciliation may not be able to happen, but there can be restoration. You can get back to a place where you can pray. You don't have to hold a grudge, you don't have to feel like there's some black spot or stain in your life. It is so freeing to finally forgive people. I speak from experience. It's so freeing when you can not hold those grudges. I used to tell uh my well, I still say it, but uh I used to tell my uh Bible class when I was teaching Bible class, I tell them all the time that holding on to bitterness or or holding on to a grudge is like taking poison expecting it to hurt the other person. It makes no sense. Why why would somebody do that? But yeah, we do it all the time with our grudges. We'll hold on to them. Ah I wanna I'm gonna I'm gonna show them, I want to be mad at them. Well, they probably don't care. But yeah, we're drinking that poison every day, and it's be giving us again it's a dark place in our life. But if we would just sincerely say, God forgive me of where I've sinned, we're not perfect. That's a whole other episode. But I want you to forgive me as I've forgiven others. And if you look at that equation, if um if A plus B, or if A equals B and B equals C, then A must equal C. Okay, it's transitive property. If A equals B and B equals C, then A has to equal C, right? Well, if A is God forgiving us, and B is us forgiving other people, then God should forgive us the same as we forgive other people, and the same as God would forgive other people. So if we're not willing to forgive other people, don't expect God to be willing to forgive us, and don't expect us to expect God to forgive them. So look at what just happened with one breakdown of that equation. All of a sudden we went from God forgiving us to God not forgiving us, and us wishing the other person to hell because we don't want God to forgive them. And I don't think that an honest Christian person would want anybody to see the flames of the torment of hell. And it all goes back to forgiveness. Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.