A Quote by Joyce Meyer
Just deciding to forgive isn't enough because willpower alone won't work - we need divine strength from God. As He gives us the strength, we need to pray for our enemies and bless them. Praying for those who have hurt us is vital to successfully forgiving them.
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God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where he wishes us to be employed. He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough and sense enough for what he wants us to do.
Strength, strength for us. What we need is strength, who will give us strength? There are thousands to weaken us, and of stories we have had enough.
Behold your little ones. Pray with them. Pray for them and bless them. The world into which they are moving is a complex and difficult world. They will run into heavy seas of adversity. They will need all the strength and all the faith you can give them while they are yet near you. While they are young, pray with them that they may come to know that source of strength which shall then always be taught of the Lord' and great shall be the peace of thy children.
Instead of waiting until crisis problems develop which result in panic praying for others, we need to trust God to protect them as we pray Spirit-led, thoughtful, caring prayers before the problems overwhelm them, and they are unable to cope. We need to engage in major battles, not just minor skirmishes, moving from surface praying to in-depth praying. We need to pray both defensively and offensively.
Sometimes people hurt us unintentionally. We may view that they've hurt us intentionally and want revenge. But sometimes when we really look back again, we can see that they weren't intentional in trying to hurt us. That's when we need to confess our judgment of them and forgive them for their unintentional hurts committed against us.
Jesus taught us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" not forgive us and smite those bastards who hurt us.
Prayer gives us strength for great ideals, for keeping up our faith, charity, purity, generosity; prayer gives us strength to rise up from indifference and guilt, if we have had the misfortune to give in to temptation and weakness. Prayer gives us light by which to see and to judge from God's perspective and from eternity. That is why you must not give up on praying!
What is forgiving? Forgiving is giving up all claim on one who had hurt you and letting go of the emotional consequences of the hurt. How can we do that? It's done at the price of beating back our pride. By nature we are selfish. Forgiving, by definition, is unselfish. Being hurt by another person wounds our pride. Pride stands in the way of forgiving. We cannot forgive without God's help. It might be possible for us to forgive something inconsequential without God's help; but in significant matters, we are unlikely to accomplish anything without God's involvement in the process.
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety, and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temparate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.
A woman once told me that she did not feel the need to reach out to those around her because she prayed every day. Surely, this was enough. But a prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another. God may not need our attention as badly as the person next to us on the bus or behind us in line in the supermarket. Everyone in the world matters, and so do their blessings. When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world.
When an injustice happens, we want to be vindicated. People feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong. If we're honest, we'll admit that we usually want the person who hurt us to pay for what they did. We can't get past this until we get the revelation that only God can pay us back. He is our Vindicator - He will heal and restore us if we will trust Him and forgive our enemies as He has told us to do.
It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?
Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.
One of the most effective ways to pray is to ask God to give you a promise from his Word concerning whatever it is you're praying for. Then hold him to his Word as you pray it back to him. It's what has been called "reversed thunder." God keeps his Word, and basing our prayer on his Word gives our prayers strength and confidence because we know we're asking for something God wants to give us.
No judge can stop us from praying for our country and I pray that on May 6, millions of Americans will join me in praying for our President, all of our elected leaders, and even for this unjust judge and all those who rule from the bench - that God would guide them and give them wisdom.
God does not give His grace as He gives His sunshine - pouring it out on all alike. He discriminates in spiritual blessings. He gives strength according to our need. His eye is ever on us in tender, watchful love, and what we need He supplies.
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