Daily Bread and Forgiveness

1. Read Luke 11:1-13. What is an example of shameless persistence in prayer? And what is an area that you could be more persistent in prayer?
2. What are some examples of answered prayers or times when you've seen your prayers make a real difference?
3. Discuss the wonder of God's sovereignty and how he can be absolutely in control and still tie his work in the world to the prayers of his people?
4. How much of your prayer life focuses on confessing sin and asking God to search your heart like Psalm 139:23-24 teaches?
5. Is there anyone you are having trouble forgiving right now? Discuss where you are and what the next step in your journey could be.
6. How comfortable are you in bringing the dark emotions of your heart to God in prayer and praying bad prayers so that God can transform you?

Prayer + Practice:

1. Click the link above and join us for 21 days of prayer and fasting. Use the prayer prompts to explore the themes of the Lord's Prayer in the Psalms. Sign up to receive our prayer journal to pray over the needs of the church. And start praying through the Lord's Prayer as we seek God's face together.
2. Come up with a prayer strategy to keep requests continually before God and pray with a shameless audacity. Consider keeping a journal or making 3x5 prayer cards or using a prayer request app.
3. Take a step towards reconciliation with someone this week, making peace "so far as it depends on you" (Romans 12:18).

All right, good morning. Last week, we started 21 days of prayer and fasting because God's calling us deeper right now into. Into a life of prayer as a church. So whether you're just starting out, starting to develop that life of prayer or you have been walking with God for decades of your life, we believe God has something new and fresh for us in this season. And we kicked off this prayer series, the Lord's prayers, where we're practicing the way that Jesus taught us to pray.

He taught us to pray just seeing all prayer, how all prayer in scripture is encompassed in this model prayer, how it's comprehensive, but not a scientific formula to force God's hand more of, like, dance moves. We're seeing how scripture gives texture, gives texture to the complexity of our lives and leads us into more of a creative expression with God. So we've divided this prayer in this series into three basic movements, where we've got this upward movement that we talked about last week in prayer that highlights the purpose of prayer in connecting with goddess. And then we have this inward movement of prayer where I'm bringing to God the things that I need, and God is bringing into the conversation his concerns for my life. And then next week, we'll look at this outward movement of prayer that focuses on the power of.

The power of prayer in the world. And so we began looking at these basic movements of scripture and how praying scripture keeps us grounded. It keeps us anchored in truth and helps us process through the complexity of our lives. Because if I am only praying, what I feel and what comes to mind for me out of the poverty of my own heart, that I will never experience the fullness of what God has for me in my prayer life with him, what's really possible. And so, as we pray through scripture, it provides this kindling that ignites this praying imagination.

Not the kind of imagination that makes up reality, but the kind that wakes up to it, that wakes up to what is most real in the world. And so scripture is that igniter. It's that igniter that sets our hearts on fire in prayer and wakes us up to reality. So this movement, we're gonna start off today with this request of give us this day our daily bread. As we come to talk about this daily bread and to ask for it.

Remember, in this upward movement, we saw that God is the ultimate source of our. Of our nourishment. He's our ultimate need, the greatest need that we have, our source of nourishment and joy. And so this inward movement now is a little bit more of a wrestling match with God, right? I'm bringing my needs, and he's bringing things to me that he's concerned about in my life.

So we take all of our tangible needs, whether it's physical or psychological or, you know, emotional, economic, anything that we need, we bring it in prayer before God. And you remember last week we talked about God as our father, that he is a good father that wants to give us good things. He wants to provide for us, to be with us and bless us. And so Jesus makes it clear in his teaching, too, that God, he doesn't want us to creep in timidly when we're asking for things. Continuing on that childlike theme, he's asking us to be shameless in it.

Jesus told a story in Luke eleven. I'll bring it up here on the screen. Let's see. Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.

And suppose the one inside answers, don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything. See, in this culture, the cultural context that they're in, a lot of homes only had one room. So by the time you lock the door and you get all the kids in bed, you're risking waking up the entire house because you came to me at midnight asking for bread.

But at the same time, hospitality is huge in this culture. And so, and, you know, food is scarce. They didn't have the same kind of preservatives that we do. So you don't go down to the grocery store in the middle of the night and ask for it. And so that's kind of the situation that they're in.

But Jesus says, I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need because of your shameless audacity. Some versions, yours may say persistence. And that's a really good way to bring out the sense of what is being said here, this persistence in prayer. But the meaning of that greek word, it's actually a lack of sensitivity to what is proper. It's a carelessness about the good opinion of others.

It's a shamelessness. He's calling us to be shameless, this shameless audacity. It sort of sounds like nagging I don't know about you. I don't like to nag people. I don't like to be a squeaky wheel.

It's very uncomfortable for me. But Jesus continues on the childlike theme and basically says that our posture in prayer should be, are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Shameless audacity. You remember in Genesis 18, Abraham. God comes to Abraham and he tells him what he's going to do to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of how great their sin is. And the problem is, God's going to destroy it. But his nephew, Abraham's nephew lot, is living there.

And so he starts haggling with God. He gets him to commit to, hey, if there's 50 righteous people in the city, then he won't destroy it. Once God agrees to that, he just keeps going. He says, all right, what about 45? All right, what about 40, 30, 20?

He gets down to ten. Gets down to ten. If there's ten righteous people in the city, will you spare it? And God agrees. God agrees to the request.

And so Abraham, he shows persistence here, and God shows that he's willing. But what happens? There weren't ten people. There weren't ten righteous people in the city. Abraham stops short.

Abraham stops asking before God stops granting.

Martin Luther said, prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, it's laying hold of his willingness. And I have to wonder, where might we be missing out? Where might we be missing out because we see God as reluctant and we don't see that willing nature that he has. Where have you given up not being shamelessly persistent with God? How much more is there in life that we leave on the table because we don't ask or we give up?

Scripture is showing here that God desires to show us how gracious he is, how willing he is to meet these needs. But we don't know his timing or his will. So he just tells us, be persistent in prayer. Be persistent. The prophet Isaiah talks about this persistence.

He tells his people, give God no rest. He says, I've posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent, day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem. He's saying, give yourself no rest.

Don't give up and give God no rest. He's saying, wear him out as if God could be worn out. Wear him out with your shameless persistence. We know praying the same thing over and over again over time, can wear us down. Can wear us down when we don't see any results.

But God's very clear in scripture. It's a childlike faith that says, are we there yet? Be persistent, be shameless. Be like a kid in prayer. Hold on and don't let go.

And of course, all of this, it brings up the big question in prayer, can I move God? Do my prayers make a difference?

If God is sovereign, if he knows all, if he's all powerful, what good does prayer really do? I love how Dallas Willard says he kind of had to recover from a tradition that saw God like this solemn is like a. He said, a cosmic stuffed shirt. He said, this tradition saw God as this cosmic, unblinking stare that already knows everything and already is set in his ways on what he's going to do. But he realized that doesn't mesh with the God that is revealed in scripture.

I'll tell you, I don't know where sovereignty and free will meet. I don't know where that is. But I do know that God presents himself in scripture as absolutely sovereign and in control, and yet one who can be prevailed upon by his children and still accomplish the things that he wants to accomplish, I don't know where those meet. But that's how God presents himself throughout scripture. It's already beyond our comprehension that he holds the entire universe together and still counts the hairs on our head, which is not hard for me.

But the fact that God allows for free will and he conflicts on the specific circumstances. How much more sovereign is that? He's playing 4d chess with us. He sees things we don't see. And so God, throughout scripture is actively looking for intercessors, people who will stand in the gap, even in his sovereignty.

God ties his work with the prayers of his people. He ties the work that he's doing in the world with the prayers of his saints. He's looking for people to stand in the gap. There's a famous story I love about Dwight al Moody, and he would famously carry 100 names in his pocket of people who didn't know the Lord. And he would pray every day of his adult life, he would be praying for these people.

And by the end of his life, 96 of them had given their lives to Christ. Throughout his life, when they would give their lives to Christ, he would just cross their name off the list. And at the end of his life, 96 out of 100 had given their lives to the Lord. But it doesn't end there, because at his funeral, those four show up, and they are so moved by the spirit in this memorial service that all four of them give their lives to Christ. Praise God.

That is commitment in prayer, but that is strategic. I couldn't pray for 100 names unless I had a list. I can't pray for things that just come to my mind and expect to keep all these things in front of God. So one thing God's been working on in me because I love my prayer time with God, and I'll ask for things all the time, but he's showing me right now, you need to be more systematic, standing on the wall, praying, walking through these things. See, prayer journals.

For whatever reason, the way my mind works, prayer journals have never worked for me. I've never gotten them to work. So, you know, what I've done is taken prayer cards, these three by five cards, and I'll make them for each person that I'm praying for. And I'll put them in stacks of family members or extended family or staff and elders in different groups, and I can decide how often I want to pray for each one. It's something that I can switch them out.

I can add to them. I can just doodle on them and not worry about ruining a whole book. So, for me, this works so much better. Whatever it is, if it's a phone app that you have, that you can keep your prayers continually in front of you, whatever you have to do. The call in scripture is to be shameless, shamelessly persistent in bringing these things to God, even if the answer comes long after you're gone.

Be persistent in prayer. One author said, I love this. He said, courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.

So God, he desires to meet our needs. He invites us to wear him out with requests. And the second part of this wrestling match, this inward movement of prayer, God brings his concerns for our life. And here we're reminded again that our greatest need is God's grace and his forgiveness and his presence. So we get to this next one and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

If you're in here and you're not a believer, this is the entrance into the life with God. This is the way that it starts, because sin has produced this. This chasm, this barrier between us and Jesus, through his sacrifice, has overcome that. He's made a way to take our punishment. But once you come into the life of faith, confession doesn't stop.

I've heard people try to say, you shouldn't ask for forgiveness over and over again because you're already forgiven. Jesus said in his model, he said there should be this regular rhythm of confession, this focus on forgiveness. So even though there is a legal picture here in scripture, very important one, a very important legal picture in scripture that says, he has taken my punishment, he's wiped my slate clean. I now have good standing before God. But there's also a relational picture in scripture, and sin is a barrier.

Even though we don't have, we no longer have condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Sin is still a relational barrier. And so we're asking God, show me where I have not hallowed your name. Show me where I haven't uniquely treasured and loved you above everything else.

Unforgiven, unconfessed. I should say unconfessed sin will pour cold water on your prayer life.

So there's always the sin that's painfully obvious, right? The one that comes to mind immediately that you want to confess. But then there's also this practice, this regular practice of examining my life and asking God, what do you want me to change? Psalm 139 is a perfect example of one that teaches us to pray in this way. It says, search me, o God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. This part of prayer is one I think we tend to rush through sometimes. We want to confess what's on our mind and then move on to something else. God is actually inviting us here to sit.

It's part of what happens in communion. We're sitting in here and just meditating on what caused this in the first place. What sin is in my life that needs to be taken care of? So God searches us and shows us our hidden faults and our blind spots.

So we're confessing because we don't want anything hindering that relationship. We don't want anything between us. We don't want anything to pull our affections away from God. And here's some, just examples of barriers, barriers to prayer throughout scripture. You know, unconfessed sin or disobedience.

Psalm 66 here tells us that if I had cherished sin in my heart, you wouldn't have listened to my prayer. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart. We've seen in James, doubt or wrong motives are hindrances to prayer. There's relational dynamics. Jesus talks in, in Mark eleven about when you stand to pray, if you've got something against someone, if there's something relationally there, go and forgive the person.

Peter even says that the way that I treat my wife affects God hearing my prayers. And we've seen just now just a lack of persistence or just giving up in general. Jesus tells us in Luke 18 that we're to be steadfast prayer and not give up. But think about this. Lack of persistence can lead to not getting what you want in life, right?

Obviously, because you haven't asked for it, you've given up. But have you considered it's also a form of disobedience?

We're commanded all throughout scripture to be constant in prayer, to be unceasing in prayer. Have you ever considered you're not just missing out but actually being disobedient when you're not coming to God in prayer? The idea is not to guilt us into prayer, it's an invitation into God's presence.

But there is a real factor here of disobeying God by being prayerless. In one Samuel, the people ask the prophet Samuel to pray for them. He says, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.

It's more than just missing out. It's more than just not getting something, leaving something on the table. Prayerlessness is sinful.

An author named Peter Forsyth, he said the worst sin is prayerlessness.

He said, not wanting to pray is the sin behind sin. Do not say, he says, I cannot pray. I'm not in the spirit. Pray until you are in the spirit. People have told me many times over the years that they've stopped praying or stopped reading their Bible in a season because it just become a checkbox for them.

My answer is always the same, check the box. Check the box until it becomes a delight.

Ji Packer called this moving from duty to delight. Sometimes we have to move through just this duty, this obedience, to find that delight in God. The ultimate purpose of prayer is delighting in the Lord. But those dry seasons where you don't, where you don't feel that you don't delight in the Lord. We're still called to pray.

Tim Keller tells us to imagine. Imagine you are rooming with someone and he or she virtually doesn't speak to you. All she does is leave messages. When you mention it, she says, well, I don't get much talking to you. I don't get much out of talking to you.

I find it boring and my mind flitting everywhere, so I just don't try. What will you conclude? Regardless of how scintillating a conversationalist you are, it's rude for her not to talk to you. She owes it to her suite mate to at least interact face to face. He says, of course, rudeness is far too weak a word to use for a failure to directly address your maker, sustainer and redeemer, to whom you owe your every breath.

He says, prayer must be persevering. So prayerlessness is the sin behind sin. And so we confess with God, even our prayerlessness, and ask him to draw us further in.

Now, Jesus, he makes a connection in this prayer, in the Lord's prayer, between just our forgiveness and the way that we forgive others. This is the economy of God's kingdom, right? Forgiven people forgive. Grace flows in, grace flows out. It's easy to make sense of, but it's not easy to do, because we don't just hurt each other in trivial ways, do we?

Some of the wounds go deep. Some of us have walked in here today with a very real evil that has been done to us. We've come in maimed. We have to acknowledge that pain so that we're not praying like the knight in Monty Python whose limbs are getting chopped off, and he's saying, it's only a flesh wound. Some of us are coming in here with real pain and hurt.

We have to acknowledge that it could be something you've carried your whole life that you just can't let go of. It may take time to heal. You know, forgiveness, a lot of times is more of a process than just a one and done kind of a thing, because forgiveness, it's not about forgetting necessarily. When you're wounded really deeply, you have scars from it, and you've got trauma from it, PTSD from it. When you get wounded really deeply, sometimes it just keeps opening up, and you got to keep forgiving.

So forgiveness is. It's not the same as forgiving. And it doesn't mean you can't set healthy boundaries to prevent getting wounded again. It also doesn't mean that it happens all at once. Forgiveness is canceling a debt.

And that's the picture in this passage. It's canceling a debt so that the other person no longer owes you. That's the picture Jesus uses in this passage. It means that you no longer hold it over their heads. You no longer.

You give up the right for retaliation.

But can I tell you just the Lord, he knows how difficult this is. He's the one that hung on the cross, bleeding out, suffocating to death, and said, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. But thank God he didn't just do it. He didn't just model it. He gave us scriptures that help us figure out how to process the deep emotions of hate and rage in our hearts.

Scripture actually helps us process through the complexity of trying to forgive someone who has done irreparable harm to you.

In the psalms, if you're going through the psalms, there are certain ones in the psalter that are called imprecatory psalms. These are psalms that. Man, they can be dark. They can be really dark because they're calling down judgment. They're calling for God to act.

They're calling down judgment on the psalmist to enemies. So you'll get to certain psalms and you'll say, whoa, this is supposed to teach me to pray? I can't say that. I can't say that. And how does it mesh with Jesus teaching that we're supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us?

How do we make these things come together? Well, Jesus, basically, he takes Israel's law code, their legal code, of an eye for an eye, in the sermon on the mount, and shows there he teaches, vengeance is about God's justice. It's not about my personal vendetta. Somebody asks you to ask for your cloak, you give it. Somebody asks them to go the second mile or to go a mile, you go with them, too.

This isn't about a personal vendetta. It's not something that you take into your own hands. See, the legal code that God gave the jews to live by was life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. It was the legal code. This wasn't something for you to go pluck somebody's eye out after they plucked yours out.

It was the legal code to make restitution when things went wrong. It's not about personal vendettas, but about God's justice.

God is just. Evil must be repaid. The scales need to balance. We all feel this in our hearts, don't we? They need to balance.

So I want you to know that Jesus didn't just move away from justice. When he starts talking in the sermon on the mount in the New Testament, when he says to pray for our enemies, he's just making it clear that we're not the ones who repay evil. It's not ours. Look, what Paul says in romans twelve, if possible, so far as it depends on you. Be at peace with all men.

Never take your own revenge, beloved. But I love this. Leave room for the wrath of God. Leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.

That's what Jesus is teaching us. Leave room for the wrath of God.

Vengeance is not yours to repay.

So the New Testament, it doesn't do away with God's justice, but satisfies it in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Vengeance belongs to God because he's the only one who knows best what to do with it. So we're told to leave room for the wrath of God. And that's ultimately what forgiveness is. It's just handing over the debt to him, believing that he will bring justice in the best way possible, in the way that he sees fit. You could look at the imprecatory psalms this way.

Really, all of them have to do. This overarching theme is God's justice. He's the one. He's the one. We're calling things out to him, even in our enemies.

When we're showing what's happened, we're calling things out. But this side of things, there's two different ways to pray. The imprecatory psalms that the psalms teach us to pray in this way on this side, has to do with dealing with your hate not coming to God, just with what I'm supposed to sound like, starting with how I think he wants me to be, to be present here in this moment, but starting with where I am and letting God take that hate and transform it into something else. So the imprecatory psalms teach us how to pray our hate. It gives us permission to pray badly, as long as we are submitting it to him and saying, you have to move.

You have to do something with this. The other side of this that we'll look at next week in God's justice is, hey, when the babylons of the world are taking over, we're praying against the forces of evil in the world. We're praying against this very real and present enemy that wants to steal, kill and destroy. So this side of the psalms are warfare. This side is taking my hate and God saying, God, you've got to do something with this.

You've got to do something with this, because I can't. I've got no way to handle the emotion that I feel right now.

I'll give you a quick example of a psalm that really is. I think it shows both of these sides, both aspects. Psalm 137 is possibly the most scandalous passage in your Bible. People have tried to take it out. They've tried to edit this out because they don't see how it fits.

They don't see how it can be reconciled. It's a profound outburst of hate. But here's how it teaches us to pray. The Jews have been taken into captivity.

So they say, remember, O Lord, against the the day of Jerusalem. How they said, lay it bare. Lay it bare down to its foundations. O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall be he who repays you, pays back this debt with what you have done to us.

Blessed shall be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks.

This is a profound outburst of hate. And the reason that it's in the psalms is because it's teaching us to go to God with the raw emotion of hate, to submit it to him, give it over some of the things that we, that we aren't forgiving other people for. They're just plain stupid. Some of them. It's just because we're obstinate and we want our own way.

But some of them has to do with profound hurt that has been done. This is what they had done to them. So you could see this psalm in a couple of different perspectives. You could see it from the perspective of the parent that had the child taken away. Would you blame a parent, a grieving parent that this has happened to, would you blame them for wanting to go Liam Neeson on somebody?

You can see it from the perspective of the parent and you can see it from the perspective of the sympathetic onlooker that sees it happen and says, God, you got to do something about this.

Going to war against Babylon.

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, child for a child. It's awful. It's awful to think about. But some of the stuff in our heart is truly awful.

God wants us to bring it to him. Eugene Peterson says, this is raw hate. It's raw hate. But he says nevertheless, when prayed it's a first step into the presence of God where we learn he has ways of dealing with what we bring him that are both other and better than what we had in mind, he says, but until we are in prayer, we are not teachable. It is better to pray badly than not to pray at all.

He says, a ship that is dead in the water can't be steered. We have to go to God in prayer. And until we learn to be honest and bring God just the ugliest parts of our heart, until we learn to pray our hate, we cannot begin to heal from it and hand it over to him. That's why unforgiveness. Part of the reason unforgiveness is a barrier in your prayer life is because you can't be honest with God in the prayer room, you have to hand it over to him.

Peterson says this. It's easy to be honest before God with our hallelujahs. It's somewhat more difficult to be honest in our hurts. It's impossible. It's nearly impossible, he says, to be honest before God in the dark emotions of our hate.

So tell God. Tell God what is actually in you, not what ought to be. And even while we're learning how to pray, we see that scripture gives us permission to pray bad prayers.

So beg for God's justice to come for his grace to transform you and enable you to forgive. While the impregatory psalms and you know, in one sense they're giving us permission to pray these bad prayers and process real hurt with God. We'll look more next week on how we can pray them in good and holy and just righteous ways against the real enemy. It's wrestling match with God. It's a daily practice.

I'm bringing my needs. He's bringing to me what, what is concerning him about my life.

So here's where we'll end today.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Come up with a strategy to keep your prayers before God systematically as a belief that he knows what he's doing, believing that it works, that you're going to stay at your post with a shameless audacity. Confess where you've not treasured his name, ask him to search your heart for what he wants to be different in your life and then process your raw emotions with Goddesse as you hand over the hate that builds up there, leave room for the wrath of God and pray for your enemies that justice will come one way or another, whether that's through God's judgment or through that judgment being routed through Christ.

These are difficult prayers but they prepare us for the battle that we're going to look at next week. This outward movement of prayer next week that looks at our circumstances and the onslaught of the enemy that's just constant. And when our prayers don't seem to be answered. So I hope you're feeling more equipped as we're going through the Lord's prayer. I just would encourage you to stay steadfast in prayer this week as we're continuing in these 21 days of prayer.

And if you'll stand, we're going to end today again like we did last week. Elijah is going to come up and he's going to pray through this prayer with us in his own words.

If you guys don't mind, even in your own sections just to grab somebody's hand that's next to you.

Heavenly Father, we are in all of you this morning.

We're in awe of your holiness.

We proclaim together as a community that you are who you said you are. You are the king of kings, you are the lord of lords. Your name is above every other name and your faithfulness never ends. And lord, even this morning as we contemplate your holiness, we're so quickly reminded of our need for your grace and for your forgiveness and for your wisdom. And so we set our hearts this morning on our desire for your will to be done.

Father, your wisdom surpasses all of our understanding. And so, Father, we seek your guidance in our lives and we pray for your perfect plan in and through us, Lord, we pray for your perfect plan in our communities. We pray for your perfect plan even in our nation. Make it clear to us, Lord, help us not to lean on our own understanding, but to trust you in your timing. Father, we want your kingdom to advance, but we also know, Lord, that you know the best way on how to advance your kingdom.

And so I pray that we would have peace in knowing that your ways are higher than our ways. We commit our lives to you, Father, even as a living sacrifice, Lord, let your will be accomplished in and through us in the name of Jesus. Father, you know the beginning, from the end and every detail in between. You're aware of every single need that is represented here this morning. Lord, you know every tear that's been shed, every worry on the hearts and minds of your people, every weight of concern.

But, Father, we know, we know that you are our provider. We know that you are faithful. We know that your word does not return void. And so right now, Father, we ask for your provision. I pray, Father, that we would have every access to the resources that we need to fulfill our responsibilities.

Those responsibilities, Lord, that you've given us our responsibilities to support our families, to our work, to our community, to our local church. Fulfill every need, Lord, close every gap. And we even pray for wisdom, lord, in managing what you've given to us, I pray that you would guide us to be good stewards. I pray even now, Father, that the spirit of generosity would overwhelm us with what you have already provided. And in the moments of uncertainty or difficulty with resources, I ask that you would remind us even in those moments of your promises of your faithfulness.

Strengthen our faith, Father, in these moments in the name of Jesus. And Lord, even now, we lift up those among us who are in a desperate situation. Those that are in desperate need, Lord, you are our source. And so according to your word, we ask right now that you would move on their behalf, whether it be food or shelter or healing. Whatever the need that's represented, we put it in your hands this morning.

In the name of Jesus, and we ask that you would provide. We give you the thanks and the praise for your provision. We thank you, Lord, for answered prayer. We thank you for salvation. We thank you for the forgiveness that you've offered to us through Jesus Christ.

And Lord, we ask for your help in extending that same forgiveness to those who have wronged us. Move us this morning to forgive others. In the name of Jesus, I pray for burdens, even right now, to be released. Lingering pain to be broken, bitterness, resentment, grudges, break them down right now. In the name of Jesus, we pray that all of the chains of unforgiveness would be broken this morning.

We pray right now, Father, that reconciliation would begin to flow even in our community, even as we speak, that reconciliation would flow, forgiveness would flow, healing would flow. I pray that relationships would begin to come back together. Marriages, Father, would be restored. I pray, Father, even by the power of your holy spirit, that parents and children would reconcile, that siblings would mend their relationships, that families would be brought back together.

Help us to forgive even as you've forgiven us. We pray even for the humility, Lord, to ask for forgiveness from those that we've hurt.

I pray that you'd move us to have those conversations this week with the people that we need to call, with the people that we need to see and ask forgiveness. I pray that love and mercy and peace and reconciliation would abound in this moment and that your grace would not only come to us, but it would go through us and to those that are around us. Father, we pray all these things in your name. It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.