“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15, KJV)
Is there such a thing as being spiritually sterile? We have a yearning to be a channel of blessing – a vessel suitable for the Master’s use. What if we want to be, but don’t seem to be that vessel. A trauma of the past may have made us infertile. The soil may not be prepared to take the seed. Why? Perhaps a hurt of the past has robbed us of the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit. The emotional crisis was deep and it seemed easier to bury the hurt than to find a solution, because in doing that it would mean we would have to rehash that grievous hurt.
We must be sensitive to the fact that no man is an island. What we do always affects someone, whether for good or for evil. We must keep short accounts with God so that we can seek His forgiveness when we have wronged someone and then to ask for His grace to forgive the one who has hurt us.
Jesus said if we forgive others, our Heavenly Father will forgive us, but if we do not forgive others, neither will our Father forgive us. It’s a small price to pay to humble ourselves by forgiving someone when we compare our loss of eternity with Jesus by not doing so.
We must ask the Father to help us to forgive and not only to forgive, but to forget the hurts of the past. We need to ask for cleansing. We must strive for the tribute by Jesus to Nathaniel, a man with no guile. When we do this, an avenue of blessing is open to us to be that vessel that God wants to use.
Esther Kennedy