There is a verse in scripture that stops me dead in my tracks every time I read it. It’s found after the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter six; you know, the prayer that Jesus used to outline how we should pray (not “what” we should pray, but that’s another column). After telling us to only ask for our needs to be met, for God’s will to be done here on earth, to praise God for being holy, to forgive us as we forgive others, seeking deliverance from evil and acknowledging he is all powerful Jesus reiterated one thing.

In verses eleven and twelve Jesus says these words, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive you.”

When I find myself embittered against someone I realize that there is an issue of unforgiveness and I better get it straightened out because if I don’t, He won’t! That puts the fear of God in me!

That being said, I have been struggling with forgiving someone this past year. I am not going to go into what they did, because it doesn’t matter. The important fact here is that I was hurt and couldn’t get past it.

The problem has been that even though some days I am really good at choosing to forgive, other days I have allowed my emotions to rule over me. Hence my struggle! Last night I found myself struggling once again. I was driving in my car and began to pray out loud. I find this helpful sometimes as I can hear my own words more clearly than when I pray silently and God has more opportunity to correct my misconceptions. Last night was no exception. As I prayed I heard myself say something I have been praying for months, “God, help me to forgive!” I immediately heard my own words and the Holy Spirit showed me the error I had been making all this time. Help me!

Using this phrase was basically saying to God, “God, I am going to handle this in my strength. I am going to do all I can do, and when I can’t do it any more I want you to step in and take over.” The problem with this philosophy of forgiveness is that my efforts have been failing this entire time. I have been asking God to start in the midst of my failure, and that will never work.

Let me clarify this a bit. Let’s say my son was trying to put the lawn mower’s engine back together and kept getting it wrong. Pretend he came to me and said, “Dad, I want you to watch me and when I get to the point where I don’t know what other parts to put together I want you to finish the job.” It’s an impossible request because the motor is put together incorrectly from the start. I would have to disassemble what he had done and start over. If every time I attempted to do that he got angry and said, “No, start where I left off!” it would be hopeless.

Now you know where I have been. Instead of praying “help me” I changed my prayer to, “God, teach me how to forgive!” Things changed immediately. The first thing was my attitude. The second was that my phone rang. My friend Ben was putting a Bible study together on truth and during our discussion he said, “How do you define atonement?”

After our discussion I hung up the phone and the Holy Spirit revealed to me about this person who had hurt me: their sin had been atoned for; the price had been paid. Had I not been teachable at that moment I would have become argumentative with the Holy Spirit. This time my heart broke. How dare I try to steal from them something that I too desperately need from God!

The next time you find yourself struggling with something don’t ask God to help you, ask God to teach you how to handle it. Then get into His word, talk to other Christians, sit under godly teaching and listen to the Holy Spirit. It will make all the difference!







– Johnny Walker is a Christian Counselor and the founder of Family Works Counseling.