The Word To Live By:3-15-26
Phil Waggoner
For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in loving kindness to all who call upon You. Psalm 85:5
The Word To Live By: We are talking about the prayer of faith, and how it is a prayer of declaration of the will of God being done in our lives. It starts with us believing in our heart and saying what we believe with our mouth. Because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17), and the law of meditation (Joshua 1:8), if you will expose yourself to the preaching and teaching of the Word, faith will become stronger than your doubt and unbelief, driving out fear and bringing the manifestation of what you say (Mark 11:23). We learned that whatever we ask for in prayer (according to the will of God) we have it when we pray, not when we see it, but when we ask (Mark 11:24; 1 John 5:14-15). Then in Mark 11:25, we discovered that the lynchpin that holds these two scriptures together is our forgiveness of those who have sinned against us (Matthew 6:12). Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a declaration from us to God the Father (Matthew 6:12). Two days ago, I was working at baseball game as a crowd manager. My area was crowded with a lot of people drinking beer. The main part of my job is to courteously control the crowd from getting out of hand, when suddenly, the police arrived with the head of our security and arrested a man for public intoxication. Apparently, he had caused a problem in another part of the park and was fleeing them and they caught up to him in my area. My immediate supervisor, who was not there but sitting at a picnic table in the shade looking at his phone, laid into me for not noticing him and told the head of security that I wasn’t paying attention. I wish I could say I immediately forgave him, but I didn’t. I stewed on it for awhile until the Spirit of God finally got through to me and I had the thought, “Let it go.” So, I said to myself out loud, “I forgive him,” and asked God to forgive him (Acts 7:60). I didn’t feel like it before and I didn’t feel like it after I did it. After the shift was over, I went up to him and shook his hand and thanked him for the hours and told him to have a good rest of his day. I walked away, still not feeling like forgiveness had occurred. The next day, I was at a different station, checking bags as people came into the park, when an older lady came to my post. She could barely walk, she was so out of breath. I stuck out my hands to support her (I thought she was going to pass out), and she grabbed them and held on for several minutes. In those several minutes, I prayed a short quiet prayer for her. Nothing long or ostentatious, just, “Lord Jesus strengthen her and give her peace.” She walked away normally. I am 100% convinced that wouldn’t have happened had I not the day before forgiven a man who lied and slandered me. By the way, I still don’t feel like it and will avoid him for the rest of this job, but I will continue to remind myself that he is forgiven. Have a great day walking in forgiveness.
Read through the Bible in a year: Matthew 15:21-39; Leviticus 26-27; Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 15, Mark 9:26-50, Galatians 1
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160