A Prayer For Those Who Have Need of Healing

 

 

Heavenly Father, we thank and praise You for the gift of Your Son Jesus.  We thank You for the life He lived and the example He set.  We thank You for the death He died and the salvation that resulted from it. We thank You for the resurrection and the ascension, and the hope and assurance they provide to sinners saved by grace, through faith.  We thank You for teachings of Jesus and the life that results from obeying them.  This week our minds are centered on the words He taught us when He said in His prayer: “as we forgive those who have sinned against us.”   These words are as important as any He included in His prayer.  He told us that we need to “forgive those who have sinned against us.”  It is a compassionate plea.  He does not say that we should consider forgiving those who sin against us, but we must forgive those who sin against us, those who have hurt us.  He does not question the reality of our wounds.  He does not doubt that we have been sinned against.  The issue is not the existence of our hurts, but the treatment of our pain.  Jesus knows that the salve that heals the wounds inflicted upon us by others is forgiveness.

 

Father, we pray this morning for all who have been wounded by the hurtful words of a husband, or a wife, a mother or a father, a sibling, a friend, a neighbor, a teacher, an employer or anyone else.  May each realize that only forgiveness gives one the opportunity to start over, to create a new beginning out of the pain of the past.  

 

Lord Jesus, help those whose hearts are so filled with resentment that they poison all who come within their shadow, to remember that an eye for an eye leads to blindness; a leg for a leg leads to lameness; a hand for a hand leads to defenselessness.  No matter what the weapons, whether they are words, or clubs, or arrows, or guns, or bombs, revenge locks us into everlasting violence.  Grant that men and nations, tribes and peoples, might come to see that revenge only adds to the pain and the problem; forgiveness alone brings healing and wholeness.  Teach all to respond to the hurts of life by praying, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”  Only this will free us from the wounds and the hurts of the past.  

 

This we ask in the Holy name of Jesus.

 

Amen