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Monday... It is so important to Him.


Matthew 18:21-22 (AMP), "Then Peter came to Him and asked, 'Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me and I forgive him and let it go? Up to seven times?' Jesus answered him, 'I say to you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven.'"

Monday... It is so important to Him.


Now I'm not sure if we realize how important forgiveness is to God.

Well Matthew 18:21 (AMP) says, "Then Peter came to Him and asked, 'Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me and I forgive him." It's a number's thing and Peter is our hero. He asked for a number. He asks, "Up to seven times?" And that really seems reasonable, doesn't it? I mean, seven times is a lot of forgiveness. But not to Jesus.

Verse 22 says, "Jesus answered him, 'I say to you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven." But that is way too much. That is unreasonable because of what they did to me.

Now I left a phrase out at the end of verse 21. The Amplified Bible says, "Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me and I forgive him and let it go?" "And let it go." You see there is an emotion in us when we have been wronged and that emotion is so very import to God. It is not a number's thing but a deep emotional thing. There is pain there. They hurt me and in no way am I going to forgive him. Oh I'll take care of the number's thing but I'm going to keep the hurtful thing because they really hurt me. I still will feel the pain. I deserve that.

But to God, forgiveness is letting it go, pain and all.

You see, we haven't fully forgiven them until we don't have any pain in thinking about what they did to us. That is true forgiveness from God's standpoint and we really do need Him to get to that point. You see, Jesus went to a cross for forgivnenss. He showed His love to us by dying for us and we need to die to our being hurt.

So how many times does it take? Well for Jesus, one but then He died for us. Now the amazing thing is He died but then was resurrected. It's amazing what can happen in us when we die to our being hurt. There will be a resurrection. No longer does that hurt hold us back. We have really forgiven them. We have let it go. Again, it is not still holding us back.

Now of course you may not trust them. They too must change, really change. Yes, what they did will be remembered but you have let go of the pain. And yes, we must remember that forgiveness is very important to God. If we want Him to forgive us then we must forgive them, we must let it go.

By the way, their asking us to forgive them is not the key for us but it is for them. As Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they have done." And our forgiveing them is very important to us and to God. Yes, yes! #todaysbeginning


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