Lent Devotional Day 9 - Friday 3/14/14 Matthew 6:14-15 (CJB) For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will not forgive yours. Mark 11:25 (CJB) And when you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive your offenses. 1 John 4:20 (CJB) If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For if a person does not love his brother, whom he has seen, then he cannot love God, whom he has not seen. Solitude is genuine only when it is inhabited. And the best way not to have people in your way is to let them into your heart. -Alessandro Pronzato -The Desert, An Anthology for Lent, John Moses (Amazon Kindle) Reflection: Remember the specks from yesterday? Who havent you forgiven? What offenses are you carrying around in your heart? To whom have you given the power to keep you from forgiveness? When I allow the offenses of others to lodge in my heart, they create a barrier past which the forgiveness of God cant reach. When I get silent before God, I find my mind and my heart turning towards that offense, and I close my heart to the person who offended me, hurt me, wronged me, sinned against me. In closing my heart to them, I close my heart to God. Ouch! But its true. If you dont love the ones you can see, you cannot love the One you cant see. Forgiveness means I release them, fully and completely. I hold nothing against them, and I open my heart to them, just as God opens His heart to me, and holds nothing against me. I let them in, and I let God back in. Prayer: Holy Father, because your heart is overflowing with forgiveness, I now forgive ______, and ______, and ______, and... I remove the barriers in my heart that block Your presence and Your forgiveness from flowing to me, and through me. Fill my heart with Your love and forgiveness, so it will overflow to those who hurt me. I wont restrict the flow.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 06:09:11 +0000
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