Praying About Forgiveness

Here’s a prayer I wrote on Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025

Dear Lord Jesus,

I come to You this afternoon giving thanks and praise for your gifts of forgiveness, salvation, sanctification, and the fullness of Your Holy Spirit. I look at Your words in Luke 23:34, “But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.’” I think of those blesses words coming from you right after you were crucified, and I am struck by how deep Your love was and is for all of us. I certainly helped nail You to the cross with my sins, but You graciously took them on Yourself to demonstrate God’s mercy and to provide wretches like me with salvation. Do I deserve what You did for me on Golgotha? Absolutely not. But that’s what Your grace is all about, giving us what we don’t deserve all because of Your great love for us. And Your forgiveness drives it home to me, while helping me see what I am responsible to do for us.

By “us” I’m referring to the people trying desperately to change me into what they want me to become. They’ve become entangled in my life by their efforts to take total control over me to push me in the direction they want me to go. But what they’re not factoring into all this is You. You, Lord Jesus, have the ultimate control over my life through Your Word and the power of the Holy Spirit. No one is going to snatch me out of Your hand, causing me to give up on You, forsake Your Word and the truth, and go follow after Satan’s evil lies. What You’re showing me I have to do with these people is forgive them for what they’re attempting to do under Satan’s prompting, just as You forgave those who crucified You, because they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t recognize that Satan is urging them on in the effort to turn me away from You, Julie, everyone else I care about, to go live a life of blatant sin. They don’t realize the severity of the judgement that will come against them eventually from God for trying to do this to me. But forgiving them sets me free from them. You can’t control someone who’s forgiving you for the wrong you’re trying to do to them.

Please enable me to continue to do this, Jesus. In Your Name, Amen.

(Scripture quote taken from New American Standard Bible, 1995 edition.)