YOU MUST ASK GOD IN PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS ON A DAILY BASIS
When the Lord Jesus
taught His apostles to pray, these were the Words He used in Matthew 6:9-13
that we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer:
“Our Father Who is in
heaven, hallowed (kept holy) be Your name.
10 Your kingdom
come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day
our daily bread.
12 And forgive us
our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted, and let go of the debts,
and have given up resentment against) our debtors.
13 And lead (bring)
us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and
the glory forever. Amen.”
Now the Word “debts”
here means sins or wrongdoings or trespasses. This is the daily prayer our Lord
Jesus Christ taught His apostles to pray.
I happen to have a
Roman Catholic background so I observed that we were taught to pray this prayer
and as a result, asking God for forgiveness of sins on a daily basis became an
integral part of one’s prayer.
I now worship in a
Charismatic congregation but I have observed even amongst the Pentecostals that
asking God for forgiveness of sins on daily basis is rarely taught.
It is done once in
a while but it is hardly taught as a very important part of prayer. In fact, I
have once heard a preacher say on television that if one is under pressure, it
is not the time to begin to say the Lord’s Prayer but a different kind of
prayer.
That is a very
misleading and sinful statement because it utterly disregards the value of
God’s Words of prayer.
The Lord Jesus told
a Bolivian lady Adelaida De Carillo in a revelation that people go to hell for
sins like gossip because they did not ask for mercy or forgiveness from God.
Some Christians of
today simply do not understand the nature and gravity of sin. The Bible tells
us in 1 John 5:17a, “All wrongdoing is sin”
Lies, sexual
immorality, taking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, gossip, reading immoral
literature, watching immoral movies, listening to and singing immoral songs,
cracking immoral or coarse jokes are examples of wrong doing, which is sin.
Even supporting
those who engage in wrongdoing whether directly or tacitly is also wrongdoing
and is sin.
The Bible tells us
in Proverbs 24:16a, “For a righteous man falls seven times and rises again,
So how does the righteous rise again? It is through
prayer asking God for forgiveness for sins.
Even verses 17 and 18 of the same
Proverbs 16 states thus: “Rejoice not when your
enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles or is overthrown,
18 Lest the Lord
see it and it be evil in His eyes and
displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him [to expend it upon
you, the worse offender].”
Dear
friend, you can see that even rejoicing at the downfall of your human enemy is wrongdoing
and a sin before God.
And
yet when the Lord Jesus Christ tells Christians to pray for and show love and
forgiveness to their human enemies (Matthew 5:44), some are busy doing the
opposite and praying for their human enemies to die and go to hell!
Dear friend,
you can now see why a Christian must ask God for forgiveness on a daily basis because
you do not know that particular wrongdoing you have committed inadvertently,
which is sin before God.
Now,
does the fact that one must ask for forgiveness for sins from God on a daily
basis become a license to engage in sin?
No
way! The Lord Jesus Christ says anyone who habitually sins is a slave of sin –
John 8:34.
This message
is for those who are saved in Christ Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and are
striving as God has commanded in His Word in the Holy Bible to live a righteous
life in sincere obedience to God.
If on
the other hand you reading this message are yet to repent of sins, surrender
your life to the Lordship of Jesus and to live a holy life as Jesus has
commanded, today and now is the moment of decision, for tomorrow may be too
late.
There is
no excuse for sin.
Do not
allow the preachers of the doctrine of eternal salvation to deceive you into
believing that once you are saved in Christ Jesus, all of your FUTURE sins are
also wiped away and you can now therefore live anyhow after that even in sin since
Jesus Christ has forgiven you.
No,
no, no.
A Christian
is not a sinner and a sinner is not a Christian.
May
the good Lord bless you as you heed His Word today, act on it and share with
others in Jesus’ Most Righteous Name, Amen.
Gabriel Ama.
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