We pray, but not all our prayers are answered. What do we need to know to have more of our prayers answered? Could it be: ‘The Power to Forgive Sins’?
This is the 3rd of an 8 part series on powerful prayer. These posts should be read in order to get the most from them.
We were made for love; we thrive in it; we are drawn to it. It makes us happy, confident, and self-assured. In contrast, hatred, selfishness, and greed make us sad, despondent, unhealthy, and pessimistic. We all have experiences with both love and evil. Love heals us but evil hurts us, and that hurt never goes away on its own.
We, and all of creation, have the ability to record (remember) every act of love and every loveless act. The world and all of humanity are operating under the weight of billions of acts of “unlove”. Many of the problems we face personally, and as a people, have their roots in a loveless world. Even if every human was able to live a loving life, we would still be faced with a loveless past.
When Jesus committed His life to unconditional love in His sacrificial death for His followers, He specifically provided a solution for this problem. Most Christians have overlooked this amazing power. Some Christians deny it, but the full power of prayer can not be achieved without this very specific, Christ-given, world-changing tool.
In three of the Gospels (Mt 9:6, Mr 2:10, Lu 5:24), Jesus heals a paralytic, and then declares that the purpose of this healing was so that everyone would know that He has the power to forgive sins on Earth. It’s obvious that God was making a point of revealing this power in a specific event so it would not be missed in Jesus’ later declaration that ALL authority had been given to Him. The power to forgive sins is an important tool in healing and in prayer which He does not want us to miss or underestimate. It was important to Jesus and it’s important to us, because He later passed on His authority to us and challenged us to do greater things.
The Pharisees ‘lost it’ over Jesus suggesting that He could forgive sins. They knew God had this power, but because they did not know Him and His nature, they couldn’t believe that He would give that power away to Jesus. Likewise, today’s pharisees can not accept that Jesus would give that authority to His followers/friends. There is, however, a codicil to Jesus’ empowerment of us. You can not separate Jesus’ power from Him. You can’t take power from Jesus. His power and authority are intrinsically part of Him. You must become part of Jesus through intimate relationship in order to have His authority and power. It’s in relationship we live, learn, and grow to understand how to rule the universe with Him. It’s in that relationship that we learn what to pray and we develop the power and authority that can change the world.
The power to forgive sin is not just a stumbling block to the religious; it’s one of the most powerful prayer tools God has given us. The forgiveness of sins permits Christ to do for those for whom we are praying, things that could be done no other way. Scripture reveals that sin is the cause for many problems we may be praying about. People who have not been able to see the love of God have been blinded by their previous sins including vows and chronic fear and unbelief. Some diseases are directly connected to previous sins as was the case of the paralytic whom Jesus healed. Previous sins hinder God from answering prayers of provision. The forgiveness of sin is a tool which we must learn how to use in order to receive more answers to prayer. It has been one of the missing tools in the Churches’ arsenal, but we can learn and grow into the mature use of this power and teach others what we have learned about building the Kingdom of God.
God is love, and His love for us motivated Him to promise in Scripture to answer every prayer we make. So why do we have some prayers that are answered and others which are not? On a few occasions, He can not answer our prayer because what is being asked for is not in the spirit of ‘love’. On far more occasions, God wants to answer, but there are factors we don’t understand which are affecting His ability to respond. Forgiveness of sins is one of those ‘factors’ but there are others which I will address in the upcoming posts.
Your comments are invited……
This is the 3rd in a series of 8 posts about prayer. Please invite your friends to join the conversation. The image below can be saved to your computer by right clicking and selecting “save image as” and then it can be “attached” or “inserted” in a email message. You can also become a “subscriber” and never miss a new post. Check out the “Meta” section “Entries RSS”on the side bar to the right.
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