Pursuit Of His Presence Day 141

Matthew 18:21-35 

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Devotional

No Whining, Please

by Kenneth Copeland

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’” Matthew 18:21-22, New International Version
We need to face the fact that we can’t walk with God and be even a little unforgiving or a little offended. If we’re going to walk with God, we must allow His love to drive out every trace of any kind of unforgiveness.
“But you just don’t know how badly they treated me!”
Has God forgiven your sin?
“Yes.”
Then you forgive them. Period. End of discussion.
Quit crying and whining about how hurt you are. Maybe you have been mistreated, but if so—get over it! Everyone has been mistreated in some form or another.
The reason I can talk so straight to you about this is that God has already said these things to me. I remember one day when I was moping around at home. I’d just come in from preaching on the road and it seemed that as soon as I got there, I had to start fighting the devil. I was whining about it when Gloria said something to me I didn’t like.
“Oh, she doesn’t care about me anyway,” I muttered in self-pity.
Right then, the Lord spoke up in my heart and said, It isn’t any of your business whether she cares for you or not. It’s your business to care for her.
Then He added something I’ll never forget. He said, I’m the One who cares whether you hurt or not. Your hurts mean everything in the world to Me, but they ought to mean little or nothing to you.
As the Church, we need to learn that today. We need to quit paying so much attention to our own hurts and cast them over on God. We need to take a lesson from the pioneers of the faith.
People like Peter and John and those Pentecostal old-timers years ago would walk into the very jaws of hell. They’d go through persecutions that make the things we face look like child’s play. They didn’t come out crying about how they’d been hurt either. They came out saying, “Glory to God! We’re getting an opportunity to suffer for His Name. What a privilege!”
When you have that attitude, it’s not hard to forgive because your focus isn’t on yourself. It’s on God and His purposes, God and His love.
If you want to discover the secret to real forgiveness, that’s where your focus has to be—on God. We are instructed to forgive others in the same way, or on the same basis, that God has forgiven us.
Speak the Word
“I forgive others, as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven me.” —Ephesians 4:32
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