Increase Our Faith!

Daily Reading:  Luke 17

Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17.3-5)

Devotional Thought:  My friend asked me, “How much is enough?  Will God stop showing me mercy because I am not showing mercy to ______?”  Do you, like my friend, wonder if you will somehow have to endure the wrath of God because you have not been forgiving?  If so, then Luke 17 is probably making you squirm a little bit right now.  But, should it? 

Jesus startled his followers by telling them they need to forgive over and over again.  Honest disciples cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith!”  Let’s see if we can do that:

• We are to forgive as we have been forgiven.  How has God forgiven us?  Forgiveness is an accomplished fact in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  However, it is not a realized fact until we receive it through repentance and faith.  Think about that.  You can forgive the one who has offended you, but until there is repentance and change, it is not received. 

• In like manner, until you repent and believe, God does not entrust eternal life to you.  The application is clear.  Until there is repentance and life change, you cannot entrust yourself to the one you have forgiven.  Forgiveness is an accomplished fact in your heart.  But until the offender truly has a change of heart, you cannot trust.  Indeed, you must not trust.

The Psalmist wrote, “For you, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you” (Psalm 86.5, NKJV).  By the grace of God – and with a willing heart - you can settle the matter and be ready to forgive whether or not your brother comes to you and truly repents.

Prayer: Lord, increase my faith so that I can forgive and so that I can understand the difference between forgiveness and trust.  May I, like you, be ready to forgive, but may I also not hold myself to impossible and foolhardy standards of naive trust in those I have forgiven.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day:   Psalm 141.1-10

1 O LORD, I call upon you; hasten to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to you!

2 Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!

3 Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!

4 Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies!

5 Let a righteous man strike me--it is a kindness; let him rebuke me--it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds.

6 When their judges are thrown over the cliff, then they shall hear my words, for they are pleasant.

7 As when one plows and breaks up the earth, so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of Sheol.

8 But my eyes are toward you, O GOD, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!

9 Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me and from the snares of evildoers!

10 Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by safely.