Hal Donaldson: Hi. This is Hal Donaldson of Convoy of Hope coming to you from Ukraine. I just wanna say thank you to you, pastor Matt, and all our friends at Sandals Church. Thank you so much for your kindness and your generosity. Because of you, there are children and families that are receiving much needed help right here in Ukraine.
To date, 1,000,000 of meals and 1,000,000 of dollars in emergency supplies have been distributed to both refugees and the families inside Ukraine. More than 200 large shipping containers filled with food, medical equipment, hygiene kits, sleeping bags, tents, and new clothes are being distributed. And more containers are on the way because with your help, Convoy of Hope has made a commitment to distribute 50,000,000 meals. Currently, we're working through a network of churches to resource 20 distribution hubs in undisclosed locations inside Ukraine. Please know that the food and supplies you are providing is meeting urgent physical needs and opening the doors to share the love of Jesus.
Speaker 2: In one community where a church was doing distributions, we learned that there was a woman who had actually been attending the church for years. After seeing the church's generosity and their involvement in the community as this war continued to unfold, the Lord moved into her heart in such a powerful way that now she's not only attending church, but she's following Christ. She gave her heart to the Lord just as she watched the church serve the community and as she now has jumped in and become a part of the relief efforts.
Hal Donaldson: From warehouses in Poland and Romania, we're also serving refugees in 9 neighboring countries, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Austria, Germany, and Hungary. But because families continue to migrate west, we're expanding the relief effort to additional countries. Convoy Hope is committed to working in the region long after the war is over because families will need our help putting their lives back together. And to that end, we've put together a long term strategy so that we can meet as many needs as possible.
Speaker 3: Our desire is really to position the local church to be the church that God has desired her to be, to be the hands and feet of who God is himself, to show his kindness to the people of Ukraine. We're committed to the long haul. We're committed for here for years. We're committed to the pastors, and we're committed to the need.
Hal Donaldson: Many Ukrainians have expressed their deep appreciation for your support. As one refugee said, we will never forget that you came, and you stayed, and you helped us when we needed you the most.
Speaker 4: I'm truly, truly grateful that convoy of hope chose to come to Romania. You helped in a big way. This food make long, long life for people, you know, they not die because they have food.
Speaker 2: I think there's millions of people that in Ukraine would have nothing to say but thank you.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: Man, as we begin, I just wanna take a moment to acknowledge, what a gift it is for us to see as a church, the work that's happening in Ukraine as a result of the way that you've been praying and the way that we gave as a church to support refugees and the crisis that was happening in Ukraine. You know, oftentimes, as we give to things like that, we don't always get to see, the fruit or or the end result of what it is that we did. And I I just love that God and his power and wisdom has a way of taking what small things we bring, what little prayers we offer, and and connecting it to something so much bigger than we could possibly imagine. And that's what we got to see in that video, and I hope that encourages all of us, because I think that principle applies even to prayer. What is prayer doing?
Does it make any kind of impact? We've been exploring and wrestling through that all summer long as we've been in this teaching series, how to pray. Taking line by line, week after week, the most famous prayer that Jesus gave us to pray in his teaching on how to pray. And this week, we zero in on this phrase that I think for a lot of us is difficult to wrestle with. And since in some ways, eve even to pray when he says, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Forgiveness. Today, we're going to explore what what the role of forgiveness is in prayer and how it transforms us, because the truth is all of us have been hurt by somebody. We all have different stories. We all have different experiences. We all have different lives right now.
Maybe some of you who are watching may are not even yet following Jesus, and man, what an honor it is for you to still be with us. But the one common thing that all of us share is this, we all have pain that's been caused by other people. What do we do with that? It makes me think of, one of the the world's biggest songs right now, according to Billboard Music. Surprisingly, it's not Harry Styles.
I'm sorry, Harry Styles fans. Not anything from Bad Bunny, which my wife and I would love to listen to. It's not even Drake. The biggest song in the world right now is actually a 37 year old song from Kate Bush, Runnin' Up That Hill. Now I don't know about you, but I'll be going from meeting to meeting, place to place, and I'll be singing running up that hill, you know, trying to hit that note.
But it's it's amazing. It's it was featured in the last season of stranger things. And so this song has experienced its own kind of resurrection as people have rediscovered just how beautiful it is and how profound it is. And it is, the result of this show. Now I'm not gonna get into a debate as to whether or not you and I should watch horror or what role art and faith, have together.
That can be another sermon. But there is something profound about this show, Stranger Things, that has just catapulted this song. And it's this theme that comes out of this last season. And it's really a question, and it's this. What do we do with our pain?
Without giving too much away about the show, a few of the characters come to wrestle with the power that evil can have when you and I do not process our pain well. There is a kind of darkness and force in this world that can lead us to devastating places of our lives if we don't know how to deal with our pain. And so let me ask you guys today, what do you do with your pain? The question isn't so much, you know, how can we go through life without getting hurt? No.
That's that's just not possible. The real question is when you get hurt, what do you do with it? And I would say enter in Jesus in Nazareth as he teaches us to pray, forgive those who have sinned against you. Forgiveness, surprisingly today, is our path forward as we think about pain. And I wanna offer this to those of you too who are maybe skeptical about Jesus.
Man, again, it's a gift to have you here with us. I don't know of a better person in human history to teach on forgiveness than Jesus himself. And so maybe you struggle with all of Christian teaching. Maybe you struggle with church. Maybe you struggle with scripture or the Bible or what people have said the Bible says.
I would encourage you to open up your mind and your heart right now to the way Jesus lays out forgiveness for us. And as we do that, let's hear from Matthew's gospel. As we have all summer long, I'm gonna ask that if you are willing and able that you would stand with us as we read God's word together. For Matthew's gospel chapter 6, we're gonna read the entire Lord's prayer, and then I'll read 2 verses that follow it, and then I'll pray. Matthew writes this, this then is how you should pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.
This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Heavenly father, as we have joined together in this moment and heard your word, we acknowledge God that you are here and we ask that you would speak. And in so speaking, God, would you give us ears to hear today? Would you give us eyes to see how it is that we can pray forgiveness, experience it for ourselves, and offer it to a world that needs it?
Would you make us what we are not yet in Jesus? We pray these things in his name. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much.
You can be seated. Jesus's word from verse 12, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Our debtors. The word there kind of is, is a Greek one that communicates something of payment or commerce or commercial. It would be like me calling up my bank.
I bank with Chase, and so I was pretty much convinced by all those very compelling Kevin Hart commercials. I'm with Chase Bank. And it'd be like me calling JP Morgan. Hey, JP. That credit card debt.
Just go ahead and erase it. Thank you. It's been great. Just go ahead and take it off. Oh, and by the way, as a sign of my good faith, I will also erase all the debt of other people.
Right. And you just hang up. It's not how it works. But you notice in the prayer, there's no please, there's no sorry for what we did forgive us. It's just forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
It it strikes us in a strange way, and I think that's also true of forgiveness. Forgiveness interjected in the world doesn't always make sense. It's difficult. And I think this line, out of all the lines in the Lord's prayer, is maybe the most challenging one for us to actually pray. Because again, who who doesn't want a father in heaven that loves us?
Who wouldn't want earth to look like heaven, whatever heaven is like? Who wouldn't want someone who is all powerful to provide our needs through daily bread? But forgiveness? Forgiveness is difficult. Forgiveness involves us acknowledging the pain that's been caused to us and then leaving it.
We're being transformed by it. I think in the words of n t Wright when he talks about forgiveness, he says, the heart will not open or the heart that does not open to forgive others will remain closed when God's own forgiveness is offered to them. You see, there is a powerful moment that happens to us in prayer that can transform not just the way that we receive forgiveness, but in the way that we extend it to people. And so with that, I want us to consider this as we spend our time together today is this, as I learn to pray, I discover there is more forgiveness in God than there is sin in me. I want us to hear that as you begin to pray, as I begin to pray, we discover that there is more forgiveness in God than there is sin in me.
You see, Jesus' goal for us as we learn to pray the way he taught us to pray is that we would become by nature people who are forgiving, people who can extend forgiveness. And this is how I think it works. First of all, in prayer, we learn this. In prayer, we can release both the debt others owe us and the grip anger has on our hearts. Forgiveness is releasing 2 things.
Both the debt that somebody owes us, which is this ability, this payment that is our right to take from someone, we forgive it. In the Greek, it means we erase it. It's gone. We no longer require it. We release it.
But secondly, we also learn to release the grip that anger has on our hearts. There's 2 levels today. And I want us to focus in on that second level of what it looks like to release the anger that is on our hearts. Because it's so wild in in in your life and I think in my life, when we experience people who have hurt us, we forgive them, they move on. But then if we're being honest, there's still anger about what they did to us.
The declaration of forgiveness has been made, but why am I still angry? Why am I still bitter? Add to that the hard phrase from Jesus, because if there's anyone who takes forgiveness seriously, it's the king himself. The father will not forgive you if you cannot forgive other people. That is a hard teaching for any one of us to hear.
What do we do with that? At the very least, I think it means this. It's not possible in the mind of Jesus for you and I to relate and conversate with a forgiving God and then not become a forgiving kind of person ourselves. It's not possible at any level in this world and life to relate to a forgiving God and then in turn not forgive people. That's what we have to wrestle with.
Paul picks up this idea as well in Ephesians 4 on this relationship between God and the way we treat people. Notice what he says, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Now what does it mean? How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? Paul goes on.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling, fighting, and slander, which is Twitter along with every form of malice. He says be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God's example. Another translation says imitate God in this way. Therefore as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love.
Man, what a phrase. Walk in the way of love. Just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. You see, what Paul is laying out for us is is to be bitter at someone, to be angry with someone, to to have malice in your life is to, in fact, grieve the holy spirit of God. It's not possible for us to be in alignment with God and then bitter towards people.
There's something wrong. Unforgiveness, you see, is not just this, emotional problem. It is a spiritual blockage between you and God, between me and God when unforgiveness is present. And that's why this second kind of level is so important for us to deal with when it comes to not just releasing the debt that is owed, but releasing the grip of bitterness that is on our heart. Matthew 18 later gives a conversation that Jesus had about forgiveness where he says we have to learn to forgive from the heart, from the heart.
And here's why I think this is hard. Because when I say release the group of anger, like, you know, what does that mean? Here's what I think it means. When we're unforgiving or when we're wrestling with what it looks like to forgive someone, our our anger and our bitterness goes in a few directions. 1st, it goes towards people.
It's hard to forgive people. We're angry with them. Maybe for some of you, you can't seem to forgive your parents. You had a hyper perfectionist parent Or 2. Double trouble.
Maybe you had negligent parents. Maybe you had parents who didn't know how to apologize to you. They claimed to follow and obey a forgiving God, but they can never ask for it themselves. Maybe for some of you, you you you're angry at coworkers. They take digs at you.
They misrepresent you. They betrayed you. Maybe for some of you, you're you're angry at a friend who has betrayed you, abandoned you. Some of you here today, you're you're angry with a spouse who's failed you. Despite your best effort to serve them, love them, help them, remain faithful, they've abandoned you.
We're angry at people. The second direction though is we're angry at ourselves, though, too. It's not just people we struggle to forgive. We can't forgive ourselves sometimes. I don't like the way I am.
I struggle with Fredo. Why? Because Fredo man, forget the standards of Jesus. Fredo fails to live up to Fredo's own standards. I don't know why I'm talking in the 3rd person, but if we're being honest here today, even if you reject the bible standards, religious standards, cultural standards, you failed to live up to your own standards.
You can't forgive yourself. You're angry with yourself. You're not who you know you could be. Those same habits have not left you yet. Your consequences continue to unravel because of decisions you made years ago.
Hal Donaldson: You can't forgive yourself. You're angry at yourself. There's another level of
Pastor Fredo Ramos: anger though too, and I'm life. And it's hard for us to forgive life for just being life. Why did this happen to me? Why does this seem so unfair? Why didn't I get that kind of family?
Why are they healthy? I'm sick. Why were they born into privilege and I wasn't? We we just are unhappy with the way things go. Why is it that I can never get ahead or even just catch up or even just get one step behind the pace of life?
We're angry at life. And then there's a last direction, which I think really stings all of us at some level is this. We are angry at God. Why did you do this, God? Disappointed in you.
Dare we even say it's hard for us to forgive God. That sounds heretical, but we're angry. I think of a fascinating book I would commend to all of you. It's called Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey. And Philip, in this book talks about disappointment with God being rooted in 3 things, fairness.
God, you haven't been fair to me. This is not fair, God. He says silence. God's quiet. I've been shouting.
I've been praying. I've been coming every week to sandals to watch this series to learn how to pray. I shout to the heavens and I hear nothing. God's silent. And also, absence.
God, where are this ever present, always loving, good, wise, powerful God, where are you? Philip talks about our disappointment with God, our anger in God is usually rooted in those three things, fairness, silence, and absence. And so when we think about Jesus teaching us to pray forgiveness, this second level is so important on us locating our anger, realizing that we have to release the grip of anger on our hearts. But the good news for us today is that there is an invitation to experience that in prayer this is possible. In prayer it is possible.
Jesus isn't mincing words. He believes what he's teaching. We can experience forgiveness and a second level freedom. Now I I say all that with hope, but also with a sense of reality too because here's what I'm not saying forgiveness is, which I know gets tossed around in especially in Christian circles so much. Because the truth is many of you guys are working through immense deep pain.
It's one thing to talk about the pain of stranger things. This is a show, but it's another thing to talk about real pain. Some of you guys are walking through that now. And so here's what I'm not saying forgiveness is. Forgiveness, number 1, is not forgetting.
We often think that, well, I gotta forget. No. As human beings, we are designed to remember. Do you guys know that? Like, we are neurologically wired to be people who remember.
Remembering memories are important to us. In fact, you you can go a page in scripture without finding the command to remember something God did for you. In fact, I would even say the ability to forgive is dependent upon you remembering what someone did to you. We need to remember. Forgiveness is not forgetting.
Secondly, forgiveness is not just a feeling either. We we can take a declaration, a posture, a position of forgiveness, and still not feel like it's the case. Enter in the work of the spirit to help produce within us what we don't yet feel is true. Forgiveness is not just a feeling. Thirdly, forgiveness doesn't mean something is not a sin, which is what I feel like happens all the time in church.
I don't know why I do this a lot too. I will forgive someone, and then there's a part of me that wants to minimize what they actually did. Well, I forgave him for it. It's not a big deal. No.
No. No. No. We we need to be honest about the depth of what sin does to us and to the world around us and at the same time hold this imbalance. It can be forgiven.
It's wrong, but it can be forgiven. It's destructive. It can be forgiven. We have to be able to hold on to both, but there is something about us in which we think we're more holy, more mature, or better off in church if I can just forgive something and then act like it's not that bad. We gotta be able to do both.
Forgiveness doesn't mean we minimize the reality, the heaviness of the sin. Fourthly, forgiveness is not always allowing someone hurtful back into your life. Forgiveness comes with boundaries. Wisdom, discernment, time, we realize that forgiveness is a step towards reconciliation, but it is not guaranteed. But you can still have a posture of forgiveness.
For some of you today, you need to hear your forgiveness, your desire to forgive people must come with boundaries. It's a wise thing to do. Listen. It's a loving thing to do, and we gotta hold that in mind. Lastly, forgiveness is not a one time event.
It's not forgiven and done. Forgiveness, this is a daily prayer, which means forgiveness is a daily choice. Every moment of every day, we are making a decision and a choice. I will forgive this person. I will maintain a posture, attitude, and heart motive of forgiveness towards this person.
It's an ongoing reality. And, again, we consider this, that this is actually possible. It's possible. I love the words of Elizabeth Bruinig. She is a a writer for the Washington Post.
She writes on both kind of church history, Christianity, human politics, so give her a lot of grace. But, on the topic of ford forgiveness, she wrote this. Forgiveness is an opportunity to give someone else an identity not based on the way they failed you. I love that. When you think about the gospel, that's what it is.
God the father gives to you and I an identity that's not based on the way we failed him but on the way Jesus was victorious for us. This is a beautiful thing you guys and we can receive that. And that's what makes it possible for you and I to pray, our Father in heaven. Father in heaven. And here's what begins to happen.
Not only do we in prayer experience a kind of release but here's here's one we need to wrestle with. In prayer it's also the case that we absorb the pain caused by others instead of returning it to them. We absorb it. In prayer, we make a decision that what was done to me, I will not return to them. You see, prayer is a practice.
It's a holy, beautiful, simple practice in which you and I can break the chain of evil and the cycle that the world is caught up into. From the very beginning, when Adam and Eve got into their first argument, you did this. Well, she gave it to me. That began the vicious cycle that we have been playing all throughout human history, tit for tat. You do this, I'll do this.
Between neighbors, coworkers, friends, world powers, my 2 children, the world powers of an 8 year old, and the world powers of 4 year old. I did this or you did this to me, I'm gonna do this to you. We exist constantly in this vicious cycle of tit for tat. You cheat on me, I cheat on you. You act like I I'm not in the room, I'm gonna forget you even exist.
You tweet about me, I'll write a whole book about you. But, see, in prayer, there's an opportunity to absorb that pain and to make a decision that it will not be perpetuated through my decisions moving forward. And this this is a challenging thing. And as we wrestle with this, I want us to hear the words from from Peter in 1st Peter 2. You know, the the the letter Peter wrote there is to a church who's wrestling with suffering.
And and Peter, in in all of his wisdom, is trying to connect the suffering of Jesus and the suffering of Christians. And he says this in the second chapter. It's a beautiful chapter. But here he writes in verse 23, when they hurled insults at him, referring to the crucifixion of Jesus, notice what he said. He did not retaliate.
When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, Peter says, instead, underline this phrase, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. And then he quotes from Isaiah 53. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.
For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. Jesus didn't retaliate. If there's anyone that had an opportunity to act justly, righteously, it's the king himself. But instead, we hear these words, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. To his executioners, he says that.
You see, it's the sacrifice of Jesus that I think offers another way, another path for you and I to deal with the pain that comes in our direction. Whether it's the pain of life, the pain you brought on yourself, the pain others have caused you, watching and embracing the good news of what Jesus did for sinners like you and I offers us another way to no longer perpetuate evil. You see, prayer is this unique union. Listen, prayer is a unique union between us and the one who suffered for us. That in our bearing of pain, we find comfort in the one who has gone before us in the same way.
You see, to absorb the pain is not masochistic, it's not without hope, it is knowing that you don't do this alone, but you follow a master who knows what it's like to also absorb pain in this way and who did it for you on your behalf. There is something profoundly beautiful and intimate offered to all of us when we go to God, absorbing the pain we deal with in life, realizing that in Jesus, we have someone who knows what it's like to do that very thing himself and to do that for us, to do that for you. So the question now is, do you know Jesus in this way? Does your prayer life experience anything like this where you can name things to God? God, they did this to me.
God, this is exactly how they hurt me. They said this. They betrayed me. They misrepresented me. They hurt me.
God, I have experienced this constantly for them or from myself. Right? Name the ways in which the pain is sitting in you as a form of absorbing it And watch what God does. You see, it it's a lot it's a lot like a, a water purifier that we attach to our faucets. Because even though we live right next to the Pacific Ocean, God knows what's coming out of our pipes.
But when you attach a a water filter to the end of your sink faucet, turn the water on, flows through the pipes, out through your sink, and this filter catches all the impurities. It's able to absorb it quickly so that what comes out of the other end is not what first went in. Absorbing pain in prayer is just like that. What what goes in is not what eventually comes out. What comes out is something clean, something purified, something that you can consume and be healthy.
Listen now, something that you can offer to the world as a better source of life. This is what prayer does for us. This friends, if we can learn how to pray and to pray forgiveness, what a gift we can offer the world. Because here's what happens. I love what Ronald Rolheiser said.
I've been reading this book by him called A Sacred Fire and it's all about how to follow Jesus in your midlife and that's where I'm at right now. I gotta just acknowledge that. I'm 36, I am not a young person, and and he offers something so profound in there. He says, any pain that isn't transformed in prayer will be transmitted to people. Any pain not transformed through prayer will be transmitted to people.
And so here's what we need to think about as we close. In prayer, we allow forgiveness to transform us rather than bitterness to be transmitted out of us. That's what happens. I love the phrase, from Hebrews 12. Listen to the language here.
See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God. Well how can that happen? He goes on. And that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. No bitter root.
You see the the the the picture there of plants, vegetation, a garden. Prayer is a way for you and I, as we pray through forgiveness, to pull with our hands and all of God's strength and grace and spirit, the roots of bitterness out of our hearts. That's what's happening. So that in turn we can be transformed by what's happened to us and offer healing to the rest of the world. Imagine for a second that with God's help, learning to pray cannot only heal my wounds and your wounds, but transform them into a form of healing for others.
Think about that. The way that you have been wounded through the good news of Jesus can actually become a source of healing for the world. This is the way of God's kingdom. What is painful and evil will be transformed into what is good and beautiful and true. This is the way that Christians live and operate.
It is so radically different. It's upside down. It doesn't make sense. But prayer is a doorway into experiencing how this can happen. Imagine at all of our church campus locations, this becoming something we offer our communities where we bring our wounds, but we do so in a way that they've been prayed over.
We bring our pain, but we do so in a way in which we experience forgiveness through it so that in turn, you can be a source and a minister of healing to your community, to your friends, to your family, to your neighbors, to those you see and sit next to at church, to those you share life with in community. Man, what an opportunity we have to allow pain, what we've carried to be transformed through prayer as we forgive people and offer life. Now to do that, I wanna just offer 2 questions so we as we close. 1st is this, to do that, we need to locate our anger. And so I want you to think about, and maybe even write down right now, what am I angry about?
What are you angry about? Is it God? Is it somebody else? Is it yourself? Is it life?
Locate your anger. And then second question, what areas, based on knowing where you're angry at, what areas of unforgiveness do I need to name to God in prayer? God, I am angry at this because I don't know how to forgive it yet. In my life, I've I've had, someone really close to me that has has hurt themselves, hurt me, hurt hurt family, hurt friends consistently for a long time. And what I've been realizing over the last few days is forgiveness is declared for sure, But there's still anger, still real anger because it just doesn't make sense.
And I don't know how to make sense of it. And what I'm discovering is that if if Jesus on the cross can say to his executioners, you've been forgiven, then then I gotta let that sink down to my soul so that I can say, with genuine freedom, this person has been forgiven and bitterness can come out of my heart, but you gotta locate it. And and for some of you, you gotta understand that if if Jesus can forgive an executioner on sight, what's keeping you from thinking he can't forgive you right now? And more importantly, that you can become a forgiving person by nature. This can happen.
But as we close, we're gonna pray in just a moment. I also wanna invite you into this. All summer long, we've been going through this series. And I know, man, summer is a time for us to travel, to rest. It's a beautiful time of the year.
But it's also a time in which we miss out on the gifts that God gives to us through his church people. And I say that because the journey of forgiveness is a weighty journey and is a journey that you cannot carry by yourself. It's a weight, though, that a community can carry with you. And so as you think about what you're angry about, as you process who it is that you need to forgive in your life, would you this week, if you're in a community group, be thinking about how you might share and ask for help as you learn to forgive, to pray forgiveness into your soul and out of your life so that it might land with people around you. And if you're not in the group, man, let us help you today take that next step.
Yes, it's summer. Yes, we're moving. We got this. We got all these things going on. But man, don't miss out on an opportunity to learn to pray with people.
The noun, forgive us our sins. This is a communal prayer. Forgiveness is a community project. Jesus gave us a church, a people to share this with, to learn how to do this. And and and I would say the best part of Sandals Church isn't even this part.
You around a stage listening to me, it gets better. Show up at someone's house, gather around a living room table, Gather in a home. Gather over a meal. Gather over coffee, and learn what it was like to experience prayer but praying through forgiveness. And to know that we have a Jesus, oh, a Jesus who is so good.
Because we do learn that through prayer, there's far more forgiveness in him than there is sin in me and there's sin in you. Let's do that now as we go to him in prayer. Heavenly father, we ask, god, that you would teach us to pray and that you would teach us to pray forgiveness and that we might be transformed people through this process. Would you help us to name the places where anger has gripped our hearts, where bitterness has taken root? And would you, by your loving, present holy spirit, help us to pull those roots out so that something more beautiful might grow.
Would you lead us to do that now as we sing and worship you in Jesus name? Amen.