Disciples' Prayer 3 - What Do Provision & Forgiveness Have to Do with Each Other?

Disciples’ Prayer Week 3

Father,
As we continue our journey in Jesus’ primer on prayer, help us to grasp what these phrases are really saying. Help us to take these truths to heart and live them.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Matthew 6:11-12 (TPT)
We acknowledge you as our Provider
of all we need each day.
Forgive us the wrongs we have done as we ourselves
release forgiveness to those who have wronged us.

This is a hard one for the “breadwinners” out there, the ones who work their butts off to put food on the table and roofs over their families’ heads, but your ability to work and the fact that you have a job or a functioning, growing business is not due to your efforts alone. God gave those things to you. He provided you with the heartbeats, breaths, strength, and drive to do what you do, along with the wisdom and favor from your clients and/or employer(s) to continue working with you/ to allow you to continue working for them. Let that pride go. Let your identity be in your status as a beloved child of God, not in what you do, much less how much you earn.

The next thing is forgiveness. This is hard, almost harder than admitting that God is our ultimate provider. Why does Jesus condition our forgiveness from heaven on how we forgive our neighbors for things that they do which offend or hurt us? Why does this come after the affirmation that God is our provider? To answer the first question, I see it as an extension of God’s emphasis on our horizontal relationships. It goes along with Jesus’ teaching about when it is legitimate to give an offering at the temple. God wants us to be upright and handle our interpersonal issues in healthy ways before we even “go to church”. If there are any things we need to make right, in terms of forgiving one who has offended us. That doesn’t mean that they need to automatically need to be accepted into the “circle of trust”, just because you forgave them. It does mean that you do not hold whatever it is against them. That takes an exercise of will on our part, because it is often easier (more comfortable) to just nurse that grudge, but the truth is that you are only hurting yourself when you nurse a grudge. As to why it comes after we are told to affirm that God is our provider, forgiveness is ultimately a heavenly thing, as well. Forgiveness is divine, not human. So our role is to ask God for the grace to forgive those who wrong us, whether in reality or just our perceptions. Then with the provided grace we receive, it is incumbent on us to give it out in return, rather than hosting bitterness and resentment from hurts that eat us alive from the inside. As I said earlier, forgiveness does not mean that the offender gets a free pass back into the circle of trust, it simply means that you do not HAVE to carry that dead weight around so much. It is also a process and a choice, not simply a feeling. This is a much larger topic than I have space to cover here, so I think this is where I will leave it.